The Daily Background
| The Case for The Presence of Totalitarianism
Filed at 11:36 am, Friday December 23rd 2005
by Dylan Matthews
by Dylan Matthews
A frequent tactic of the Republican Noise Machine has been to attack Democrats for comparing Bush to Hitler, the Nazis, fascists, etc. As with most Republican criticisms, these usually have no basis - the most popular one, involving a claim that MoveOn.org ran ads comparing Bush to Hitler, has been thoroughly debunked. However, I think that given a few shocking revelations of the past week or so, that it’s fair to call the Bush administration totalitarian. After all, does a the leader of a free nation:
And I could go on. But it does make you wonder if this is a free nation anymore.
Some of the less nuanced wingers have taken to calling us fascists. It comes across as some sort of primal scream in the face of their own cognitive dissonance.
Also, I have linked to the media matters debunking of the moveon ad so many times I feel like it is my own home page.
I remember being criticized when I (several years ago) compared the manner in which Hitler came to power with the manner in which Bush came to power. I was of course not comparing the two as people; merely the ways which they became leaders of countries. Both got in by invalidating a majority of the voting population, but sort of cheated their way through each country’s electoral college type process (okay, so hitler had people killed and bush had buddies on the supreme court- minor difference)… Of course I wasn’t saying Bush was going to practice genocide or anything, just a specific thing.
uumm…how often has ann coulter got off with saying haneious comments? and what about the attack ad against max cleland saying he was like saddam and OBL? And last i checked, fascisim usually stars by denying civil liberties and rights and by spying on your OWN people. we have been teetering on that edge for far too long.