Bush is not another Hitler

I've heard about the two ads (out of roughly 1,500 entrants) in MoveOn.org's "Bush in 30 Seconds" contest that imply that Bush is "another Hitler." I'm very glad to see that neither of them made the finals.

I have a big problem with the way we so easily make comparisons to Nazis and Hitler these days. I'm sure anyone who's been on an e-mail discussion list or message board where a moderator has tried to actually enforce the rules has heard one or more participants accuse the moderator of being a Nazi, or comparing them to Hitler. On the show "Sienfeld," there was a long running joke about the "soup Nazi." And more and more over the last few months, I've heard people comparing Bush to Hitler.

When we start comparing mailing list moderators or soup chefs to the Nazis, we trivialize who and what the Nazis were. No mailing list moderator is going to round up people who write off-topic messages, use them for medical experiments, torture and abuse them, starve them, and/or finally gas them to death by the millions. And while there may be aspects of Bush's personality that might remind some of Hitler (such as his claim that God is telling him to go after Saddam), I honestly do not see America heading to the point where we're going to have concentration camps filled with people being killed at the hand of President Bush for no reason other than their race, religion, beliefs, etc. Yes, I think Bush is extremely dangerous and could well lead America from being a democracy to being a facist state, but turning a country into a facist state alone truly does not come close to matching the vileness of what the Nazis did and stood for. The thing is, when we use Hilter comparisons and Nazi metaphors in such a superficial way, we run the risk of forgetting just how awful what they did was.

I will say that I believe there are valid comparisons to be made between the economic and political tactics that Hitler used in turning Germany into a facist state and some of the economic and political tactics Bush has used, and I think it's more than fair to show the similarities in how each of them has used the power of their office. That, however, is the limit of the comparisons between them, and its very hard to explain those similarities in a 30-second ad.

As for implying that Bush is "another Hitler", unless you can honestly imagine him building concentration camps and killing millions of Americans, don't do it. Bush is bad, yes, but Hitler was far worse. Just as comparing a message-board moderator to a Nazi trivializes just how evil the Nazis were by turning them from mass-murdering, torturous butchers into people who believe in strictly enforcing the rules, bringing Hitler down to Bush's level trivializes just how evil a man he was. And when we stop looking at Hitler and the Nazis as perhaps the greatest evil force in history, it makes it easy to forget just how bad what they did was - and that is simply something we cannot afford to do.

Article edited at 3:30pm 1/6/04 to correct number of ad entered into MoveOn.org's contest to 1,500 instead of 15,000. I regret the earlier error