Bush Does Not Equal Hitler: The 17 Points

Saturday, March 25, 2006

by Dr. Steve Jonas

In the United States a controversy rumbles with increasing intensity: are comparisons claiming that George Bush and Adolf Hitler have much in common valid? I would like to weigh in on the side that holds such comparisons indeed are not valid, for the following 17 reasons.

1. Bush had two Time covers, Hitler only one.

2. Hitler obtained an explicit Constitutional Amendment in the German Reichstag, the Enabling Act, to establish his dictatorial powers.

Bush is creating his dictatorial powers not by obtaining a Constitutional Amendment, which is rather more difficult to secure under the US Constitution than under the German Weimar Constitution of Hitler’s time. Rather, to start with he is using a creative reading of the US Constitution as to what the term “Commander-in-Chief” means. Then, he is broadly interpreting a particular (“use of force”) resolution of Congress -- one that has no language establishing a dictatorship and refers specifically to one foreign country, Afghanistan -- and an act of Congress, the USA “Patriot Act” that, itself, violates the Constitution by vitiating the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments. On March 23, 2006, for example, he noted upon signing the renewal of the Patriot Act, passed at his very strong behest, that he would not abide with all of its provisions for reporting by the Executive Branch to the Congress. Nevertheless, unlike Hitler Bush is proceeding one step at a time to establish his dictatorship rather than doing it at one swell foop.

3. To obtain the 2/3s majority needed in the Reichstag to obtain passage of the Enabling Act, Hitler had his private Army, the Sturmabteiliung (“Storm Division,” S.A.) arrest all the Communist deputies who had not left the country when Hitler became Chancellor on Jan. 30, 1933 and immediately began hunting down the Communist leadership, arrested or forced the emigration of certain Socialist deputies, had all the Nazi deputies dress in S.A. uniforms at the time of the vote, and ringed the hall with other S.A. men.

Bush already has a majority of both Houses of Congress (some possibly elected fraudulently, as he was), his majority in the House of Representatives solidified by an un-Constitutional redistricting in Texas. With two possible exceptions, neither Bush nor any of his supporters directly or indirectly killed any opposition legislators nor did he force any to emigrate.

4. Hitler used the Reichstag Fire to create a “national emergency” enabling him to obtain dictatorial powers from the Reichstag. He produced documents purporting to show that the German Communist Party set the fire. These were later proven to be forgeries. The fire was clearly set by a deranged person acting alone, as the Berlin police had told Hitler at the time. Hitler just took advantage of an event he clearly had nothing to do with.

The book is far from closed on Bush and 9/11. Bush may have just used it, but there is suspicion in many quarters that he either knew something was coming and let it happen, or even played an active part in creating the tragedy.

5. For Hitler, the Weimar Constitution had an Emergency Powers clause for the President (although not the Chancellor). Pres. Hindenburg invoked it even before the passage of the Enabling Act.

For Bush, there is no existing Emergency Powers clause in the US Constitution. He just made one up with his interpretation of the Commander-in-Chief clause that matches no previous interpretation of that clause. He gave himself powers that the rest of the Constitution is designed to prevent the acquisition of by the President, built as it is around the concept of “checks and balances" between the three branches of government.

6. The primary racial targets of the both Bush and Hitler are of Semitic origin. But there the similarity ends. For Hitler it was the Jews. For Bush the target is being developed, but does include at least some Arab members of the Muslim religion, the object of burgeoning Islamophobia. Arabs are indeed Semites.

7. Hitler came to power with a small, under-armed national military, the Reichswehr. He built it into what for a time became the world’s most powerful military, the Wehrmacht. Bush started out with the world’s most powerful military and is in the process of running it into the ground.

8. Hitler, upon taking power, established a government Ministry of Propaganda. The Georgites “buy news” at home and abroad, but that’s a small-scale if growing operation. True to their ideology, their MoP is privatized, through thousands of right-wing religious radio and TV stations, the hundreds of right-wing radio and TV talk show hosts, the Fox"News”Channel, and their “semi-official” (as they say of Al-Ahram in Egypt and the New China News Agency) newspaper, the Washington Times.

9. Hitler’s first foreign military adventure, the re-militarization of the Rhineland in 1936, was a success; as were his second, his intervention in the Spanish Civil War beginning in 1937; his third, the annexation of Austria (the “Anschluss”) in March 1938; his fourth, the annexation of the Czech Sudetenland in Sept. 1938; his fifth, the conquest of the balance of Czechoslovakia with the establishment of a separate fascist Slovakia in March, 1939; his sixth, the conquest of Poland in Sept., 1939; and his seventh, the conquest of France, the Low Countries, Denmark and Norway, in the late Spring of 1940. His unbeaten success streak ended with these “Lucky Seven.” His eighth and ninth foreign military adventures, the Battle of Britain, late 1940, and the invasion of the Soviet Union, June 1941, eventually lead to his overall defeat.

Bush’s first foreign military adventure, the War on Iraq, is a disaster-in-the-making on a variety of dimensions, and may become a major factor in the downfall of Georgitism, if that eventually happens.

10. Hitler had a muddled approach to religion. He was born a Catholic. Early on in his reign he made an arrangement with the Catholic Church to leave them alone if they left him alone. His own religious beliefs, however, are quite uncertain. He did use the slogan “Gott Mit Uns” (God is with us) for his military. He had strong support among the old-line Protestant clergy in Germany. He appealed to Christians across the board for his attacks, rhetorical and real, on “Godless Communism,” and to many Christians with his rampant anti-Semitism transformed into official policy. But there was also the Nazi “Religion of the Blood,” which harked back to the paganism of the German/Nordic founding myths. Confusing to say the least.

Bush is totally politically loyal to and personally believes in U.S. Right-Wing Christian Fundamentalism. He believes “God”, as defined by this movement, is personally guiding him. He may well believe in "innerantism" (that is that a particular English translation -- the "King James version" of a Latin translation of a Greek translation of a Hebrew translation of an Aramaic/classical-Hebrew text for the Old Testament and a Greek text for the new, known to have been written by many hands [literally], hand-copied through the ages by hundreds if not thousands of scribes, is the literal "word of God," and he may be a millenialist. But pagan certainly not and personally believing at one time or another in both of the two major streams of Christianity that have been at each other's throats on and off for the last 500 years, certainly not.

11. Hitler created a concentration camp system almost immediately upon taking power. Bush may be only just now starting one.

12. Hitler faced the worst Depression the world had ever known. Principally by massive re-arming, he got German industry to spend its hoarded capital and achieved a decent economic turnaround.

Bush took a flourishing economy with a Federal budget surplus and a declining national debt and put them into reverse, all the while strongly encouraging the export of US capital, not its investment at home.

13. Hitler left the League of Nations. Bush can say only that the man he sent to the United Nations to represent the United States has only advocated so doing.

14. Hitler’s foreign policy was complex: driven by anti-Semitism, anti-Slavism, the drive for more farmland, the destruction of Soviet Communism, rivalry with the British and French overseas empires. To deal with Communism, until 9/1/39 he had the covert support of the UK and to a lesser extent France. His foreign policy also focused on the acquisition of adequate oil supplies, primarily to support the German military.

Bush’s foreign policy is largely driven by oil, but unlike Hitler, the motivation is the drive for ever-increasing oil company profits. Georgite foreign policy is also driven by the ever-intensifying drive by major U.S. corporations to export capital, the needs of the Israeli Right, and some vague campaign to establish U.S. “hegemony” around the world. The UK is an ally; France is not.

15. Hitler used both psychological and physical terror to cement his dictatorial powers. Bush so far has used only psychological terror at home (although it appears as if he is training a cadre of physical terror practitioners abroad for possible future use at home).

16. Hitler dealt with his principal rivals/enemies within his own Party by killing them (most notably on the “Night of the Long Knives,” June 30, 1934.) So far Bush has dealt with his internal enemies only by doing things like threatening to cut off their campaign funds.

17. Hitler acquired support from major German industrialists after his Party had announced their platform/ideology and had begun to implement it, beginning in the 1920s. (Foreign industrialists also formed part of Hitler's early core of support. A George Bush great-grandfather, George Herbert Walker, began providing financial aid to the him in 1924.) Hitler came first; his industrialist support came second. Bush is the creation of major U.S. industrial interests.

So, there are obviously significant differences between Bush and Hitler. Indeed, based on the examples in this list, Bush is not Hitler. In fact, compared with Hitler, Bush is something of a piker. Yes, one must conclude that such comparisons are totally unfair -- to Hitler.

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