A German Speaks Out About the Shitbags Invoking Hitler

Citisven at Daily Kos has a must-read diary regarding the rabid right's Hitler-fest. A sampling:

A lot of great diaries have been written about the new meme by Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity and the corporate anti health care enablers to call President Obama a racist and compare him to Adolf Hitler. The assessment of the situation ranges from the last wails of a dying breed to fascism on the rise.

As a German, I'm not only part of my people's long collective struggle to come to grips with our past, but I have personally grappled with my own family history and how to approach a subject so fraught with emotion and almost mythical proportions. I am so reluctant and utterly shocked to even write in response to such a patently absurd comparison that borders on the mental fringes between frightfully deluded and clinically insane. However, as painful as it is, there are times when we are asked to fearlessly descend into the darkest corners of our consciousness in order to evolve and transcend, and this is one of those times.

[snip]

I've often thought about why I get so annoyed when people here in the US sling around the Hitler label. And just to be fair, I never liked seeing signs with Hitler mustaches painted on George W. Bush's face either. I would usually just kind of shrug it off as kind of a juvenile expression of people's frustration with a truly horrible warmongering president. But these recent deliberate and preposterous insertions of Hitlerisms into the mainstream of American society are going way too far and need to be exposed as the dangerous and ignorant appeals to our lowest sense they are.

What the people who draw these comparisons are doing is invoke the archetype of Hitler that we have collectively formed in our head, the archetype of something so evil and inhuman that it is beyond our capacity to shake off or transcend. By linking President Obama to the archetype of Hitler they are not trying to make any points about health care or energy or any other policy, but they are attempting to put him into a box out of which nobody could ever escape and from which any kind of soul growth or evolution is impossible. In short, they are trying to make a man who is about as human and compassionate as any man who has ever graced the American political landscape, inhuman. Just like Hitler did with those he didn't like...

Not that I expect Limbaugh, Beck et al to understand any of this, or modify their behavior. But Citisven's perspective, and the family history he(?) relates, is something we sorely need.

(Incidentally, in looking over Citisven's blog, I do believe I've discovered our next press-ganging victim... you Elitist Bastards should let me know what you think.)