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"USA - A lot Like Nazi Germany?"

Comparing the USA to Nazi Germany may seem ridiculous to you at first. I mean, I don't live in America, but I know there's no Gestapo there. No rounding up of Jews to be murdered. No children forced to join politicised scout groups where they learn their first allegiance is to their dictator.

So lets start at the beginning. Mr. Bush is now the leader of the USA. How did that happen? Well, it turns out he didn't actually win the presidential election. But he's still in power. In Germany, Hitler did try to stage a coup to seize power, but it failed. When he eventually did take power, he actually did it democratically. So now we have the two in the same place. Both Hitler and Bush in power. But neither have total control over their country. In Germany, the Reichstag (German Parliament) is burnt down. Hitler, seeing this as a chance to seize total control, demands he be given emergency powers to ensure further terrorist acts are not carried out. The Nazi's blamed communists for the fire, but some historians now suspect the Nazi's torched the Reichstag themselves to get Hitler his emergency powers, which would lead to him obtaining total control over the country. Remind you of anything? September 11th? Now obviously they aren't the same, but there are similarities. Hitler used an act of terrorism so he no longer had to consult parliament on decisions. Bush used an act of terrorism so he no longer had to explain himself to his voters. His excuse to so many issues has been September 11th.

At present, the USA is in a state of fear and mindless nationalism. Everyday people are warned of terrorist threats. Everyday people are confronted with the stars and stripes, 'freedom' fries and an 'us and them' mentality. If you don't support the ruling party, you are a terrorist supporter. The Nazis used similar tactics. They scared people with propaganda against communists, Jews, blacks, any minority that didn't fit in with Hitler's 'master race'. Opposition parties were banned, people were indoctrinated to worship Hitler, if you didn't support all Nazi actions you were a communist or Jew-lover.

But just in case all this didn't work, the Nazis had the secret police or 'Gestapo'. They could spy on people and take anyone away at any time for questioning. They were essentially above the law, and anyone in their hands essentially had no rights. But surely there's nothing like this in America? I wouldn't hold your breath. Under the new Patriot Act in the USA, the government may intercept confidential E-mails, take a peek at bank and school records, and even records of purchases that have been made. Government agents are even allowed to enter and search homes and never tell the occupants they have paid a visit. These may not seem anything too intrusive, after all they'll only be used on suspected terrorists right? Well, no. Because the Patriot Act means agents simply get secret warrants from a secret court. So in effect no one knows what evidence is produced to justify prying into peoples lives. Further, Mr Bush seems to think he has the right to label anyone an 'enemy combatant', meaning the Bush Administration will not acknowledge they have any human rights. At least the Gestapo couldn't electronically pull up the private records of any German they wanted to.

But the Gestapo were there to reinforce Hitler's power, not to protect the country from terrorism. After all, isn't the Patriot Act there to protect people? Well that's what Bush would say isn't it, but if we dig a little deeper it seems there are cases where it's not being used appropriately. A college student has been visited and told to hand over anti-American material. It was an anti-death penalty poster. A teacher was removed from his class when the feds paid a visit to photograph one of his students' art projects that showed Mr. Bush with duct tape over his mouth. A final example is a Green Party Activist being detained and not allowed to fly because it was deemed Green Party members were potential terrorists. So the new Patriot Act has already harassed students for expressing themselves freely, and has stopped a member of an opposition party from travelling. Way to fight terrorism.

The final comparison I'm going to make is that of concentration camps. There are no concentration camps in the USA though. The Nazis locked up anyone they didn't like (Jews, blacks, suspected homosexuals, anyone who spoke out against them) in concentration camps. Many people were murdered in gas chambers, died of starvation or were killed trying to escape. And while it's true Bush hasn't done anything as horrific as this, America does have it's own special camp for people it wants to put away without a fair trial (or any trial for that matter). But as I said before, it's not actually in the USA. America finally found something Cuba was good for, namely holding hundreds of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. They have no rights, they have not been charged with anything, and all this flies in the face of international laws. There are even children under sixteen incarcerated indefinitely there. So while the USA has no concentration camps, it still manages to lock people up without proving them guilty of any crime, with little or no hope of release.

So far in this article America and Germany have been under the microscope. So now it's time to examine the other countries. When Hitler started breaking points set out in the Treaty of Versailles (the treaty Germany was forced to sign after World War 1), Great Britain, which was still a major power in Europe and worldwide, ignored it. It was felt that once Hitler had reversed the harsh restrictions placed on Germany by Versailles, he would stop being so aggressive. He was appeased. But he wanted a German empire, he wanted his vision of the 'master race' imposed on the world. The more he walked over the international community, the more they moved back and gave in. Finally, Hitler invaded Poland and it was decided enough was enough. World War 2 was the result. Bush is using September 11th as an excuse to invade countries. At first he invaded Afghanistan. Fair enough, get rid of Osama who planned the attacks that killed thousands of Americans, most people probably thought. But then came Iraq. Bush used the state of fear in America to gain support for the war. He then ignored the wishes of the international community and went ahead with his own war against Iraq, dragging us Brit's into it as well, because our own Mr. Blair didn't want to jeopardize our 'special relationship' with the USA. The moral of the Nazi Germany case is that appeasing an aggressive ruler doesn't work. If they think they can get away with something, they'll keep doing it. You have to stand up and make it clear you're not going to take that kind of s*** from them.

The so-called "Land of the Free" has a worrying number of similarities to a certain Fascist Regime. Thankfully there is still a process for Americans to throw their dictator out. Lets just hope Bush doesn't hijack democracy a second time.



Much of the information about the current state of America taken from 'Dude, Where's My Country' by Michael Moore. Go read it.
Nazi Germany information based on stuff I learnt from taking GCSE history. Looks like school's good for something.

I wrote this for my website a few days back, thought some people here might be interested... The whole article (which includes some pictures) can be found at http://www.unitepunk.co.uk/features/fascistamerica.htm

Belldandy wrote:
> You also fail to make the point that Hitler's war was against those
> not, as he perceived it, part of the Aryan (spelling?) race

Hitler did not go to war against the Jews, Hitler invaded other countries to expand his own empire. He killed Jews because he didn't want them in his rebuilt world.

Belldandy, yes, the German people were encouraged to inform on each other, fair point there. But I would say the 'secret police' style activities the Patriot Act allows is comprable to some of the activites the Gestapo carried out.

But I never actually compared the invasion of Poland by Germany to the invasions of Afganistan/Iraq by the USA. I compared the international reaction to these invasions. I said the war to get the Taliban out of power was justified in most peoples eyes, but I said that with Iraq the international community disagreed with America, yet America went ahead anyway. I meant that appeasing any leader who seems intent on wars is not a good policy.

Flockhart wrote:
> you really are so predictable,so a police officer got hit with a brick
> at every protest then?

So every protest was attacked by police then? 'cause I saw a lot of them on TV and I didn't see it happen... Did I say it happened at every protest? Duh...

The Gestapo bit is wrong as well. They didn't need to spy on people because the German people were encouraged to tell the authorities about people themselves. Part of the horror of pre-war Germany was that the German populace was largely compliant with the regime. Unlike Guantanamo there were no court hearings - you may have selectively forgotten that a bipartisan selection of judges in the US ruled that those held were legally enemy combatants.

You've also selectively forgotten that the juveniles being held are seperated from the rest of the men and in specially built building with their own rooms, tutors etc.

Whilst this does not make holding them right it is silly to compare this to the way Jews were herded into cattle trucks...

You also fail to make the point that Hitler's war was against those not, as he perceived it, part of the Aryan (spelling?) race, where as the war on terror is about getting rid of terrorists, regardless of race, religion and so forth. Yep, invaded Iraq and Afghanistan but only those who fought against the coalition - namely Saddam's regime and Al Qaeda/Taliban - lost.

This is another sloppy comparison, because by comparing the invasion of these two to the invasions by Nazi Germany you suggest that it was not warranted to attack the regimes of those two countries, which it was. There was no justification, other than in Hitler's head, for invading Poland etc. I have not seen any one here say they would rather have left Al Qaeda and the Taliban in charge of Afghanistan or Saddam in charge of Iraq.

you really are so predictable,so a police officer got hit with a brick at every protest then?
as for telling people to shut up,i didnt say people,just you
if i am biased i am not the only one

Flockhart wrote:
> i heard something about this patriot act a little while ago,apparently
> people were protesting peacefully about the war and were attacked by
> the police because the patriot act considered the protests to be pro
> terrorism.
> another example of if youre not with us...
> war on terror,bit of a contridiction no?
> im thinking george came up with that one himself.
> the fact is the worlds biggest terrorists is america
> the similarities between germany and america are there although i
> would say there are more similarities with communist russia.
> america is a police state
>
> (message to belldandy) before you think of commenting on my post
> SHUT UP!

Ha, just like someone like you who protests about freedom being taken away to tell people to shut up...

I'm not even going to bother picking this apart because you look stupid already. The protest in question, if I remember rightly, was peaceful, up to the point a brick smashed into a policemans face and the crowd then largely tried to break out of the area they had been told they could protest in.

As far as I'm aware I didn't compare Bush to Hitler. I simply compared actions each of them carried out and events that occurred within Germany and America...

The intention of the article was not to say Bush is the next Hitler or anything like that. It was simply to point out that I find it worrying how America, probably the most powerful country in the world, bears a resemblance to one of the most famous fascist regimes in history in any way, let alone in a multitude of ways.

Plus, for such wide claims, the evidence is selective and sketchy.

i heard something about this patriot act a little while ago,apparently people were protesting peacefully about the war and were attacked by the police because the patriot act considered the protests to be pro terrorism.
another example of if youre not with us...
war on terror,bit of a contridiction no?
im thinking george came up with that one himself.
the fact is the worlds biggest terrorists is america
the similarities between germany and america are there although i would say there are more similarities with communist russia.
america is a police state

(message to belldandy) before you think of commenting on my post
SHUT UP!

I didn't say that... I'm also sorry I ever brought up Korea as that has got nothing to do with the topic. I only mentioned it as one of the many countries Bush has threatened with his 'axis of evil' speeches.