At the risk of sounding like a language Nazi—to use the daft and offensive term which almost should be banned—it’s time for a voluntary worldwide moratorium on using Nazism as an analogy for anything other than Nazism itself.

This is a Nazi. Photo: AFP

A couple of bizarre examples follow from the past week. In the Vatican, a senior member of the clergy has tastelessly likened the (valid) scrutiny of the Catholic Church over child sexual abuse to the persecution of the Jews.

Given the vexed history between Judaism and Catholicism - not to mention the totally non-historical nature of the comparison - the Reverend Raniero Cantalamessa should really spend less time nosing through the Bible and more time glancing at the history books.

Then there’s Naomi Wolf, the author who enjoyed global star status with her attacks on female objectification, penning the bestseller The Beauty Myth.

A prominent leader of what is described as ``third-wave feminism’‘, Wolf has written that women should have ``the choice to do whatever we want with our faces and bodies without being punished by an ideology that is using attitudes, economic pressure, and even legal judgments regarding women’s appearance to undermine us psychologically and politically’‘.

A great many people would agree. Hers is a well-argued position.

But I’m not sure that the same people would agree with this, though—Wolf on President Barack Obama’s policies towards terrorist suspects.

``Obama has done things like Hitler did,’’ Wolf said last week. ``Let me be very careful here. The National Socialists rounded people up and held them without trial, signed legislation that gave torture impunity, and spied on their citizens, just as Obama has.

``It isn’t a question of what has been done that Hitler did. It’s what every dictator does, on the Left or the Right, that is being done here and now.’‘

The proviso ``let me be very careful here’’ is quite hilarious given Wolf goes on to confuse a bunch of murderous hate-filled fanatics who believed in the complete genocide of the Jewish race and a 1000-year Aryan world domination with a liberal-democrat operating in accordance with one of the world’s most enlightened constitutions.

In this age of overstatement and historical indifference—which manifests itself, as one example, with critics of the Federal Government’s net filter likening Australia to China—the Nazi analogy is really in a league of its own for pure offensiveness.

But it’s now entered everyday use, where the Health Minister Nicola Roxon can be called a ``food Nazi’’ for campaigning against junk food, or the people who put child-proof lids on Paracetamol labelled ``safety Nazis’‘.

It’s both a devaluing and a distortion of what actually happened some 70 years ago for anyone to make such a blase analogy, even in jest, and it shows a total lack of interest both in history and taste.

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    • Nick says:

      06:15am | 08/04/10

      One of the worst proponents of this sort of thing is Fox News. Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity are unbelievable. Although they rarely say it directly, they prefer to insinuate by asking questions and making montages of Obama set to music from The Omen.

    • Eric says:

      08:06am | 08/04/10

      Is this another example of “dogwhistling”? They don’t say it, but you think they’re saying it anyway.

      Maybe it’s all in your head, not on the screen.

    • Rev says:

      04:48pm | 08/04/10

      Having lived in the States, you should probably watch MSNBC.  It is the polar opposite of Fox, though you could go one step further than all the clowns who moan about the right-wing channel…you could turn it off.

    • Dan says:

      08:49pm | 08/04/10

      Eric,  give me a break. Just as the Howard government constantly dogwhistled against Mulims (which you undoubtfully support), Fox news and co are dogwhistling against Obama because he’s a Muslim or a Solialist! Disgusting.

      BTW, Penbo; “with one of the world’s most enlightened constitutions.” Yet, this enlightened constitution has constantly been ignored, and in the case of Bush, was trashed.

    • Dominic says:

      06:39am | 08/04/10

      Hear bloody Hear

    • Gary Cox says:

      07:15am | 08/04/10

      Seinfeld started it with the soup nazi. A great show and a great episode, still I probably agree that it is a tad disrespectful, and does seem to be creeping into everyday language.  Still I can’t help but laugh at Nicola Roxon being referred to as the food nazi.

    • Seano says:

      09:08am | 08/04/10

      I don’t know about Seinfeld being the start, after all he didn’t “invade Poland”.

    • Jo says:

      11:55am | 08/04/10

      Seinfeld based that character on a real person who was actually referred to as “the soup nazi” so he really didn’t start it. It was already happening for quite a while.

    • John A Neve says:

      07:40am | 08/04/10

      David,
      While I agree with your sentiment, the same could be said of the use of the terms cummunist and socialist. But often used as a slight on people or thier views.

      I often wonder if the people who use such terms really know what they are implying?

    • bec says:

      09:14am | 08/04/10

      Scarier are the people who think the words are interchangeable.

    • A Bob says:

      12:37pm | 08/04/10

      The false dichotomy of left vs right gives them an excuse. Nazism doesn’t fit well into a leftover concept from the cold war.

      Their full name was the The National Socialist Workers Party and they projected a Socialist agenda to the public in order to leverage the suffering caused by their shattered economy. Once they gained power their economic philosophy shifted to the centre and became Keynesian but their political bent went straight to totalitarianism. Which is neither left nor right but something that can be employed by both.

      They were also happy to misappropriate anything that could be twisted to support their cause. Be it the writings of Nietzsche, the music of Wagner or even the myth of Atlantis. They claimed the Arians originated from there. They were unique in that they knew that what they were doing was founded in lies and relished in it.

      Which makes them rather hard to categorise but easy to draw parallels as they tried a little bit of everything. Evil, raving, nutbags might be close to the truth. Very smart, dangerous ones.

    • papachango says:

      01:31pm | 08/04/10

      A Bob -

      that’s about the best reponse to the whole ‘Were the Nazis left or right wing’ chestnut I’ve read for a long time. Answer - neither, they were authoritarian nutters. Only two small quibbles:

      1 - the left/right dichotomy came from the French Revolution, not the Cold War. ‘la droite’ were the old established landowners and supporters of the King, ‘la gauche’ were the revolutionaries. So named because that’s which side of the national assembly they sat on.

      2 - I could be wrong but wasn’t Wagner sympathetic to the Nazi cause as well?

    • A Bob says:

      01:39pm | 08/04/10

      Papachango,

      the origin of the left/right dichotomy may have come from the French, but the modern idiom comes from the culture wars that erupted during the Cold War, where the term ‘liberal’ also got inverted from its original meaning of an economic liberal during the 17th thru 19th century to the post-modernist social liberal we know today.

      Wagners family (Richard was long dead) allowed their personal concert hall to be used for a Nazi function early on in a nationalistic performance, but once the true nature of Nazism became evident they distanced themselves. In any case, there was nothing in the actual music to justify the Nazi association other that its celebration of teutonic mythology. His music is only just starting to get rid of the stigma.

      Por old Nietzsche still has along way to go.

    • Chris L says:

      01:58pm | 08/04/10

      Richard Wagner died in 1883. He did, however, favour the idea of the superiority of the Aryan race. No way to know if he would have condoned genocide.

    • A Bob says:

      02:56pm | 08/04/10

      Richard Wagner was a larger than life character. He was inclined to use hyperbole and incite outrage if he thought it would further his idea of the German identity. He was much more restrained in private. He loved to heap shit on the neo-classical style of Brahms, but was actually quite complimentary when Brahms performed for him in person. Richard was a grand romantic. I can’t see him going for actual bloodlust.

    • Mike says:

      08:01am | 08/04/10

      Very timely comment. The “Nazi” label belittles the holocaust and the millions of people who were persecuted. It is a silly, thoughtless phrase.

    • Jane says:

      08:24am | 08/04/10

      *shrug* Godwin’s law.

      It’s lazy thinking by average minds, pure and simple.

    • Sarah says:

      08:41am | 08/04/10

      You all need to understand Godwin’s Law:
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin’s_law
      “It states: “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.”
      Generally, whoever invokes Nazism, loses.

    • A-Bomb says:

      10:32am | 08/04/10

      Though I believe Godwin’s Law doesn’t apply if the blog is actually about Nazism in the first place.

    • papachango says:

      01:12pm | 08/04/10

      yes this article is exempt from Godwins’ law, but the article is really all about why Godwin’s law is a good thing. I’m staggered the author didn’t mention Godwin’s law as he could have saved about 500 words.

    • bec says:

      09:16am | 08/04/10

      Is it me, or are white supremacists/neo-nazis really just very unattractive? None of them wear colours that highlight their best features, none of them have a nice haircut. Really, they are very aesthetically affronting. I mean, matching colours and basic spatial intelligence is legitimately beyond people with a sub-70 point IQ, but really, can I ask for more than red, black and khaki?

    • A Bob says:

      12:32pm | 08/04/10

      Yes, how gauche of them.

      But the dress code is all they have. David Gress, in his book ‘From Plato to Nato’ comments that the modern neo-Nazi/Skinhead would be begging for release in minutes if locked in a room with a real 1930’s Brownshirt. They really have no idea what it is they idolise.

    • Eric says:

      09:20am | 08/04/10

      “In the future, everyone will be Hitler for 15 minutes.”

      http://bit.ly/bX4owQ

      Too late to stop it now.

    • Dani says:

      09:37am | 08/04/10

      Surely you need to reconsider your headline then (as clever as it is)? As you said, it’s not appropriate to use - even in jest…

    • Beagle says:

      09:52am | 08/04/10

      Reminds me of some other terms, that have been contorted and used by the right. You are a do-gooder or a bleeding heart If a you expresses sympathy or concern for others less privileged or fortunate. All of a sudden caring for your fellow man is a bad thing.

    • Ian F says:

      10:02am | 08/04/10

      The Communists just aren’t being given the proper recognition that they deserve; Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Ceaucescu, Castro, Hoxha, Kim etc.

    • Eric says:

      10:12am | 08/04/10

      Good point, Ian. Stalin alone had murdered over ten million people before World War II began, while Hitler was still in the dozens. And Mao was an even bigger killer.

      If history had been well represented, we’d be insulting people by calling them Communists, rather than Nazis.

    • John A Neve says:

      10:28am | 08/04/10

      Ian F,
      Your point is?

    • A Bob says:

      12:26pm | 08/04/10

      Hitler has a special place in Western culture because he acquired power by democratic means. These others were via revolution or the vacuum left by war. Our society does not face any real threat from these things.

      Hence, the Nazi obsession kicks in to our own vigilance whenever our own rights are eroded. It is probably excessive but describes the worst case scenario for many.

    • Eric says:

      12:43pm | 08/04/10

      A Bob: Interesting point.

      However, it is certainly possible that Communists could get into power by democratic means, just as Nazis did. They have certainly tried.

      I think the problem is that many of the elite classes of media, bureaucracy and education have a sneaking sympathy for Communism, along with its exterminationist goals.

    • Henry says:

      12:49pm | 08/04/10

      Agree.  Given Hitler was a Socialist what is the total of people slaughtered by either of these crackpot left-wing religions?

      One only needs to tune into Q&A on the ABC to see a tiny microcosm of the type of aggressive, hate filled spite the latte socialists in the audience and dominating the panel have for anyone not following the sick set of ‘morals’ these people want to impose on us all.  The booing, heckling, of Liberals or alternative to PC thinkers is sad and reminds me of how NAZISM started where people were afraid to give their opinions.

    • papachango says:

      01:34pm | 08/04/10

      A Bob - true, most real socialists got into power by violent revolution, as not many people will volunarily surrender their property to the State.

      A possible exception is Hugo Chavez, whose ‘revolutionary socialism’ appealed to the masses who thought he’d take all the oil money from the rich and give it to them. He must realise that’s not sustainable as he’s taking extraordinary steps to install himself as a dictator.

    • Chris L says:

      02:07pm | 08/04/10

      I think Henry has missed the entire point of this article. Either that or he hadn’t met his quota of left hating comments and just had to leave one here.

    • Willy K says:

      02:17pm | 08/04/10

      Henry is spot on.  When it comes to hate and slaughter the Left is in a realm of its own.

      Their creed is one based on spite and envy for ones betters.  With hate and blame at its core and the religious like fervor of its zombies and their often violent methods of imposing its set of ‘morals’, Socialism and its devil spawn Communism has been the single most evil creed this planet has ever known.

    • Wombat says:

      06:01pm | 08/04/10

      Henry is doing the old “Nazis are socialists” crap again.
      What’s that badge on the back of the skinhead’s jacket in the photo, Henry? The one in between the swastikas.
      I suggest that you get yourself along to a meeting of the National Front or Stormfront. After listening to the anti-socialist speech, then the anti-gay speech, then the anti-union speech, then the anti-abortion speech and of course the obligatory anti-immigrant speech, Henry, you can get up and give your own speech, explaining to the skinheads that they are, in fact, socialists.
      Just make sure that your life insurance is fully paid up first.
      BTW, anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-union… isn’t there a famous Aussie triathlete/ironman who has views along those lines?

    • Dan says:

      08:57pm | 08/04/10

      Willy K, you really need to research socialism. If you think that it as evil as you make out, then you you need to read the source material.

      Oh, and Henry and everyone else, considering that Nazism was a form of Fascism and Fascism is specifically right-wing, you really need to stop spouting your left-wing nonsence.

    • Fredd says:

      10:26am | 08/04/10

      Using Nazism as an analogy is silly in so many ways, particularly as Nazism was reasonably complicated in its development.

      The one thing that is annoyingly hypocritical is the religious using it as an analogy or consequence of atheism, when Hitler & his Nazism actually used prolonged interaction with significant aspects of Germans catholic church to gain support, and that or the consequences are not the churches fault, either.

    • Jon says:

      10:42am | 08/04/10

      Good points, the words Nazi or Hitler is used to muddy the waters of debate or deflect many misdeeds that are still going on today. After WW2 many of the new propaganda tricks that were used to mislead the German people by the Nazi’s were studied in great detail. Then happily applied to the American population and then inflicted on to the rest of the world, we are still using them today.

      Many of the techniques to restrain the people used by the Nazi’s have been around since the time of Romans and much was borrow from the way religion control the believers. You always read that the Nazi’s were fanatical believers. So does that make Osama bin laden a Nazi?

    • IMHO says:

      11:27am | 08/04/10

      Good one. 100% agree. On some blogs and websites where comments contain gratuitous Nazi references, the commenter is ignored or banned for failing to be able to make his or her point without this resort. It’s becoming more and more trendy to do it and I agree it should be discouraged (although perhaps not banned!)

    • John says:

      11:45am | 08/04/10

      Its a word that you can either be offended by or not. I can offer some advice to the younger/older reader, Ignore it!!! Just like your parents taught you at a young age, that If your offended by something ignore it and walk away.

      Also the analogy AIDS may interest you check it out, its used just as much if not more.

    • David C says:

      12:04pm | 08/04/10

      like calling climate sceptics “deniers”

    • It's Getting Hot In Here says:

      01:24pm | 08/04/10

      You think there is a case for the term “holocaust sceptics”?  There is a point where scepticism becomes absurd, and the equivalent of denial.

    • Mark says:

      03:52pm | 08/04/10

      Only in your mind. Just to clarify. There is no such thing as global warming caused by man.

      You cannot deny that which is not occurring.

    • It's Getting Hot In Here, So Take Off All Your Clo says:

      04:08pm | 08/04/10

      I knew I’d get a bite from someone who didn’t read the comment properly.  Although I invited the conclusion, my comment did not say the world was getting hotter.  And I didn’t even hint or suggest that any global warming that may or may not be occuring was caused by humans.  Defensive much?

    • WinstonSmith says:

      03:59pm | 08/04/10

      @MArk -bit of an OT non-sequiter there. Skepticism implies that you are open to an alternative view should it be shown to be demonstrably true. Unfortunately, your view is denial- it ain’t happening therefore you cannot disprove it. The illogic involved here astounds me.

      Of course the Nazi label is used on the who deny the Holocaust occurred or attempt revisionist history to downplay its effect. They may not be NAzis but they certainly are sympathisers.

    • DG says:

      02:22pm | 09/04/10

      “You cannot deny that which is not occurring.”

      To deny something one must assert that it is untrue. It does not matter whether or not the thing is true. A person can deny allegations, such a denial does not mean that the allegations are true. The person is a “denier” with respect of those allegations but that does nothing to support the allegations.

    • Mick says:

      12:23pm | 08/04/10

      Don’t mention the war

    • stephen says:

      12:57pm | 08/04/10

      Naomi Wolf reads like a 3rd rate Susan Sontag, so of course she’d use a word like nazi as a descriptor. It’s an easy word to use, cause it’s old , and it connotes more than it states. Clumsy thinkers like rich old words, (whether they’re sensible or not), cause it implies the author has an abundant series of references - historical,etc - at his/her disposal. This is meant to make it true.
      Others should know better (Naomi is excused). ‘Nazi’ is at the extreme end of nasty, and belongs to terre’blanche, and not food, not the weather (‘that’s a nazi cyclone’ ; heard that too), and certainly not us.

    • Kim says:

      03:19pm | 08/04/10

      After reading and enjoying Susan Sontags “Trip to Hanoi”, I don’t see how you could possibly use the two ladies names in the same sentence.  Naomi Wolf - pfffft

    • martinX says:

      01:35pm | 08/04/10

      We worked with a German PhD student a few years ago, and we were all keen to avoid the N-word, not wanting to be seeming to tar modern Germans with a nasty past. It all went well until I referred to a parking inspector as a “real Nazi”. “Vot do you mean?” came the German student’s reasonable question. What followed was, for him, a quick lesson in what the rest of the world thinks of officious bureaucrats and how they may be referred to.

    • stephen says:

      01:50pm | 08/04/10

      Modern Germans are very sensitve about the nazi, because they are taught of the atrocities at school. They have a deep regret, as they should. When you use the word outside normal context, it shifts their sympathies, (and everyone elses’) to nothingness.
      (The word ‘gay’ is a bit different : you can still have ‘gay abandon’, but a ‘nazi’, well,  is a dead-end road.)

    • Paul Horn says:

      01:38pm | 08/04/10

      You know the one thing that peeves me Mr Penberthy and that is the love affair your profession and other progressive media and academic troglodytes have with the socialist / communist regimes.

      If the unions can raise the hammer and sickle in their trades hall then why can’t I fly the nazi flag with pride? Let’s face it their atheistic philosophies resulted in more human carnage than Hitler could have ever concocted even in one of his most insane rages.

      Let us also note that the Western allies were guilty of murdering up to a million German prisoners of War under Eisenhowers command. Also we won’t mention the many tens of thousands who were shot by Allied troops during the closing stages of the war after being taken prisoner. If you need proof then heres a site to have a gander at POW’s.http://www.exulanten.com/bingthree.html

      But then again I guess the winner gets to write “history” and the vanquished can only watch in horror.

    • Toby says:

      02:31pm | 08/04/10

      Of course the winner gets to rewrite history.  That’s the point of winning.

    • papachango says:

      03:31pm | 08/04/10

      Leaving aside the ‘why can’t I fly the nazi flag with pride’ (I certainly hope you didn’t actually mean it) yes I do find it ironic that you can fly a communist flag or have a portriat of Mao in your living room and no-one will bat an eyelid.

      Communism and Naziism as praticed were both evil ideologies, it’s just that Naziism was more explicit about its evil, whereas Communism pretended it was abotu creating a workers paradise.

    • Matt Stewart says:

      01:52pm | 08/04/10

      I used to be in a debating team with a guy who worked Jesus and Hitler into every single debate, as they personified his sense of good and evil respectively.  Obviously, our side of the debate was always linked to Jesus, and the opposition side to Hitler.  The world must be a simpler place when you can neatly ascribe everything to good and evil/Jesus and Hitler.  He wasn’t a very good debater.

    • bec says:

      03:29pm | 09/04/10

      Stunning. I will have to teach this to my year 8 debating team. This is a sure-fire way to win!

    • DG says:

      02:50pm | 08/04/10

      This is hardly new or unique. People are constantly misusing words and phrases to “poison the well”. Just a few examples that are regularly seen on The Punch: xenophobic or racist to describe any one who is in favour of keeping the population low , controlling the admission of people into Australia or any protectionist policies. Then we have the suggestion that those who oppose the filter enable child abuse.

      Personally I don’t see the use of Parking-nazi, soup-nazi or grammar-nazi as a bad thing. Language is an evolving creature, and the meaning of words is fluid. That a word associated with one thing is now associated with another does nothing to detract from the previous conduct. If we have nothing more than a name to say “That is wrong” then we have missed the point entirely.

      It is not the politics of the NAZI party that are the problem. It is the things that were done in achieving their goals. To me the point of remembering the dead is not that a certain group were bad or that another group were victim, but something much more human:

      The end does not justify the means.

      That is to say - the message we should get from the holocaust is not that the disabled were put to death or that Hitler was a naughty boy who didn’t tidy his room. The message is that people do bad things, it is not their motive that determines good from bad but their behaviour. Killing innocent people is not acceptable.

      To keep this too firmly tethered to a particular political group, when history has shown that all colours and creeds are capable of this behaviour, is to miss the point.

      The fact that it was a totalitarian regime is not relevant to the atrocities. It is their behaviour that should be condemned, and should be condemned and remembered for all time. This behaviour is not acceptable to the human race.

    • papachango says:

      03:45pm | 08/04/10

      sorry, but the politics of the Nazi party WERE the problem. One of their stated political aims was to eliminate the Jewish people. You don’t think that’s a ‘problem’?

      Personally I’m extremely uncomfortable with any kind of race-based supremacy (whether it’s white, black, Asian or whatever), but beliveing you are the ‘superior race’ is not in itself an evil thing. But calling for the extermination of another race (or class in the case of the communists) is definitely evil. For the same reasons I condemn groups like Hamas who explictly want to kill all Jews.

      The nazi’s actions can’t be divorced from their politics as their politics is exactly what guided their actions.

      I also completely disagree that fact they were a totalitarian regime is not relevant. It’s completely and utterly relevant, and the sole reason they were able to do what they did. Totalitarianism almost always leads to this type of evil behaviour, whether they started out as nationalists, socialists or national socialists.

    • DG says:

      05:03pm | 08/04/10

      Papachango:

      Perhaps I should have made a clearer distinction between the ideas and the actions. There is a world of difference between thinking about doing something and actually doing it. Similarly, talking about something is not the same as doing the thing. It gets messy when directing a person to do a thing - I would argue that by giving that direction you are equally responsible for the behaviour (notwithstanding the capacity of the actor to say “No”).

      Calling for a thing to be done, when you have reasonable expectation that people will follow your orders, is an action that, depending on the orders, may be abhorrent.

      Interestingly the Neuremberg Laws did not provide for the execution of the Jewish population, it simply revoked their citizenship and did certain other things relating to the rights of Jewish people in Germany (including interbreeding between Germans and non-Germans).

      Now, I am not suggesting that this is a good thing, but it is certainly not the same as the extermination of a race of people.

      To be honest I don’t know where the authority for the holocaust was based, but it was not in law or in the NAZI party. It’s almost certain that by the mid 1930’s the “party” was irrelevant as Germany had their “one leader”. To suggest that policy after that time was the policy of the party does not appear to stand up to the facts. By this stage it was a dictatorship in all but name. The Enabling Act allowed the Chancellor (Hitler) to make laws - he no longer needed his party. By the middle of 1933 he had no substantive opposition, there were no other parties, and his own “party” was pretty much his plaything.

      The totalitarian nature of Hitler’s rule made it possible to behave in such manner, but again it does not mean that a totalitarian regime is, by its very nature, evil. Again my point is that these people decided that it was OK to pursue their goals in this manner that was the problem, not the fact that the Government had that much control.

      To learn a lesson from this we must learn that the behaviour is unacceptable, not that the NAZI party was a problem, not that racial ideology kills people or any other political or social ideology kills people. If we take away all of the reasons, all of the opportunity and every extracted “reason” we can think of, the behaviour remains abhorrent.

      For that reason I argue that the lesson should be distinct from its association with a particular political party in the 1930’s. The remaining link to the NAZIs, without the context of the prevailing political structure at the time is meaningless. The practice from the end of 1933 until Hitler’s death was that Hitler did what he wanted, people went along with it due to fear or other self interest (some people accumulated great wealth due to their association with Hitler and his allies). Does this (Hitler’s motivations and power) have any bearing whatsoever on the ‘acceptability’ of things done under his command? Of course not. 

      Why is it important to link this behaviour to a political party that was effectively redundant during the time of these atrocities?

    • Paul Horn says:

      06:30pm | 08/04/10

      Sorry Papachango have to disagree with you there. Prior to the start of the War the Nazis simply wanted to deport all Jews from Germany. The final solution came about because of other nations refusal to resettle them, in large numbers anyway. I can always remember walking through the Holocaust museum in Israel and seeing a letter on display from the Australian delegate to the Evian conference convened to discuss the increasing Jewish refugee problem and declaring that

      “Under the circumstances, Australia cannot do more, for it will be appreciated that in a young country manpower from the source from which most of its citizens have sprung is preferred, while undue privilege cannot be given to one particular class of non-British subjects without injustice to others. It will no doubt be appreciated also that as we have no real racial problem, we are not desirous of importing one by encouraging any scheme of large-scale foreign migration.”

      Quite moving really. They had no idea just how bad the situation would become. Once war started all immigration stopped!

    • Dan says:

      09:09pm | 08/04/10

      papachango is right. The politics of the NAZI party ARE absolutely the problem. Their goal, their reason for being, was to murder all the Jews.

    • Adam MacLeod says:

      03:04pm | 08/04/10

      Just to freak you out….On a molecular level we all have a few Hitler atoms in us.  Now get back to work, you bunch of Nazis.

    • Kim says:

      03:17pm | 08/04/10

      Hey!  I resemble that remark!  smile

    • Tedd says:

      03:52pm | 08/04/10

      bunch? ... bunch applies to a grouping of a few flowers.

      We’re a nettle, we are!

    • Gibbo says:

      04:01pm | 08/04/10

      People complain that using the word Nazi out of context is going to dilute its meaning and lose the effect of what happened during the war, I say, have a look at Britian and see that they have had the Holocast removed from the school curriculum as it may offend muslams… UNBELIEVABLE, To forget is to repeat!!!

    • acotrel says:

      06:11pm | 08/04/10

      Both Nazism and Communism are extremist parts of an old authoritarian paradigm.  The truth about which is right or left wing was revealed at the Battle of Stalingrad when the proponents of the two ideologies fought to the death!

    • Marilyn Shepherd says:

      06:29pm | 08/04/10

      My problem is this.  If we stop people calling people nazis when their behaviour is genocidal or homicidal or the same as Hitlers we give him more cred. than he deserves.

      He was not an exceptionally evil person - you could say Pol Pot should be set aside as special for the murder of 3 million of his own, or the US for the murder of 3 million Vietnamese with our help, or how about Idi Amin.

      It doesn’t make a jot of difference who a mass murderer is or who he kills he is not an exceptional anything so I will continue to call people who behave atrociously “nazis”.

      For example, many Israeli’s think that they way they are behaving to the Palestinians is not much better than Hitler’s behaviour so I ask - are the only lives worth remembering those of the Jews?

      Because 110 million human beings were slaughtered by other human beings last century and I don’t happen to think the 105+ that were not Jews are deserving of our memories too.

      Enough.  The more we try and pretend that Hitler was the most evil of all the more we demean the victims of other hideous genocides and the dumber we look.

      One genocide never mentioned is the deliberate murder of as many as 9 million German women, kids and old people after WW11 in a plan devised in the US by Henry Morgenthau and the 16 million ethnically cleansed from all over Europe into Berlin to die, be raped (Russia alone raped over 200,000 German girls as young as 8 and women as old as 86), the US were not far behind them and even Australia and Britain sent many hundreds of thousands to their deaths in death trains and death camps.

      Who is to say we are any better than Hitler?

      Anyone who wants to dispute what I am saying is welcome to read Giles McDonoghs book “After the Reich” which I have on my shelf as a reminder that the nazis were not the only evil.

    • Notacarrot says:

      07:20pm | 08/04/10

      Thugs, Vandals, Assassin - all words that came from real historical groups with negative connotations.
      It’s called language Davo, words of famous people/groups make their way into the language.

      True it’s overused, but sometimes it’s valid to make a point. Everyone loved Hitler at first because he was doing good things for the German community. IIRC, he was democratically elected voted the highest % of votes ever.

    • acotrel says:

      01:36pm | 09/04/10

      I wonder if Hitler would’ve been elected if he stood for the 1946 elections?

 

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