Playing the Nazi Comparison Card Charlotte West 11 July 2003
The European Union had reached a critical impasse. It was very serious.
"Mr. Berlusconi has caused a major crisis unlike any other in EU history," declared Enrique Baron, socialist group president. In the first assembly since Italy assumed EU presidency, right-centrist Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi met a jeering carnival atmosphere in which various left-leaning members derided him as “Attila of the Union”, and as he began speaking, Green party placards taunted he was not above the law. When Martin Schulz, a German Social Democrat, heckled that Berlusconi had sidestepped bribery charges, Berlusconi, finally getting into the spirit of things, countered that Schulz could play the part of a “Capo” in an upcoming Nazi film. Berlusconi later explained the comeback was a joke, an ironic observation inspired by Schulz’ “tone and gestures” - and since Berlusconi controls a $7.8 billion media empire, who knows, he may even know a little something about casting.
Yet Berlusconi’s throwaway jab galvanized the EU into action in a way no cruel despot gassing his people and collecting bombs ever could. Immediately, the session was suspended, and righting this grievous wrong flew to the top of Europe’s agenda, as German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder demanded an apology - in person and to the entire assembly!
A Sapa-AFP report patiently explained, “The Nazi era is still a hugely sensitive issue for Germans, nearly 60 years after the end of the Second World War, and the slightest remark seeming to make light of its crimes invariably causes outrage.” Yes, “invariably”. Pity, many are neither as prescient nor solicitous about the victims’ feelings as they are about the feelings of perpetrators.
“No democratic politician should be allowed to take a dispute with another democratic politician so far as to dishonor him with a Nazi comparison,” Wolfgang Thierse, the German Parliament’s veteran Speaker rebuked on public television.
Apparently, some epithets must be reserved for dishonoring Jews or they will lose their strength.
When Oxford poet and former Labour Party member Tom Paulin last November said in an interview that Jewish settlers should be “shot dead”, “I think they are Nazis, racists, I feel nothing but hatred for them,” and then added “I can understand how suicide bombers feel… I think attacks on civilians in fact boost morale,” he was not joking. He didn’t even claim to be. And it was not a throwaway comment. He regularly refers to the Israeli Defense Forces as “the Zionist SS”. One wonders where all the sensitive democrats demanding apologies were then.
Oxford University meted out no personal consequences for Paulin’s hate-filled incitements to murder, not even a reprimand, even though he had violated British law, and incurred student protests. Indeed, Balliol College student union president, Sarah Monroe warned, “Such public advocation of violence against a particular ethnic or political group is not acceptable and the university should not pussy-foot around saying so.” But Oxford did not even venture a wussy pussy-foot. Tom Paulin played The Nazi Comparison Card against the victims and won himself more BBC television appearances, more newspaper interviews, and a trip to Harvard to infect ‘the colonies’ with his raging social disease.
He also apparently won the admiration of his colleagues, as scant months later, we witness another player coming out of Oxford. By now we’ve all heard about the strange case of Dr. Andrew Wilkie, by day ethical scientist experimenting with genetically based malformations in children, by night dabbling in political poisons, anonymously, or so he thought, until he awoke one morning horrified to find he had completely transformed into a monstrous Mr. Hyde for all the world to see, caught not only clumsily playing The Nazi Comparison Card, but illegally denying Amit Duvshani, today’s ‘Jew the Obscure’, his chance to study at Oxford.
Perhaps inspired by academic colleagues like Tom Paulin and Mona Baker, Dr. Wilkie, entrusted with Oxford power, seized his moment of political expression, apparently not even dimly aware he was usurping the rights of another human being. Somehow, a real live Israeli was to him nothing more than the chance to make a political statement. Dr. Wilkie may as well have tattooed a number on Duvshani’s arm before casually performing his selection duties, requesting all Israelis to step smartly to the next lab please. Wilkie stated outright that it wouldn’t have worked, and yes, he was being sincere. It no doubt wouldn’t have worked. But what does that say about the noxious little kingdom he’d created in his Oxford lab? Kaboom. Seems Palestinian sympathizers also can explode prematurely, becoming “work accidents”.
Yet, Wilkie no doubt still considers himself a good man, hardly suspecting a heart of darkness. Surely, he had the best intentions. Perhaps he had not had the best methodology. A scientist must be daily on guard against the introduction of bias, particularly in data collection and the formulation of hasty conclusions. Had he applied those same rigorous standards in formulating his much vaunted personal political views? Or was Wilkie relying willy-nilly on a British media as stained with The Nazi Comparison - artfully quoting “expert sources” such as Arafat and Tom Paulin - as if raw ‘Comparison’ fish n’ chips were regularly thrown right in the rolling hot press newsprint, every greasy quote oozing the social disease a little further outward. Consuming this mycobacteriosis in crawling rags, the country daily ingests what amounts to zoonosis of the mind more insidious than “mad cow”.
Then there’s the BBC. Israel has determined the BBC so consistently lacking in objectivity, contextual depth, and historical accuracy that they have instituted special restrictions on interviews and visas. Enough is enough. The Telegraph’s Barbara Amiel says the BBC’s anti-Israel bias is because “the BBC has been captured by one end of the political spectrum… They have handled the corporation, especially in news and current affairs, as if it were the party organ of Labour’s left-wing, or, at best, the Fabians.” Accurately, she suspends the argument there, without connecting the dots that left-wing bias assures an incapability of presenting Israel fairly. It is a given.
Indeed, one needn’t look very far to find an example. Oona King (half Jewish herself), London East representative of the governing Labour Party, breezed through Gaza before playing the Nazi Comparison Card, by gushing that conditions were just "the same in nature but not extent" as Poland’s Warsaw Ghetto, where Jews were corralled by Nazis. King also acknowledged that it was different in “intent”. What does that gobbledygook mean, ‘the same in nature but not extent or intent’? What made the Warsaw ghetto unique in nature was exactly the extent of the persecution and the intent to starve and murder the victims. But even more important than how the Jews were treated, is what the Jews did to incur that treatment. Nothing. The Jews of the Warsaw ghetto were victims. They were neither demanding anything of the Germans, nor were they harming the Germans or their country. Unlike the Gaza residents.
It’s not just Britain. Who can forget Gretta Duisenberg, “Mr. Euro” the Dutch banker’s wife who ironically never leaves home without her Nazi Comparison Card, so eager is she to shop for ways to equate Jews to Nazis. She happily goes on sprees, charging the Jenin wall was “higher than the Berlin wall”, that the Israeli “occupation” of the “Palestinian territories” is worse than the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, that Israeli “cruelty” in blowing up terrorist houses is worse than the cruelty of the Nazis in the Netherlands and on and on. And on.
Typically, those playing the Nazi Comparison Card against Jews obsess about restrictions placed on Palestinians as if they came unbidden. They ignore or discount malicious murderous Palestinian behaviors requiring restraining. They seem unaware that Palestinians have turned down at least four offers of the homeland for which they claim they are doing all this.
Also typical is how those desperately trying to shove the square pegs of Nazism into the round behaviors of Israel, manage to ignore the many perfect fits for comparing the Arab Nation to the Nazis. One need not even stretch one’s imagination, use metaphors, analogies, overblown hyperbole or even qualifications. Just the facts.
Arabs are eagerly ingesting Nazi ideology, reading books and watching shows on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Mein Kampf. Conspiracy theories about Jews dominate their media. Their religious and political leaders’ speeches bond with Hitler in his attempt to murder all the Jews, such as: “But I… complain to Hitler, even saying to him from the bottom of my heart, ‘If only you had done it, brother… so that the world could sigh in relief’….” They vilify and slander the Jews with blood libels, claiming that Jews require the blood of Muslims and Christians to make holiday foods. They teach their children to hate Jews through songs, textbooks, television shows, commercials, comic books, posters, art exhibits, sermons.
If a lone Jew comes within reach, they kill him by lynching, shooting, stoning, stabbing, running him over. If they can gain entry to any Jewish house they murder all inhabitants without mercy. They descend upon Jewish prayers and religious celebrations to mass-murder them. They desecrate Jewish religious sites. They train their youth how to murder Jews in special camps. They seek out places where Jews have gathered to mass-murder them. They celebrate when Jews and their supporters are mass-murdered. They honor and reward those who mass-murder Jews. They desire all their lands be ethnically cleansed of Jews, made “Judenrein”. They drove out almost a million Middle Eastern Jews from their homes to a ghetto called Israel, where transport after transport of Jews on buses are now being mass-murdered as the world stands by, just like they did during the first Holocaust.
Those using The Nazi Comparison against Jews are deliberately sweeping under the Oriental rug the fact that it is the very real Arab revival of Nazism that needs addressing.
So, equating Jews with Nazis serves two purposes for the anti-Semites. One, it hurts Jews. Comparing the Jews to their worst nightmare hurts the Jews more than any other slur ever could, as it is intended to do. It is evil. It is tantamount to cooking the baby in the milk of its mother. Adding the gravest insult to the most heart-wrenching crime. It is heinous. It matters not if it is a Jew who is doing the slurring – whoever does so is an anti-Semite. Period. If calling a democrat, especially a German one, a Nazi, is intolerable, it pales in comparison to the injury inflicted by calling a Jew a Nazi. Anyone claiming any sensitivity whatsoever would have no desire to force-fit crude comparisons. The only shock and horror garnered is at the shallow frivolousness of their understanding, or the sheer monstrousness of their evil. Thus, anyone clumsily holding the sword of a vicious Nazi comparison at the neck of a Jew has ipso facto defaulted both the intellectual and the moral high ground. And two, it camouflages the fact that the Arab Nation is in a full throttle Nazi Revival. By attempting to equate Jews with Nazis, the Arab Nation and their supporters seek to confuse, obfuscate and dilute comparisons that will inevitably (and rightly) be aimed at them. Making a hall of mirrors out of the comparison negates its effectiveness and impairs credibility when elements of the Arab Nazi Revival Period are finally exposed.
By bandying about false comparisons and/or making it politically incorrect to use the Nazi Comparison Card at all, those hiding Nazi activities can safeguard their ability to operate uncriticized and undeterred. -------------------------------------------------------- Charlotte West can be reached at [email protected].
