similarities and differences

Bush does not equal Hitler: The 17 Points
Dr. Steve Jonas, March 26, 2006

In the United States a controversy rumbles with increasing intensity: are comparisons claiming that George Bush and Adolf Hitler have much in common valid? I would like to weigh in on the side that holds such comparisons indeed are not valid, for the following 17 reasons.

31 Similarities Between Hitler and President Bush
Edward Jayne, August 29, 2004

When President Bush decided to invade Iraq, his spokesmen began comparing Saddam Hussein to Adolph Hitler, the most monstrous figure in modern history. Everybody was therefore shocked when a high German bureaucrat turned the tables by comparing Bush himself with Hitler. As to be expected, she (the bureaucrat) was forced to resign because of her extreme disrespect for an American president. However, the resemblance sticks--there are too many similarities to be ignored, some of which may be listed here.

Bush does not equal Hitler: The 17 Points
Dr. Steve Jonas, March 26, 2006

In the United States a controversy rumbles with increasing intensity: are comparisons claiming that George Bush and Adolf Hitler have much in common valid? I would like to weigh in on the side that holds such comparisons indeed are not valid, for the following 17 reasons.

1. Bush had two Time covers, Hitler only one.

2. Hitler obtained an explicit Constitutional Amendment in the German Reichstag, the Enabling Act, to establish his dictatorial powers.

Bush is creating his dictatorial powers not by obtaining a Constitutional Amendment, which is rather more difficult to secure under the US Constitution than under the German Weimar Constitution of Hitler’s time. Rather, to start with he is using a creative reading of the US Constitution as to what the term "Commander-in-Chief" means. Then, he is broadly interpreting a particular ("use of force") resolution of Congress -- one that has no language establishing a dictatorship and refers specifically to one foreign country, Afghanistan -- and an act of Congress, the USA "Patriot Act" that, itself, violates the Constitution by vitiating the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments. On March 23, 2006, for example, he noted upon signing the renewal of the Patriot Act, passed at his very strong behest, that he would not abide with all of its provisions for reporting by the Executive Branch to the Congress. Nevertheless, unlike Hitler Bush is proceeding one step at a time to establish his dictatorship rather than doing it at one swell foop.

3. To obtain the 2/3s majority needed in the Reichstag to obtain passage of the Enabling Act, Hitler had his private Army, the Sturmabteiliung ("Storm Division," S.A.) arrest all the Communist deputies who had not left the country when Hitler became Chancellor on Jan. 30, 1933 and immediately began hunting down the Communist leadership, arrested or forced the emigration of certain Socialist deputies, had all the Nazi deputies dress in S.A. uniforms at the time of the vote, and ringed the hall with other S.A. men.

Bush already has a majority of both Houses of Congress (some possibly elected fraudulently, as he was), his majority in the House of Representatives solidified by an un-Constitutional redistricting in Texas. With two possible exceptions, neither Bush nor any of his supporters directly or indirectly killed any opposition legislators nor did he force any to emigrate.

4. Hitler used the Reichstag Fire to create a "national emergency" enabling him to obtain dictatorial powers from the Reichstag. He produced documents purporting to show that the German Communist Party set the fire. These were later proven to be forgeries. The fire was clearly set by a deranged person acting alone, as the Berlin police had told Hitler at the time. Hitler just took advantage of an event he clearly had nothing to do with.

The book is far from closed on Bush and 9/11. Bush may have just used it, but there is suspicion in many quarters that he either knew something was coming and let it happen, or even played an active part in creating the tragedy.

5. For Hitler, the Weimar Constitution had an Emergency Powers clause for the President (although not the Chancellor). Pres. Hindenburg invoked it even before the passage of the Enabling Act.

For Bush, there is no existing Emergency Powers clause in the US Constitution. He just made one up with his interpretation of the Commander-in-Chief clause that matches no previous interpretation of that clause. He gave himself powers that the rest of the Constitution is designed to prevent the acquisition of by the President, built as it is around the concept of "checks and balances" between the three branches of government.

6. The primary racial targets of the both Bush and Hitler are of Semitic origin. But there the similarity ends. For Hitler it was the Jews. For Bush the target is being developed, but does include at least some Arab members of the Muslim religion, the object of burgeoning Islamophobia. Arabs are indeed Semites.

7. Hitler came to power with a small, under-armed national military, the Reichswehr. He built it into what for a time became the world’s most powerful military, the Wehrmacht. Bush started out with the world’s most powerful military and is in the process of running it into the ground.

8. Hitler, upon taking power, established a government Ministry of Propaganda. The Georgites "buy news" at home and abroad, but that’s a small-scale if growing operation. True to their ideology, their MoP is privatized, through thousands of right-wing religious radio and TV stations, the hundreds of right-wing radio and TV talk show hosts, the Fox"News"Channel, and their "semi-official" (as they say of Al-Ahram in Egypt and the New China News Agency) newspaper, the Washington Times.

9. Hitler’s first foreign military adventure, the re-militarization of the Rhineland in 1936, was a success; as were his second, his intervention in the Spanish Civil War beginning in 1937; his third, the annexation of Austria (the "Anschluss") in March 1938; his fourth, the annexation of the Czech Sudetenland in Sept. 1938; his fifth, the conquest of the balance of Czechoslovakia with the establishment of a separate fascist Slovakia in March, 1939; his sixth, the conquest of Poland in Sept., 1939; and his seventh, the conquest of France, the Low Countries, Denmark and Norway, in the late Spring of 1940. His unbeaten success streak ended with these "Lucky Seven." His eighth and ninth foreign military adventures, the Battle of Britain, late 1940, and the invasion of the Soviet Union, June 1941, eventually lead to his overall defeat.

Bush’s first foreign military adventure, the War on Iraq, is a disaster-in-the-making on a variety of dimensions, and may become a major factor in the downfall of Georgitism, if that eventually happens.

10. Hitler had a muddled approach to religion. He was born a Catholic. Early on in his reign he made an arrangement with the Catholic Church to leave them alone if they left him alone. His own religious beliefs, however, are quite uncertain. He did use the slogan "Gott Mit Uns" (God is with us) for his military. He had strong support among the old-line Protestant clergy in Germany. He appealed to Christians across the board for his attacks, rhetorical and real, on "Godless Communism," and to many Christians with his rampant anti-Semitism transformed into official policy. But there was also the Nazi "Religion of the Blood," which harked back to the paganism of the German/Nordic founding myths. Confusing to say the least.

Bush is totally politically loyal to and personally believes in U.S. Right-Wing Christian Fundamentalism. He believes "God", as defined by this movement, is personally guiding him. He may well believe in "innerantism" (that is that a particular English translation -- the "King James version" of a Latin translation of a Greek translation of a Hebrew translation of an Aramaic/classical-Hebrew text for the Old Testament and a Greek text for the new, known to have been written by many hands [literally], hand-copied through the ages by hundreds if not thousands of scribes, is the literal "word of God," and he may be a millenialist. But pagan certainly not and personally believing at one time or another in both of the two major streams of Christianity that have been at each other's throats on and off for the last 500 years, certainly not.

11. Hitler created a concentration camp system almost immediately upon taking power. Bush may be only just now starting one.

12. Hitler faced the worst Depression the world had ever known. Principally by massive re-arming, he got German industry to spend its hoarded capital and achieved a decent economic turnaround.

Bush took a flourishing economy with a Federal budget surplus and a declining national debt and put them into reverse, all the while strongly encouraging the export of US capital, not its investment at home.

13. Hitler left the League of Nations. Bush can say only that the man he sent to the United Nations to represent the United States has only advocated so doing.

14. Hitler’s foreign policy was complex: driven by anti-Semitism, anti-Slavism, the drive for more farmland, the destruction of Soviet Communism, rivalry with the British and French overseas empires. To deal with Communism, until 9/1/39 he had the covert support of the UK and to a lesser extent France. His foreign policy also focused on the acquisition of adequate oil supplies, primarily to support the German military.

Bush’s foreign policy is largely driven by oil, but unlike Hitler, the motivation is the drive for ever-increasing oil company profits. Georgite foreign policy is also driven by the ever-intensifying drive by major U.S. corporations to export capital, the needs of the Israeli Right, and some vague campaign to establish U.S. "hegemony" around the world. The UK is an ally; France is not.

15. Hitler used both psychological and physical terror to cement his dictatorial powers. Bush so far has used only psychological terror at home (although it appears as if he is training a cadre of physical terror practitioners abroad for possible future use at home).

16. Hitler dealt with his principal rivals/enemies within his own Party by killing them (most notably on the "Night of the Long Knives," June 30, 1934.) So far Bush has dealt with his internal enemies only by doing things like threatening to cut off their campaign funds.

17. Hitler acquired support from major German industrialists after his Party had announced their platform/ideology and had begun to implement it, beginning in the 1920s. (Foreign industrialists also formed part of Hitler's early core of support. A George Bush great-grandfather, George Herbert Walker, began providing financial aid to the him in 1924.) Hitler came first; his industrialist support came second. Bush is the creation of major U.S. industrial interests.

So, there are obviously significant differences between Bush and Hitler. Indeed, based on the examples in this list, Bush is not Hitler. In fact, compared with Hitler, Bush is something of a piker. Yes, one must conclude that such comparisons are totally unfair -- to Hitler.


31 Similarities Between Hitler and President Bush
Edward Jayne, August 29, 2004

When President Bush decided to invade Iraq, his spokesmen began comparing Saddam Hussein to Adolph Hitler, the most monstrous figure in modern history. Everybody was therefore shocked when a high German bureaucrat turned the tables by comparing Bush himself with Hitler. As to be expected, she (the bureaucrat) was forced to resign because of her extreme disrespect for an American president. However, the resemblance sticks--there are too many similarities to be ignored, some of which may be listed here.

1 Like Hitler, President Bush was not elected by a majority, but was forced to engage in political maneuvering in order to gain office.

2 Like Hitler, Bush began to curtail civil liberties in response to a well-publicized disaster, in Hitler’s case the Reichstag fire, in Bush’s case the 9-11 catastrophe.

3 Like Hitler, Bush went on to pursue a reckless foreign policy without the mandate of the electorate and despite the opposition of most foreign nations.

4 Like Hitler, Bush has increased his popularity with conservative voters by mounting an aggressive public relations campaign against foreign enemies. Just as Hitler cited international communism to justify Germany’s military buildup, Bush has used Al Qaeda and the so-called Axis of Evil to justify our current military buildup. Paradoxically none of the nations in this axis--Iraq, Iran and North Korea--have had anything to do with each other.

5 Like Hitler, Bush has promoted militarism in the midst of economic recession (or depression as it was called during the thirties). First he used war preparations to help subsidize defense industries (Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, etc.) and presumably the rest of the economy on a trickle-down basis. Now he turns to the very same corporations to rebuild Iraq, again without competitive bidding and at extravagant profit levels.

6 Like Hitler, Bush displays great populist enthusiasm in his patriotic speeches, but primarily serves wealthy investors who subsidize his election campaigns and share with him their comfortable lifestyle. As he himself jokes, he treats these individuals at the pinnacle of our economy as his true political “base.”

7 Like Hitler, Bush envisages our nation’s unique historic destiny almost as a religious cause sanctioned by God. Just as Hitler did for Germany, he takes pride in his “providential” role in spreading his version of Americanism throughout the entire world.

8 Like Hitler, Bush promotes a future world order that guarantees his own nation’s hegemonic supremacy rather than cooperative harmony under the authority of the United Nations (or League of Nations).

9 Like Hitler, Bush quickly makes and breaks diplomatic ties, and he offers generous promises that he soon abandons, as in the cases of Mexico, Russia, Afghanistan, and even New York City. The same goes for U.S. domestic programs. Once Bush was elected, many leaders of these programs learned to dread his making any kind of an appearance to praise their success, since this was almost inevitably followed by severe cuts in their budgets.

10 Like Hitler, Bush scraps international treaties, most notably the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the Biological Weapons Convention, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the Convention on the Prohibition of Land Mines, the Chemical Weapons Convention, the Kyoto Global Warming Accord, and the International Criminal Court.

11 Like Hitler, Bush repeats lies often enough that they come to be accepted as the truth. Bush and his spokesmen argued, for example, that they had taken every measure possible to avoid war, than an invasion of Iraq would diminish (not intensify) the terrorist threat against the U.S., that Iraq was linked with Al Qaeda, and that nothing whatsoever had been achieved by U.N. inspectors to warrant the postponement of U.S. invasion plans. All of this was false. They also insisted that Iraq hid numerous weapons it did not possess since the mid-190s, and they refused to acknowledge the absence of a nuclear weapons program in Iraq since the early nineties. As perhaps to be expected, they indignantly accused others of deception and evasiveness.

12 Like Hitler, Bush incessantly shifted his arguments to justify invading Iraq--from Iraq’s WMD threat to the elimination of Saddam Hussein, to his supposed Al Qaeda connection, to the creation of Iraqi democracy in the Middle East as a model for neighboring states, and back again to the WMD threat. As soon as one excuse for the war was challenged, Bush advanced to another, but only to shift back again at another time.

13 Like Hitler, Bush and his cohorts emphasize the ruthlessness of their enemies in order to justify their own. Just as Hitler cited the threat of communist violence to justify even greater violence on the part of Germany, the bush team justified the invasion of Iraq by emphasizing Hussein’s crimes against humanity over the past twenty-five years. However, these crimes were for the most part committed when Iraq was a client-ally of the U.S. Our government supplied Hussein with illegal weapons (poison gas included), and there were sixty U.S. advisors in Iraq when these weapons were put to use (see NY Times, Aug. 18, 1992). U.S. aid to Iraq was actually doubled afterwards despite disclaimers from Washington that our nation opposed their use. President Reagan’s special envoy Donald Rumsfeld personally informed Hussein of this one hundred percent increment during one of his two trips to Iraq at the time. He also told Hussein not to take U.S. disclaimers seriously.

14 Like Hitler, Bush takes pride in his status as a “War President,” and his global ambition makes him perhaps the most dangerous president in our nation’s history, a “rogue” chief executive capable of waging any number of illegal preemptive wars. He fully acknowledges his willingness to engage in wars of “choice” as well as wars of necessity. Sooner or later this choice will oblige universal conscription as well as a full-scale war economy.

15 Like Hitler, Bush continues to pursue war without cutting back on the peacetime economy. Additional to unprecedented low interest rates bestowed by the Federal Reserve, he has actually cut federal taxes twice by substantial amounts, especially for the top one percent of U.S. taxpayers, while conducting an expensive invasion and an even more expensive occupation of a hostile nation. As a result, President Clinton’s $350 billion budget surplus has been reduced to a $450 billion deficit, comprising an unprecedented $800 billion decline in less than four years. At the same time the U.S. dollar has steadily dropped against currencies of both Europe and Japan.

16 Like Hitler, Bush possesses a war machine much bigger and more effective than the military capabilities of other nations. With the extra financing obliged by the defeat and occupation of Iraq, Bush now relies on a “defense” budget well in excess of the combined military expenditures of the rest of the world. Moreover, the $416 billion defense package passed last week by Congress will probably need to be supplemented before the end of the year.

17 Like Hitler, bush depends on an axis of collaborative allies, which he describes as a “coalition of the willing,” in order to give the impression of a broad popular alliance. These allies include the U.K. as compared to Mussolini’s Italy, and Spain and Bulgaria, as compared to, well, Spain and Bulgaria, both of which were aligned with Germany during the thirties and World War II. As a result of their cooperation, Prime Minister Blair’s diplomatic reputation has been ruined in England, and a surprising election defeat has produced an unfriendly government in Spain. The Philippines have withdrawn their troops from Iraq to save the life of a hostage, and other defections can be expected in the near future.

18 Like Hitler, Bush is willing to go to war over the objections of the U.N. (League of Nations). His Iraq invasion was illegal and therefore a war crime as explained by Articles 41 and 42 of the U.N. Charter, which require two votes, not one, by the Security Council before any state takes such an action. First a vote is needed to explore all possibilities short of warfare (in Iraq’s case through the use of U.N. inspectors), and once this has been shown to be fruitless, a second vote is needed to permit military action. U.S. and U.K. delegates at the Security Council prevented this second vote once it was plain they lacked a majority. This was because other nations on the Security Council were satisfied with the findings of U.N. inspectors that no weapons of mass destruction had yet been found. Minus this second vote, the invasion was illegal. Bush also showed in the process that he has no qualms about bribing, bullying, and insulting U.N. members, even tapping their telephone lines. This was done with undecided members of the Security Council as well as the U.N. Secretary General when the U.S.-U.K. resolution was debated preceding the invasion.

19 Like Hitler, Bush launches unilateral invasions on a supposedly preemptive basis. Just as Hitler convinced the German public to think of Poland as a threat to Germany in 1939 (for example in his Sept. 19 speech), Bush wants Americans to think of Iraq as having been a “potential” threat to our national security--indeed as one of the instigators of the 9-11 attack despite a complete lack of evidence to support this claim.

20 Like Hitler, Bush depends on a military strategy that features a “shock and awe” blitzkrieg beginning with devastating air strikes, then an invasion led by heavy armored columns.

21 Like Hitler, Bush is willing to inflict high levels of bloodshed against enemy nations. Between 20,000 and (more probably) 37,000 are now estimated to have been killed, as much as a ro-1 kill ratio compared to the more than 900 Americans killed. In other words, for every U.S. fatality, probably as many as forty Iraqi have died.

22 Like Hitler, Bush is perfectly willing to sacrifice life as part of his official duty. This would be indicated by the unprecedented number of prisoners executed during his service as governor of Texas. Under no other governor in the history of the United States were so many killed.

23 Like Hitler, Bush began warfare on a single front (Al Qaeda quartered in Afghanistan), but then expanded it to a second front with Iraq, only to be confronted with North Korea and Iran as potential third and fourth fronts. Much the same thing happened to Hitler when he advanced German military operations from Spain to Poland and France, then was distracted by Yugoslavia before invading the USSR in 1941. Today, bush seems prevented by the excessive costs of the Iraqi debacle from going to war elsewhere if reelected, but not through any lack of desire.

24 Like Hitler, Bush has no qualms about imposing “regime change” by installing Quisling-style client governments backed by a U.S. military occupation with both political and economic control entirely in the hands of Americans. It is no surprise that Iyad Alawi, Iraq’s current temporary prime minister, was once affiliated with the CIA and has been reliably reported by the Australian press to have executed six hooded prisoners with a handgun to their heads just a day or two before his appointment a couple weeks ago.

25 Like Hitler, Bush curtails civil liberties in captive nations and depends on detention centers (i.e., concentration camps) such as a Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and any number of secret interrogation centers across the world. Prisoners at the camps go unidentified and have no legal rights as ordinarily guaranteed by the Geneva Conventions. They have also been detained indefinitely (for 2 ½ years already at Guantanamo Bay), though there is mounting evidence that many are innocent of what they have been charged--some, for example, having been randomly seized by Northern Alliance troops in Afghanistan for an automatic bounty from U.S. commanders. Moreover, many Iraqi prisoners have been tortured, in many instances just short of death. Recent U.S. documents disclose that as many twenty have died while being tortured, and twenty others have died under unusual circumstances yet to be determined.

26 Like Hitler, Bush uses the threat of enemies abroad to stir the fearful allegiance of the U.S. public. For example, he features public announcements of possible terrorist attacks in order to override embarrassing news coverage or to crowd from headlines positive coverage of Democratic Party activities. He also uses the threat of terrorism to justify extraordinary domestic powers granted by the Patriot Act. Even the books we check out of public libraries can be kept on record by federal agents.

27 Like Hitler, Bush depends on a propaganda machine to guarantee sympathetic news management. In Hitler’s case news coverage was totally dominated by Goebbels; in Bush’s case reporters have been almost totally “imbedded” by both military spokesmen and wealthy media owners sympathetic with Bush. The most obvious case is the Fox news channel, owned and controlled by Rupert Murdoch. Not surprisingly, recent polls indicate that the majority of Fox viewers still think Hussein played a role in the 9-11 attack.

28 Like Hitler, Bush increasingly reduces the circle of aides he feels he can trust as his policies keep boomeranging at his own expense. Just as Hitler ended up isolated in his headquarters, with few individuals granted access, Bush is now said to be limiting access primarily to Attorney General Ashcroft (who also talks with God on a regular basis) as well as Karl Rove, the Vice President, Karen Hughes, and a few others. Both Secretary of State Powell and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld are now said to be out of the loop.

29 Like Hitler, Bush has become obsessed with his vision of conflict between good (U.S. patriotism) and evil (anti-Americanism. Many in contact with the White House are said to be worried that he is beginning to lose touch with reality--perhaps resulting from the use of medication that seriously distorts his judgment. Possibly symptomatic of this concern is the increasing number of disaffected government officials who leak embarrassing documents.

30 Like Hitler, bush takes pleasure in the mythology of frontier justice. As a youth Hitler read and memorized the western novels of Karl May, and Bush retains into his maturity his fascination with simplistic cowboy values. He also exaggerates a cowboy twang despite his C-average elitist education at Andover, Yale, and Harvard.

31 Like Hitler, Bush misconstrues Darwinism, in Hitler’s case by treating the Aryan race as being superior on an evolutionary basis, in Bush’s case by rejecting science for fundamentalist creationism.

Of course countless differences may be listed between Hitler and President Bush, most of which are to the credit of Bush. Nevertheless, the resemblances listed here are striking, especially since Bush’s first term in office must be compared with Hitler’s performance as German Chancellor through the year 1937, preceding the chain of events immediately preceding World War II. In any case, George W. Bush seems the worst and most dangerous U.S. president in recent memory (for me since Roosevelt)--if not in the entire history of the United States.