Everyone is a Nazi...

...except anti-Semitic socialists. "Red" Ken Livingstone, the crazy (but not in a good way) Mayor of London will not apologize for likening a Jewish reporter to a Nazi death camp guard. Yes, Red Ken compared a Jewish journalist to a death camp guard. I don't have to explain why that is completely unhinged, do I?

What are we to make of the use of "Nazi" as a generic insult for anyone who disagrees with a Leftist? I touched on this subject several months ago. Even former astronaut-Senator John Glenn compared George W. Bush to a Nazi late in the presidential campaign. The use of Nazi has become a cultural phenomenon. I was termed a Nazi today for disagreeing with the insane (hat tip, LGF) 'professor' of 'journalism' Robert Jensen at the University of Texas.

I just Googled "Bush Nazi" and Google estimates one million five hundred thousand hits. Not every hit equates Bush with a Nazi of course, but the vast majority do. Why do people even make the comparison? I have many theories. Rather than try to prove a particluar theory, why not just list them and see what you think?

1. Prescott Bush had contacts with Nazis.
If this method of analysis is used consistently, every German is a Nazi. Most Arabs are Nazis. All Italians are Nazis. Some Americans are Nazis. The majority of French are Nazis. For that matter, Europeans of all nationalities, especially Austrians, are Nazis. All Japanese are Nazis. That's not a comprehensive list.

2. Many people only know enough history to name one or two significant historical figures. Hitler is the archetype for bad, so anything bad is Hitler.

3. Propaganda works, especially Communist propaganda. Stalin and Mao (like Hitler, socialists) actually killed more people. Yet very few people use Mao or Stalin in a similar way.

4. Socialists who hate Jews must diminish the real Hitler to justify their views which are not only analagous to Hitler, but exactly the same.

5. This relates to points two and three. Higher education is a joke, but I'm not laughing. There are whole departments of crapthink. Peace studies comes to mind as the best example. The Middle East study departments with their Saidist, totalitarian-apologist, and Islamist tendencies are close in craptacularness. Yes, craptacularness isn't a word, but it should be.

What happened to military history? When I was in school there was exactly one course devoted to war, pitiful then, worse now. That was a two-part slavery and the Civil War class. If the so-called smartest among us don't learn that war is the normal state of affairs for the entirety of human history, and they've only a passing familiarity with World War II, perhaps a president becoming involved in war seems just like Hitler. The syllogism would be:

Hitler was involved in war.
Bush is involved in war.
Bush = Hitler.

6. It's holocaust denial wrapped up in the pretension of caring about the world.

7. Some people believe the global jihad will suddenly evaporate if they sacrifice the Jews to the Arabs.

8. Children are taught that there is no right and wrong, that no idea is superior to another. Competition of any kind is frowned upon in many public schools, for example. When challenged intellectually the adult victims of this indoctrination liken it to warfare.

9. Mental illness is rampant throughout society, and drugs aren't helping.

10. Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo constitute the systematic extermination of European Jewry.

All of the above?

I've tried to come up with legitimate justifcations for comparing Hitler to George W. Bush, but nothing withstands the slightest scrutiny. Comparing the temporary detention of illegal combatants, where everyone comes out alive and unscarred, to death camps is just another example of diminishing the holocaust.

Please remember, as I've mentioned before, the al Qaeda training manual, lesson eighteen.

You will NOT hear this mentioned by any mainstream media outlet. They are too busy believing and disseminating the techniques mentioned in lesson eighteen, telling us about Paris Hilton, discussing the Michael Jackson trial, making up stories about the U.S. military killing journalists, or forging documents relating to GWB's TANG service.

Osama bin Laden is a bastard, but he's a smart bastard. Jihadists, their MESA, CAIR, and MPAC allies play the media like my German shepherd plays with a basketball.

UPDATE: Gore Vidal (hat tip: The Sanity Inspector at LGF) while not comparing Bush to Hitler, gives me some insight into this phenomenon. Gore Vidal knows enough history to know better. His logical mind has been overwhelmed. It's a hatred for GWB which goes beyond reason into the dangerous, irrational, depths of insanity. It's more than a bit ironic "The Sanity Inspector" posted the article just as I was finishing this post.

LATE-BREAKING UPDATE: VDH weighs in on this question in his usual inimitable and brilliant style. VDH argues the stupidity angle.

One explanation is simply the ignorance of the icons of our popular culture. A Linda Ronstadt, Garrison Keillor, or Harold Pinter knows nothing much of the encompassing evil of Hitler’s regime, its execution of the mentally ill and disabled, the systematic cleansing of the non-Aryans from Europe, or mass executions and starvation of Soviet prisoners. Like Prince Harry parading around in his ridiculous Nazi costume, quarter-educated celebrities who have some talent for song or verse know only that name-dropping “Hitler” or his associates gets them some shock value that their pedestrian rants otherwise would not warrant.

Ignorance and arrogance are a lethal combination. Nowhere do we see that more clearly among writers and performers who pontificate as historians when they know nothing about history.

On occasion, those who are tainted, sometimes unfairly, with past charges of rightist extremism, find some psychic release in calling an American democratic president or his conduct Nazi-like. Thus, a German politician, who de facto unfortunately operates under the suspicions of the post-Nazi world, gains the moral high ground and moral fides by gratuitously deflecting attention to an American — not as the descendant of the liberators of the Europe, but as the true inheritor of the German Hitlerian mantel.