Whilst masticating on , WAYNE CHIRNSIDE (1:123/140)
wrote to ALL:

WC> Old and tired stuff from me and Adolf.

WC> http://www.buzzflash.com/farrell/04/12/far04041.html

WC> For anyone wanting even more proof, Mein Kampf is chock full of 
WC> the Fuhrer's musings on God. ("I believe that I am acting in 
WC> accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending 
WC> myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord," 
WC> Hitler wrote). But anti-Semitic rants aside, some of Hitler's 
WC> religious musings are interchangeable with Mr. Bush's. 

Hitler used many rationalizations to support his hatred of Jews, including
Christianity.  The "blood libel" (Jews killed Christ, so they
should be punished for eternity) was just one.  He was preaching to a
country full of Christians, so it's natural that he used religion to gain
support.  Jew hatred was nothing new in Europe.  How religious he was in
his Mein Kampf days and beyond, I don't know.

Bush is no Hitler, and it serves no purpose to call him such (it serves no
purpose for anyone to call their opposition "Hitler," actually.) 
Bush is a religious Christian, and his religious beliefs influence his
policies (too much, IMO - he's too accomodating to the far right, the type
who'd like the U.S. to be a Christian theocracy), but I don't see him
calling for death or collection into ghettoes or concentration camps for
non-Christians and Christians of different sects.

*******

I just read a column on this type of name-calling, and how everyone does it.  

Boston.com     
The Boston Globe
ELLEN GOODMAN
The devil made them do it

By Ellen Goodman  |  September 29, 2006

SO WHAT'S the deal with the devil anyway? First, Hugo Chavez, the
sulfur-sniffing president of Venezuela, calls President Bush the devil.
Then before the air clears, Jerry Falwell is cheerfully and unfavorably
comparing Hillary to Lucifer.

At a summit of so-called values voters, Falwell handicapped a presidential
race between Hillary and the devil. Nobody, he said, could energize the
base like Hillary Clinton: ``If Lucifer ran, he wouldn't."

Falwell insists that this was said ``totally tongue-in-cheek," or
maybe forked-tongue in cheek. I believe him, although I remember when he
blamed ``the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and
the lesbians" for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

But have you noticed that when we talk about demonizing our enemies, it's
getting awfully literal?

Hitler used to be the all-purpose, generic bad boy. There's an endless list
of people who have been compared, not always favorably, to the Fuehrer. It
runs from Bill O'Reilly to Martha Stewart with stops along the way for
terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
Not long ago, Senator Rick Santorum compared the Democrats to Hitler, and
Senator Robert Byrd compared the Republicans to Hitler. Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld even compared Chavez (see above) to Hitler. And Senator
George Voinovich called Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a ``Hitler type of
person," though the Iranian president doesn't even believe in the
Holocaust.

Now the devil is getting his due. In the wild world of the Internet there
are more candidates nominated for the title of anti-Christ than for
American Idol. They include Bill Gates, the pope, David Hasselhoff, Prince
Charles, and anyone born on June 6, 2006 -- don't ask.

Remember when Ronald Reagan talked about the Soviet Union as the ``evil
empire"? Evil as in d-evil? Ayatollah Khomeini famously called the
United States the ``Great Satan." Bob Jones of Bob Jones University
once called George Bush I the devil. And George I called Saddam Hussein the
devil.

Of course, radical Islamists casually label America ``evil" all the
time. Osama bin Laden called for a theological war between Muslims and
global crusaders or, rather, ``Satan's US troops." President Bush
defined North Korea, Iran, and Iraq as the ``axis of evil" and
promised a war to rid the world of evildoers. And let us not forget Pope
Benedict XVI, who recently channeled a medieval Byzantine emperor saying
that Islam was ``evil and inhuman."

Happily, we can ignore the Chavez charge. The National Association of
Evangelicals reassures us in a press release: ``NAE theologians and
scholars have conducted a thorough exegetical study of the biblical texts
concerning the person, disposition, and earthy manifestations of Satan
[Beelzebub, Lucifer, Prince of Darkness]. They have incontrovertibly
concluded that, contrary to the assertion of Hugo Chavez, President Bush is
not the devil." Heck, Bush doesn't even wear Prada.

But the polarizing language of good and evil, us and them, God and Satan
frames a clash of cultures at home and a clash of civilizations abroad. The
vocabulary of absolutes freezes the way we think and act. The black and
white narrative suggests that anybody who doesn't side with us has gone to
the dark side.

In ``The Origin of Satan," a social history of the devil, Princeton
religion professor Elaine Pagels explains how Satan is ``invoked to express
human conflict and to characterize human enemies within our own religious
traditions." These days, the ``use of Satan to represent one's enemies
lends to conflict a specific kind of moral and religious interpretation, in
which `we' are God's people and `they' are God's enemies, and ours as
well."

Good ``us" vs. evil ``them." This is how a handful of radical
Islamic theorists twisted Islam's prohibitions against murder and suicide
to justify murder and martyrdom. As Lawrence Wright shows in ``The Looming
Tower," his compelling run-up to 9/11, these radicals redefined every
enemy as an apostate. They decided ``who was a real Muslim and who was not,
who should live and who should die."

In Washington these days, the White House seems to define anyone who
disagrees with the president as an apostate, or a Defeatocrat, or a fool
who thinks we can sit down and sing ``Kumbaya" with terrorists. They
recast a debate about strategy and tactics as a debate about good and evil.
Try talking strategy with a guy talking Satan.

Americans should not fall into the rhetorical traps set by the radical
Islamists who talk about holy war. We have to appeal to those people who
see life as nuanced, who want to get through the day with promise and
without violence.

When we resort to nonnegotiable language, we've entered the world of
absolutes. And when we fall into the clash of cultures at home and
civilizations abroad, all hell breaks loose.

Ellen Goodman's e-mail address is ellengoodman{at}globe.com.  
+ Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company
 

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