The Poor Man thinks Diana Moon has gone too far when she compares some rather heavy-handed voter intimidation in Ohio to the work of the Nazis.

And he's right. For the comparison to the Nazis to be valid, we'd have to at least see protestors, and even people just nearby, knocked around, swept up in dragnets and illegitimate mass arrests -- typical Nazi electioneering tactics before they came to power.

But seriously, folks.

What made the Nazis uniquely evil was their dedication to genocide not even as a tool of policy, but as a goal in and of itself -- in the waning days of World War II, logistical support from the war suffered greatly so they could keep the trains going to Auschwitz. You can be better than that -- a lot better than that -- and still be pretty damn bad. It's also important to remember that the Nazis become "the Nazis" overnight, or even immediately after coming to power. It took a long time for the true horror of that regime to become apparent. The anti-Semitic stuff may have been all over Mein Kampf, but some people thought it was just pandering, and even Kristallnacht didn't necessarily convince people who weren't on the scene.

So, let's consider.

As David Neiwert has extensively cataloged, there are a lot of parallels between the tactics of the Bush crowd, and perhaps a softer version of fascism, with less domestic violence. They're rabidly nationalist, they have no patience with legal niceties, and they're trying to rig the system to gain a permanent lock on power; they depict their political opponents as threats to the integrity of the state. But those are tactics in service of what goal?

Well, Hitler talked about the Jews, but no one thought he was going to do much about them. Bush talks about a crusade to bring "freedom" -- in the form of Bush-friendly governments -- to the Middle East, even though the Army is hugely overstressed with only two such projects in hand. (Bear in mind that even George Will was calling the second of the two, Iraq, an "optional war" before it started). This certainly isn't a plan as singlemindedly evil as the Nazis' work, but like Hitler's ultimate overreach in invading Russia, it isn't likely to work and has the potential to lead to disaster. Particularly in the hands of a leader stubbornly determined to pursue the danger presented by figments of his imagination, to the exclusion of real dangers on the ground.

Meanwhile, on the other side, Dean Esmay vociferously objects when David Neiwert points out that one of his posts echoes Nazi rhetoric about German soldiers getting "stabbed in the back" by the Jews. The post in question highlights a cartoon that depicts a figure carrying a protest sign running away after stabbing an American soldier in the back.