So it is about time to impose discipline on this
issue. Unless someone is actually intending to wipe out an ethnic group or to
kill 50 million people, there is no merit in making these kinds of comparisons.
This is the case regardless of what one believes the other person to be like
from a psychological standpoint. Most people who had what Hitler had (if
psychologists are to be believed, 3 million people presently living in America)
are neither tyrants nor murderers, and it is wrong to accuse them of similarity
to someone who was both.
From the psychological standpoint, Freud and Hitler
were a lot alike. Did Freud become a mass-murderer? No. From the psychological
standpoint, Ayn Rand and Hitler were a lot alike. Did Ayn Rand become a
mass-murderer? No. From the psychological standpoint, John Rockefeller and
Hitler were a lot alike. Did John Rockefeller become a mass-murderer? No. So it
is time to put an end to misuses of psychology to compare any given person to
Hitler when most of the people who get accused of such things have no intention
of killing anybody.
And unless someone is actually interested in mass
murder, it is wrong to compare them to Hitler - or Dahmer, or Bundy, or Koresh,
or anyone else of that sort.
Doing so insults the memory of the people who have
been killed by these mass murderers. It also undermines one's own credibility.
One keeps shouting wolf at all sorts of things that aren't wolf; so that when a
real wolf shows up one is no longer believed.
Of potential wolves there are plenty, and most of
them are on the Right. I would like to single out Alex Jones, Glenn Beck and
Rush Limbaugh as wannabe wolves in America. Hitler, if it is to be remembered,
was a right-winger as well and appealed to the same things as does the Tea
Party (patriotism, national greatness, tradition, white supremacy) while militating
against the same groups against which Tea Party militate (social democrats,
Communists, feminists, unions, ethnic and racial minorities). It is amazing
that the same people who are so ready with spurious Hitler comparisons are
nowhere to be seen when faced with real fascism. In the same way as the people
who were so ready to attack Bill Clinton for supposedly practicing "big
government" were nowhere to be seen when Bush not only bloated the
government but also imposed oppressive and unconstitutional restrictions on
people's lives.
So to these people: You are either idiots or conmen,
depending upon whether you actually believe these things or claim to believe
them in order to fool others. None of the people who get accused of similarity
with Hitler today have killed 50 million people. Meanwhile the greatest
atrocities in the history of humanity - the murder of 100 million American
indigenous people and the enslavement of 100 million Africans by European
conquerors and the murder of 150 million Hindus by Muslims - were not led by
psychopathic despots but rather by very normal priests, imams, monarchs and
traders. Should I compare all priests, imams, monarchs and traders to people
who perpetrated these crimes against humanity? Should I agitate public opinion
against them? Should I consider this course of action scientific? You get the
idea.
There can be any number of reasons why any group of
people, or any individual person, decides upon a destructive course of action.
Psychopaths play a role in only some of these situations. A regular
conservative, either in Texas or in Afghanistan, is a violent, bloodthirsty
beast. And most of these people are completely normal.
As we have seen, the world's greatest atrocities are
not owed to psychopaths. They are owed to your very regular Christians and
Muslims. The Hitler comparisons are a distraction in these groups attempting to
dominate. Both religions have killed many more people than did Hitler and
vastly more than anyone they accuse of being Hitler-like.
Are these religions the only source of atrocity? By
no means. Certainly Hitler would have killed more if he had more time, and
Stalin and Mao have also been major killers. What it does show however is that
it is wrong to accuse people who aren't mass-murderers of similarity to people
who are mass-murderers. Unless someone is actually plotting to kill 50 million
people, one has no business comparing him to Hitler. And the fact that Hitler
showed one way in which to be destructive does not give either him or people whom
one can compare to him the monopoly on destructiveness.
So it's time to put an end to these irresponsible
comparisons. The bulk of the people who had what Hitler had are not only not
mass murderers but in fact form the bulwark against the tyranny of the
majority. When people go down a garden path, the only person who can set them
straight is someone who thinks differently from them. This means that these
people possess a real social function.
And the only people who would do away with people's
ability to do that are the people who are themselves conmen, tyrants or both.
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