Normally I try not to make a lot of political commentary by celebrities, but my conservative counterpart’s post “In Defense of Hank Williams” where Williams compared Obama to Hitler (or Hitler to Benjamin Netanyahu in the name of John Boehner, Obama’s golf partner) was just too much to leave alone.
My conservative counterpart (Bryan White)’s claim is that it was an analogy easily graspable "by the fair-minded person” of Hitler to Netanyahu as “ideological opposites.” But it is much more complicated than that, and such a comparison is not only just poor, but instead of easily graspable, is easily misleading. And Bryan chose to carry on that blatant misrepresentation in his post.
Bryan White implies as well that Williams may not have meant that Obama was being compared to Hitler, but if you listen to the full interview, it is clear that’s what Williams meant. To the delight of the Fox morning crew and its mostly right-wing viewers, he made his dislike of Obama well known, so the “context” was there for all to see. He hedged any left-wing race card play by invoking a preference for Herman Cain as a presidential choice.
Here’s Bryan’s customary word-twisting take on it:
…Williams is not admitting that he compared Obama to Hitler. All he's admitting is that he drew an analogy. And he explained the analogy sufficiently for a fair-minded person to grasp his point (I trust Morrissey will grasp it eventually): Hitler and Netanyahu are ideological opposites. While we may have a predisposition to identify our least favorite between Boehner and Obama with our least favorite figure from the analogy, the analogy does not depend on that identification at all. One can understand Boehner as Hitler just as well and the point--that polar opposites are having a ludicrous tete-a-tete--continues to stand. And one shouldn't have to agree with that point in order to understand it.
Actually, the “analogy” was a very poor one: the only disparity was the semitic one, the symbol of the Jewish Holocaust with the current leader of Israel is quite an opposing comparison. Yet Bryan White claims they are ideological opposites, and they are not. Ideologically, it is a comparison of right-wing extremism (Hitler) with center right-wing (Netanyahu). Netanyahu is a member of Israel’s Likud, which is described by Wikipedia as follows: (emphasis added)
Likud (Hebrew: … HaLikud, lit. The Consolidation) is the major center-right political party in Israel… It was founded in 1973 by Menachem Begin in an alliance with several right-wing and liberal parties.
The Likud party claims to support a free market capitalist and liberal agenda, though in practice it has mostly adopted mixed economic policies. Under the guidance of Finance minister and current party leader Benjamin Netanyahu, Likud pushed through legislation reducing value added tax (VAT), income and corporate taxes significantly, as well as customs duty. Likewise, it has instituted free trade (especially with the European Union and the United States) and dismantled certain monopolies (Bezeq and the sea ports).
Additionally, it has privatized numerous government-owned companies, e.g. El Al and Bank Leumi, and has moved to privatize land in Israel, which until now has been held symbolically by the state in the name of the Jewish people. Netanyahu was the most ardent free-market Israeli finance minister to-date. He argued that Israel's largest labor union, the Histadrut, has so much power as to be capable of paralyzing the Israeli economy, and claimed that the main causes of unemployment are laziness and excessive benefits to the unemployed."… Under Netanyahu, Likud has and is likely to maintain a comparatively fiscally conservative economic stance, although it might be considered centrist or even progressive from a world view.
Sound familiar? Compare that to the ideological stances of the Nazi party, for which people like Bryan try to focus on the well-documented misnomer “National Socialist” as if that’s all they need to do:
Many conservatives accuse Hitler of being a leftist, on the grounds that his party was named "National Socialist." But socialism requires worker ownership and control of the means of production. In Nazi Germany, private capitalist individuals owned the means of production, and they in turn were frequently controlled by the Nazi party and state. True socialism does not advocate such economic dictatorship -- it can only be democratic. Hitler's other political beliefs place him almost always on the far right. He advocated racism over racial tolerance, eugenics over freedom of reproduction, merit over equality, competition over cooperation, power politics and militarism over pacifism, dictatorship over democracy, capitalism over Marxism, realism over idealism, nationalism over internationalism, exclusiveness over inclusiveness, common sense over theory or science, pragmatism over principle, and even held friendly relations with the Church, even though he was an atheist.
In other words, Bryan White’s claim that the comparison was one of a “polar opposite” analogy, is ridiculous. Their ideologies are far from being polar opposite. You can’t replace one with the other as opposites, because it’s only opposite as a matter of Semitism, and that cannot be switched. And if you base it on ideologies, it would have to be Boehner as Hitler (extreme right) with Obama as Netanyahu (center right—because in his recent capitulations to the Republicans, many Democrats and Liberals view him that way). So Williams’ analogy is incorrect. All that Bryan gets right is that "one can understand Boehner as Hitler just as well"--because when you really look hard at the core ideologies of both political parties (Nazi versus Likud), Boehner can only be Hitler.
Yes, here’s just one more “you all missed the point except for me” schlock-crock of sublime bloviations from my conservative counterpart. Williams needs to study up on what he says before he starts shooting off his mouth, because he certainly didn’t comprehend the comparison.
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