alternative hippopotamus

progressive cyberdadaism from our nation’s capital

June 30, 2005

Tastes Just Like Hitler

by @ 8:23 am. Filed under Uncategorized

I see that all the cool kids are transforming their blogs into on-line magazines.

I’m not above that kind of silliness, though I’m also not beneath it. If anything, I’m just to the side. The left side, of course.

If I ever do choose to become an on-line magazine, I’d want to simultaneously buck another trend: the tendency to eschew comparisons to Hitler, Nazi’s, Eva Braun, the Gestapo, or anything else remotely Germanic in the middle part of the 20th century.

I know that some believe that the Nazis were so uniquely evil, that all comparisons demean those that lived through that era. And there’s something to that viewpoint. At the same time if we forbid even the garden-variety analogy, then we possibly doom ourselves to repeating the pattern, giving into the same weaknesses.

That means recognizing trends in our society like the increasing use of propaganda. The silencing of dissent. Centralizing authority. Laws or regulations favoring a priviledged class over a disadvantaged one. The marriage between corporations and government. The shunning of those with a particular religious viewpoint.

That’s why, if I ever start an on-line magazine, it would be called: Home, Garden, and Hitler. The whole purpose would be to make explicit comparisons between people and events of then and now. How Rove is like Goebbels. How Centrists are like the Vichyites. Why ignoring trends towards fascism is just as dangerous now as it was during the 1930’s.

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hip·po·pot·a·mus n. A notion, perhaps distinct from conventional wisdom, that needs to be verified by reality-based scrutiny.

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95. Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum (I think that I think, therefore I think that I am.)
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