I can't remember how to spell Ahmadinejad so I just use the abbreviation A.
It's easier that way.
I broke a long standing rule against oral arguments against the present Administration.
A friend said President A. was Hitler.
I said no he wasn't, Hitler was dead.
And even if Hitler weren't dead, He'd be 120 years old or so.
And furthermore down this road to idiocy, Hitler himself wasn't Hitler.
I mean, if you can go around saying Joe Mc Doakes is Benito Mussolini, then who was the original Benito Mussolini? Somebody else, apparently. Or he was enough like some other historical avatar such as to render his own self a non-entity...
O.K. Then Prez A. is a parallel to Hitler. He is a simulacrum. He is the next best (or next worst) thing to the real Mr. H.
So I sez, you are referring to his Austrian birth? Everyone knows Prez A. was born in Austria. His early years in Vienna? Everyone knows Prez A. spent some early years as an art student in Vienna.
Now I was accused of being deliberately obtuse. I acknowledged my obtuseness. I am always so when in the presence of majestic blatherscat.
It is Prez A.'s ideas that render him the spit and image of Hitler.
So, was Hitler a Holocaust denier, I asked.Hardly that...
Has Prez A. published an entire book about killing various peoples?
Well, he did say once that Israel should disappear from the map.
So I sez, O.K. then Mel Gibson is Hitler, too?
And so on.
Prez A. is a fascist.
Oh, sez I, like General Franco?
We must help the peoples he would oppress.
Oh, sez I, like we helped the Ethiopians resist the Italian fascists?
I left the argument - if this discourse can be lauded with such a positive term - fearing that the Iran-American Bund might have me marked for even speaking about the whole thing.
Let President A. be evil or good on his own.
It's rather like saying U.S. Grant is Idi Amin because the US Cavalry killed Native Americans during his tenure.
The evil (or good) of the day (or the man) is sufficient thereto.
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4 comments:
Franco, as Salazar in Portugal weren´t fascists at all.
I just assumed they were since their contemporaries seem to think they were.
Franco certainly received help in bombing Guernica from his cohorts.
Maybe not.
Maybe someone thinks they are "good" fascists, but we can not bring our minds to encompass such a notion, so they must not be fascists at all. They must be something else.
As you may know in Guernica bombing about a hundred people died. There were many worse bombings in our Civil war, but fortunately nothing similar to Dresde...
The term fascism is sometimes (by both supporters and opponents) applied to other authoritarian regimes of the same period such as those of Imperial Japan under Hideki Tojo, Austria under Engelbert Dollfuss, Argentina under Juan Perón and Greece under Ioannis Metaxas. Its use for similar but longer-lived regimes such as Spain under Francisco Franco and the Estado Novo of António de Oliveira Salazar in Portugal is widespread among opponents of those regimes but is often disputed. Most theorists see
importants distinctions to be made.
But even in the case of Spanish Falange founder, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, if we look to his political texts, and speeches we find he always differed from Italian fascism. Thank you for your
comment.
Kind regards from Spain.
thanks for your comment. From it I would gather that "fascism" is a convenient term we used for authoritarian regimes in the 20th century.
We used the term "fascism" because Mussolini used it and he was the first to set up such a regime in 1922 (?)
I have not heard the name of Primo de Rivera mentioned in years.I actually once studied the Spanish Civil War but that was a long time ago. And the people that pass for my friends would never think of talking about that particular Civil War.
I wonder if I can find my books?
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