Elections are simply entertainment with a serious undertone due to the results.
Can anyone take Trump, Erdogan, Le Pen and Wilders serious? I suppose with Brexit and the US Presidency compromised by a populist movement across the globe, one needs to be reminded of the Fatal Attraction. 😉
Why does everyone keep making Nazi comparisons? | BBC News |
As a row between Turkey and the EU deepened, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused both the Germans and the Dutch of using Nazi tactics.
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Associating someone with Nazis - as in this Turkish TV broadcast - is unlikely to win any logical argumentsBringing up Hitler or Nazi Germany in an argument is hardly new. But recently, it has appeared as part of political discussion on an international scale.
Similar comparisons plagued the US presidential election, and they can be found in every medium, from Twitter to national parliaments. So why is it so widespread?
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A German float in the Rose Monday parade declaring "blonde is the new brown" referenced the brownshirts - Nazi paramilitariesThe answer, according to America’s Anti-Defamation League (ADL), is simply that it is the “most available historical event illustrating right versus wrong.” When an argument descends to such fundamentals, the comparison inevitably turns up.
But “misplaced comparisons trivialise this unique tragedy in human history,” the ADL’s national director Jonathan Greenblatt says, “particularly when public figures invoke the Holocaust in an effort to score political points.”
○ Bibi Netanyahu: Book of Esther, Persecution, Deliverance and the Holocaust
○ Putin Calls Out Netanyahu for Exploiting Purim Story to Disparage Iran | Tikun Olam |In fact, comparing someone to Hitler to invalidate their point is so popular it’s been given its own fake Latin name, the reductio ad Hitlerum – a play on the very real logic term reductio ad absurdum. It’s mostly used to point out the fallacy of comparing almost anyone to Hitler.
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan: ‘We know Dutch from Srebrenica massacre’ | The Guardian |
The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has held the Netherlands responsible for the worst genocide in Europe since the second world war as the row over Turkish ministers addressing pro-Erdoğan rallies in the country deepened.
In a speech televised live on Tuesday, Erdoğan said: “We know the Netherlands and the Dutch from the Srebrenica massacre . We know how rotten their character is from their massacre of 8,000 Bosnians there.”
After Erdoğan’s speech Rutte told the Dutch TV channel RTL Nieuws that Erdoğan “continues to escalate the situation”, adding the Srebrenica claim was “a repugnant historical falsehood”.
“Erdoğan’s tone is getting more and more hysterical, not only against The Netherlands, but also against Germany,” he said. “We won’t sink to that level and now we’re being confronted with an idiotic fact … It’s totally unacceptable.”
- ○ Dutch investment in Turkey not at risk in diplomatic row: EU minister | Hürriyet Daily News |
○ Turkey’s unemployment rate rises to 12.7 pct, highest in seven years
See also my recent diary …
○ Dutch Election Prelude – Political Row with Turkey Escalates
Brexit – Trump – Wilders – will the Dutch stem the tide of populism today? I trust they will … the voting is under way and I have a good feeling Geert Wilders will not gain sufficient foothold to be a key player in the coalition forming starting tomorrow.
○ GOP Nominee Donald Trump and His EU Bed Partners
○ Brexit ‘a Warning’ for Hillary Clinton, Says Council on Foreign Relations President by Oui @BooMan on June 25, 2016
Unbelievable but true! Dutch defeat the rise of extreme right-wing populism of the PVV and Geert Wilders. The PVV had polled a year ago as by far the largest party, it has to settle for a battle for 2nd-3rd-4th spot with the Christian Democrats (CDA) and even the Liberals of Pechtold (D66). The campaign was lively with serious discussion of the issues and Wilders thought he could squeeze through without participating in all television debates.
PM Mark Rutte’s Conservative Liberal party (VVD) has outmaneuvered Geert Wilders and leads the exit polls with an equivalent of 31 seats, down from 38 in previous election. The Labour party is completely devastated, down to 10 seats at the most. Dutch parliament has 150 seats, thus the forming of a coalition will be a long process.
Wonderful spring weather and a high turnout, democracy is alive in Holland! Let the tulips bloom, after Brexit and Trump there is no continuation of populism in the Netherlands. Will the international media cover the end of this story, or will leave asap to offer noteworthy fake news elsewhere across the globe??
○ Election 2017: Turnout may reach 80%, new ballot papers printed
PM Rutte will take the initiative to form a new coalition government. Policy will not change on essential issues. Labour party is out. Results indicates populism of Wilders has been halted. Parties are pro-Europe, elements of the Netherlands represents All of Us, thus the Dutch voted for multi-culturalism, young people voted in large numbers and chose the Green party for durability and concern for the environment. In many elections people vote for a tactical result and often the large parties profit from this. This time, the choice of the Dutch is diversity. For the first time a party has gained seat(s) in parliament representing the Turkisch population.
The Brexit and Trump effect led to sanity in the voting pattern today! Need to stay a bit guarded about the exit poll and the final tally. Normally the Dutch votes are tallied digitally. Due to the Red scare of vote hacking (Putin did it) the Dutch voted by paper ballots and the result will be known early on Thursday.
Conclusion: A progressive voice in the Netherlands!
○ Dutch general election: a finger in the wind, not a litmus test | The Guardian |
○ Chancellor Angela Merkel has phoned Rutte to congratulate him on his win | DW |
○ PM Rutte sees off anti-EU Wilders challenge | BBC News |
I suppose if one wants to view the collapse of the Weimar Republic and the rise of the Hitler movement and ensuing revolution as purely sui generis, one can do that. History can always been seen as merely an interesting fictional novel.
In my view, the reason we are seeing so many analogies to the rise of the European fascists is because the physiognomies are compelling. Certainly the message of the New Nationalists (best personified by Trump) that the [particular] nation needs a return to “purity” of the [particular] Volk and expulsion or ostracism of the alien “other” is Hitlerian. And while this sort of crackpot reactionary outlook is always with every nation to some degree, it has now become the property of major political parties across western democracies.
The fact that the Hitlerite movement culminated in WWII and the Holocaust while these current nationalist movements (likely!) will not does not mean that the story of the rise of the Nazis has no “logical” relevance to today’s world, contra the BBC.
Since the US already has a strong presidential system and aggressive militarist tradition, the (mis)election of Trump (as a minority anti-democratic candidate, no less) brings greater Hitlerian parallels to bear than might be the case with the rising nationalist movements in western Europe. When a completely unqualified politician (who has never held political office) espouses aggressive militarism and authoritarianism, crows about a “ushering in a revolution” (as Reichsfuhrer Bannon does), attempts to muzzle the nation’s free press and independent judiciary, foments hatred by the dominant ethnic majority on smaller, largely powerless ethnic minorit(ies), expands internal police powers (our ICE forces) ala the Gestapo, denies empirical reality and focuses on emotion and fantasy as a guide to national action, consistently uses Big Lie propaganda techniques and demagoguery, and works in a symbiotic relationship with CEOs to aid big capital and vice versa, then comparisons with Hitler are going to spring to the minds of many informed observers in the US, IMO.