Canada's largest paper hits bottom, digs

Columnist Thomas Walkom concedes that Bush isn't Hitler - and implies that, in many ways, Hitler was a more admirable leader:

Some refer to George W. Bush as another Hitler. This is a gross exaggeration. He has constructed no death camps and only one concentration camp — at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

While it does seem, in Nuremberg terms, that Bush could be called a war criminal (invading other countries on the flimsiest of pretexts), he has not engaged in genocide. Nor, unlike Volkswagen supporter Hitler, does he promote the production of small, cheap cars.

True, both came to power constitutionally (although under dubious circumstances and with the support of only a minority of voters). True, both masterfully used traumatic events at home (the 1933 Reichstag fire for Hitler; 9/11 for Bush) to make a frightened and resentful populace accept restrictions on civil liberties.

True, also, that the U.S. leader shares Hitler's taste for military costumes — although to be fair to the German dictator, he did serve on active duty in wartime.

But overall, the comparison is far from exact, lending credence to Karl Marx's famous comment that when history repeats itself, the first time is tragedy, the second, farce.

Still, for Canada and novice Prime Minister Paul Martin — currently trying to engage Bush in Monterrey, Mexico — there are certain similarities. Like central European nations of the 1930s, Canada finds itself next door to a powerful nation led by an unusually aggressive and perhaps slightly unhinged man. What to do?
[...]
Former prime minister Jean Chrétien attempted the Swiss solution — stay out of the aggressor's wars but continue to sell him whatever he needs. Hitler was comfortable with that level of tacit support. Bush appears to want more.
[...]
Those on the right, including many of Martin's business supporters, want a version of the Austrian model: Anschluss (annexation) in everything but name. However, the U.S. has little interest in this so it's unlikely to happen. [emphasis added]

On the "mainstream" left, the trivialization of the Holocaust continues to pick up speed.

(via Andrew Sullivan)

Update: a reader pointed out this line - perhaps the most appalling one in the entire column - which I inexplicably overlooked the first time I read it:

Indeed, [Hitler] had many admirers in Europe and North America — people who lauded his "leadership," who lionized his moral certainty (no namby-pamby moral relativism there) and who either forgave, or actively applauded, what was then called anti-Semitism and today would be labelled racial profiling. [emphasis added]

Even by the Toronto Star's subterranean standard, Walkom is disgusting.

Update II: meanwhile, proving that this sort of thing isn't just a left-wing sickness, Bill O'Reilly compares the ACLU to the Nazis. Really.

Posted by damian at January 14, 2004 08:54 AM