I am honestly flabbergasted that I have to argue about this, let alone to community staples like Pigeon.
You asked "why do we compare Trump to Hitler but don't compare FDR to Hitler?"
No I said:
You cannot just casually compare racist discourse to the Nazis, it's disgusting. You can find plenty of other historical comparisons for this behavior without implicitly invoking the Holocaust.
Why not compare Trump to them instead of Hitler unless it's just about insults?
People use Hitler comparisons because people haven't internalized the wrongs of US history in the same way (even though they are more historically relevant to our situation). It's about proportionality and appropriateness.
pigeon said:
Well, gee, Slim, there are a few reasons for that (like, it's probably worth noting that FDR fought a world war against Hitler), but primarily we don't compare FDR to Hitler because WE NEVER TALK ABOUT FDR. Because why would we, exactly?
So did Stalin, so excuse me if I don't find it worth noting. If I wanted to talk about FDR in wartime, I'd probably mention his anti-antisemitism, his refusal to acknowledge and speak out about the Holocaust, and his inaction in trying to stop/impede it. Oh and maybe a little bit about not doing more to take in Jewish refugees in lieu of a strict quota system (The U.S. immigration system severely limited the number of German Jews admitted during the Nazi years to about 26,000 annually — but even that quota was less than 25% filled during most of the Hitler era. That alone could have saved 190,000 lives.)
Why would we talk about FDR in modern times though? Uh, I dunno, maybe for the same reason we talk about anything from the past, we ought to learn from history and all that jazz. Or maybe it's because the nature of Trump's comments is a historical analogue to that era of US history and that makes it a particularly powerful reference point.
pigeon said:
If you wanted to talk about whether FDR was like Hitler, you probably could've just posted and asked what we thought. But instead you decided to assert that the reason we don't criticize FDR is because he's "on our team." So, yeah, that's a dumb post, man. The reason we don't criticize FDR is because this is a thread about politics and FDR isn't particularly politically relevant. It's not because we're biased to forgive his faults.
No I said that we don't compare FDR to Hitler because he's on our team, not that we don't criticize him.
Did the Southern Strategy make Nixon a Nazi? FDR for internment camps?
FDR actually did it but I don't recall Poligaf ever complaining about him being a Nazi.
Pretty big difference. I guess FDR avoids the Nazi label because he didn't use inflammatory language in public, just private.
pigeon said:
Is this your real concern? That somebody will start committing genocide and we'll have run out of descriptors and won't be able to talk about them?
Language fascism, man.
Somebody will start committing genocide?
Bangladesh, 1971
East Timor, 1975-1999
Cambodia, 1975-1979
Guatemala, 1981-1983
Bosnia, 1992-1995
Rwanda, 1994
Darfur, Sudan, 2004 - Present
ISIS/Syria - Ongoing
Do you really not see a problem with equating Nazis to people like Donald Trump instead of reserving it for more appropriate circumstances? That it might dilute the historical significance of what occurred in favor of creating a kitschy insult?
pigeon said:
Trump has stepped up racist and xenophobic rhetoric in an alarming way, and even more alarmingly, maintains a strong base of support.
I feel that this is bad! Specifically, I feel that it's bad in a particularly anti-American, anti-democratic way that appeals to fantasies of "populist" rule by personal power, displacement of the existing state apparatus, and blaming, scapegoating, and stigmatizing minorities for the country's problems in a manner that has worrying historical precedent, especially during the WWII period.
I feel okay saying that that's kind of fascist. If you don't like that because it's not precise enough, like, you do you, I guess, but I would like to understand why. Because I don't think my position is particularly unclear or confusing, so as far as I can tell so far the disagreement is driven by a desire to correct others? If that's the case, let me know and I'll put some grammatical errors in for you guys.
Donald Trump is not the first racist or bigot to come upon the US political scene, we've had those before and after WWII. He does seem to be the first that liberals have felt is bad enough to merit a Hitler comparison without reservation or restraint. At least Bush was president and actually did physical things you could point to when people called him Hitler, Trump is completely verbal. I find his discourse disgusting, but people have cloaked their language and used dog whistles for decades, dropping the pretense doesn't make you a Nazi. This is just your tried and true populist fear mongering, Trump is not calling for the displacement of the state apparatus or rule by personal power, those are ridiculous hyperbolic extensions. At least the Southern Strategy actually had organization and objectives behind it, I'd like to think its separation from fascism was about more than word choice.
Obama's recent speech is a good model. You don't need reductive absolutism to make a point, nor is it the most effective way to argue. You dilute your enemies to being Nazis and eventually you'll just create an echo chamber where everyone opposed to you is evil.
pigeon said:
Because those comparisons are dumb? FDR created Japanese internment camps, and yes, those are terrible and wrong. He didn't characterize Japanese people as being responsible for American problems in general, nor did he build a political career on being willing to put Japanese people in camps. So that's meaningfully distinct. Similarly, I see very little comparison between using xenophobic rhetoric for political advantage and giving scientists immunity for war crimes. I mean, do you think those things are similar? Do you want to make the argument?
It's not about what's most similar to Trump, it's about which of these things is most morally culpable to the actual atrocities of the Nazis. Cause it seems to me you're arguing that pure rhetoric is worse than actual physical actions. So all Trump needs to do is put a polite spin on his speeches or keep it private, and then he's in the clear?
And to that point, let's explore
FDR's less public comments shall we?
At one point in the discussion, FDR offered what he called "the best way to settle the Jewish question."
Vice President Henry Wallace, who noted the conversation in his diary, said Roosevelt spoke approvingly of a plan (recommended by geographer and Johns Hopkins University President Isaiah Bowman) "to spread the Jews thin all over the world."
In 1943, he told government officials in Allied-liberated North Africa that the number of local Jews in various professions "should be definitely limited" so as to "eliminate the specific and understandable complaints which the Germans bore towards the Jews in Germany." There is evidence of other troubling private remarks by FDR too, including dismissing pleas for Jewish refugees as "Jewish wailing" and "sob stuff".
In a series of articles for the Macon (Ga.) Daily Telegraph and for Asia magazine in the 1920s, he warned against granting citizenship to "non-assimilable immigrants" and opposed Japanese immigration on the grounds that "mingling Asiatic blood with European or American blood produces, in nine cases out of ten, the most unfortunate results." He recommended that future immigration should be limited to those who had "blood of the right sort.
Look, I'll post again an excerpt from an interview with Mike Godwin (yes that very Godwin) because I think it's still informative.
At what point do you think Hitler and the Nazis will no longer be the go-to comparison comparison, for horrible people, horrible governments, or whatever. I imagine that, in the year 3000, for example, people might not still be doing that.
Well, one thing I think of in comparison to this is that, when I was growing up, people often said, “He’s to the right of Attila the Hun." It doesn’t even really make sense to talk about Attila the Hun in terms of left/right politics, but when they talk about Attila the Hun — and they still do, from time to time — [they do so] without any clear sense of any historical context at all.
The thing it seemed to me worth doing was to prevent the Holocaust from turning into a cliché, or into a handy arrow in someone’s rhetorical quiver. I was entering into the online world pretty deeply in the eighties, and I was offended by how glibly these comparisons came up — almost invariably inappropriately. My feeling was that the more people got into this habit, the less likely that people remembered the historical context of all this. And as you know, one of the injunctions of Holocaust historians is that we must never forget, we have to remember. And I just thought, Well, I’m going to do a little experiment and see if I could make people remember.
Do you ever come across Nazi comparisons in discussions of American politics that you find legitimate?
You know … sure. American history has its own flirtations with fascism and racism and militarism, and people have believed in any and all of these things, so with certain individuals it has to come up from time to time. So it’s not the case that the comparison is never valid. It’s just that, when you make the comparison, think through what you’re saying, because there’s a lot of baggage there, and if you’re going to invoke a historical period with that much baggage you better be ready to carry it.