Bill Blum at the Anti-Empire Report:
“The praise heaped on President Obama for his speech to the Muslim world by writers on the left, both here and abroad, is disturbing. I’m referring to people who I think should know better, who’ve taken Politics 101 and can easily see the many hypocrisies in Obama’s talk, as well as the distortions, omissions, and contradictions, the true but irrelevant observations, the lies, the optimistic words without any matching action, the insensitivities to victims. Yet, these commentators are impressed, in many cases very impressed. In the world at large, this frame of mind borders on a cult.
In such cases one must look beyond the intellect and examine the emotional appeal. We all know the world is in big trouble — Three Great Problems: universal, incessant violence; financial crisis provoking economic suffering; environmental degradation. In all three areas the United States bears more culpability than any other single country. Who better to satisfy humankind’s craving for relief than a new American president who, it appears, understands the problems; admits, to one degree or another, his country’s responsibility for them; and “eloquently” expresses his desire and determination to change US policies and embolden the rest of the world to follow his inspiring example. Is it any wonder that it’s 1964, the Beatles have just arrived in New York, and everyone is a teenage girl?
I could go through the talk Obama gave in Cairo and point out line by line the hypocrisies, the mere platitudes, the plain nonsense, and the rest. (“I have unequivocally prohibited the use of torture by the United States.” — No mention of it being outsourced, probably to the very country he was speaking in, amongst others. … “No single nation should pick and choose which nation holds nuclear weapons.” — But this is precisely what the United States is trying to do concerning Iran and North Korea.) But since others have been pointing out these lies very well I’d like to try something else in dealing with the problem — the problem of well-educated people, as well as the not so well-educated, being so moved by a career politician saying “all the right things” to give food for hope to billions starving for it, and swallowing it all as if they had been born yesterday. I’d like to take them back to another charismatic figure, Adolf Hitler, speaking to the German people two years and four months after becoming Chancellor, addressing a Germany still reeling with humiliation from its being The Defeated Nation in the World War, with huge losses of its young men, still being punished by the world for its militarism, suffering mass unemployment and other effects of the great depression. Here are excerpts from the speech of May 21, 1935. Imagine how it fed the hungry German people.
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HITLER:“….. Germany, too, has a democratic Constitution. Our love of peace perhaps is greater than in the case of others, for we have suffered most from war. None of us wants to threaten anybody, but we all are determined to obtain the security and equality of our people……….
The German Reich, especially the present German Government, has no other wish except to live on terms of peace and friendship with all the neighboring States. Germany has nothing to gain from a European war. What we want is liberty and independence. Because of these intentions of ours we are ready to negotiate non-aggression pacts with our neighbor States.
Germany has neither the wish nor the intention to mix in internal Austrian affairs, or to annex or to unite with Austria.
The German Government is ready in principle to conclude non-aggression pacts with its individual neighbor States and to supplement those provisions which aim at isolating belligerents and localizing war areas…….
Germany is ready to participate actively in any efforts for drastic limitation of unrestricted arming. She sees the only possible way in a return to the principles of the old Geneva Red Cross convention. She believes, to begin with, only in the possibility of the gradual abolition and outlawing of fighting methods which are contrary to this convention, such as dum-dum bullets and other missiles which are a deadly menace to civilian women and children.To abolish fighting places, but to leave the question of bombardment open, seems to us wrong and ineffective. But we believe it is possible to ban certain arms as contrary to international law and to outlaw those who use them. But this, too, can only be done gradually. Therefore, gas and incendiary and explosive bombs outside of the battle area can be banned and the ban extended later to all bombing. As long as bombing is free, a limitation of bombing planes is a doubtful proposition. But as soon as bombing is branded as barbarism, the building of bombing planes will automatically cease.
Just as the Red Cross stopped the killing of wounded and prisoners, it should be possible to stop the bombing of civilians……The German Government is of the opinion that all attempts effectively to lessen tension between individual States through international agreements or agreements between several States are doomed to failure unless suitable measures are taken to prevent poisoning of public opinion on the part of irresponsible individuals in speech, writing, in the film and the theatre.…… [1]— End of speech excerpts —
How many people in the world, including numerous highly educated Germans, reading or hearing that speech in 1935, doubted that Adolf Hitler was a sincere man of peace and an inspiring, visionary leader?
NOTES
[1] The entire speech can be found at: http://members.tripod.com/~Comicism/350521.html
[1] The entire speech can be found at: http://members.tripod.com/~Comicism/350521.html
Beware Lila and Bill. The peasants will all come after your any allusion of St. Obamas rhetoric to that of Hitler. Even if the point is to show the tradion of lies and manipulation by polticians they (the cult of Obama) will go nuts on you. I do think and it certainly appears that Obama is in fact a Charismatic Leader–and I do not mean that in a good way. Heck, Lila you even had a few people out there questioning the wisdom of daring to live somewhere other than the U.S.A. Why by gosh (humming national anthem in background) would we leave we will stay and fight for this land of our–yeah whatever. And Obama is Bismark and Hillary Clinton is Metternich and Nancy Pelosi is Sam Rayburn. God, things do go downhill fast.
Hi Robert –
I actually still think the comparison isn’t quite right..though I am willing to agree that there’s more validity to it than five years ago.
I posted the piece because Blum had analyzed some of the holes in Obama’s speech..
I’d like to have a more extended post..maybe a kind of interactive post (not in the comment section) – on the obama-equals-hitler-gaza- equals-Warsaw meme – not from the point of view of disproving or proving anything, but to see whether we can find some other point from which to address this whole disaster..
Obama is more akin to Mussolini than Hitler. (And it is a very fair comparison)
Mussolini…yes.
But I’d be careful with such comparisons.
History never repeats itself..it hiccups
It’s not hard to predict that Obama’s fanatics in about two years or so will turn into Obama’s critics. One extreme inevitable turns into its opposite. “Obama is great” is a “trend with false premise” that everyone can safely bet against.
In the 80s Mr. Obama’s predecessor – Mikhail Gorbachev of the USSR had gone from being very popular on the hope of a “change” to being extremely unpopular – because the life in general got much worse.