Even 59 years after the end of the war he started, there is no purer symbol of evil than Adolf Hitler. The German leader oversaw the genocide of six million Jews and provoked a global armed conflict.As the philosopher George Santayana famously said, "those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat its mistakes." It makes good sense, intellectually and morally, to compare current leaders to those of the past.
False comparisons, though, like those put forth in recent ads circulated over the internet and given some publicity by the group MoveOn.org, are spiteful, malicious and dangerous.
The ads were part of a contest called "Bush in 30 Seconds," where individuals filmed their own anti-Bush commercials and submitted them. All appropriate submissions were posted online, and winners were selected from the group.
Two of the ads posted online used Nazi imagery but were later pulled.
"We agree that the two ads in question were in poor taste and deeply regret that they slipped through our screening process," wrote MoveOn.org Voter Fund founder Wes Boyd in a press release available on the Internet. "In the future, if we publish or broadcast raw material, we will create a more effective filtering system."
The admission is commendable, but it fails to answer the crucial question: are Bush's policies like Hitler's? After all, it is commonly thought that Nazism is a radical form of conservativism. In fact, President Bush has often been portrayed as Hitler in leftist propaganda, especially during the height of the anti-war movement.
This perception is far from the truth, however. Many of Hitler's policies, such as those on genocide, war for acquisition, economics, immigration, gun control and vegetarianism, were far from the beliefs of American conservatives.
The most disturbing facets of Nazism - genocide and war for acquisition - are the reason that any comparison to Hitler is damaging. One of the ads even said outright, "what were war crimes in 1945 is foreign policy in 2003."
However, there is no record of Bush expressing interest in either of these policies. There has never been any evidence presented of a desire to exterminate Iraqis, and the country is in the process of being returned to its population.
Also, while the war was preemptive, it was far from unprovoked. There were humanitarian issues to be dealt with, and Hussein had played weapons-inspection games for years. Poland was not in the process of inventing weapons of mass destruction when Hitler decided to occupy the state.
Though it can be argued that the war was not worth its costs, there was certainly little Hitler-esque about it.
Next, Nazi policy on economic issues had little in common with American conservativism. A quick look at the National Socialist German Workers Party (NAZI) program verifies this.
"It must be the first duty of each citizen of the State to work with his mind or with his body," reads the tenth of 25 statements, sounding somewhat right-wing. However, it then rails against free-market ideals: "The activities of the individual may not clash with the interests of the whole, but must proceed within the frame of the community and be for the general good."
Certainly, this is inconsistent with Bush's tax-cutting platform and the economically individualist right wing. However, it does seem to be in line with the ideals of the Democratic Party.
Other parts of the program demand nationalization of big businesses and strict regulation of the press. It is the left, not the right, that is anti-big-business and in favor of regulating media ownership.
When Hitler came to power, it is true he toned down his push for nationalization,
turning instead to massive public works like the Autobahn, as well as protectionism to encourage German self-sufficiency ("autarky").
Bush did pass steel tariffs to protect the US steel industry, but overall the policies of nationalization, public works projects, and economic protectionism through "planning" are also of the left-wing, anti-free market Democrat variety.
Even when Nazism can be called extreme conservativism - for example, the absolutist anti-immigration stance of the National Socialist German Workers Party - it seldom describes Bush's agenda.
The U.S. leader recently proposed soft-on-illegal-aliens measures, defying not only far-right "nativist" sentiments but even the notion of law and order.
The only real commonality between Bush's philosophies and Hitler's program is this smiliarly leftist idea: "We demand extensive development of provision for old age." Social programs advocated by Hitler are mirrored by those championed by the American left, not the conservative parties.
Next, the American right has often asserted that Hitler's gun control enabled the Holocaust. Some scholars have taken issue with this far-reaching assertion, as Hitler merely expanded pre-existing measures, but it is clear the Nazi leader did like the policy.
Take, for example, this chilling 1938 quote: "The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to permit the conquered Eastern peoples to have arms. History teaches that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by doing so."
In other words, Hitler and the NRA are on complete opposite sides of the issue.
Lastly, Hitler was a vegetarian. This trend, and its accompanying beliefs (and malnutrition) are clearly much more prevalent on the American left than the right.
The point of these arguments is not to call liberals Nazis. Rather, it is to point out that Hitler's beliefs were not simply extreme versions of Bush's.
Bush does espouse social control and patriotism, as Hitler did to much greater degrees, but similarities between Hitler's policies - like desires for a defenseless population and big government - exist with the left as well.
Northwestern history professors Peter Hayes and Benjamin Frommer declined to comment on this issue.
