Right Wing bloggers and Right Wing nuts have been using the term Islamofascist for quite some time, but last week the leader of the "free world," George W Bush, used the term for the first time. So, why would George W Bush sink to the level of extremist fear mongers? And, why would he do it at this time?
The very same Right Wing Extremists who had used this term, were the very same Right Wing Extremists who had dismissed Liberals for bringing up any parallel between the Bush administration's propaganda war and the Nazi propaganda war during the 1930s. The point is that political argument is filled with emotion, and there isn't anything in American cultural that is more emotional that World War II. This is because many people who fought in that war are still alive and many people still romanticize the patriotism of the "Greatest Generation."
Is it any wonder then that any emotionally charge argument tends to end with one side invoking the Nazi Specter to win an argument. The fact is that the Nazis and Adolph Hitler have come to represent the pure embodiment of evil. This representation has become so big that one can not see the ideology that this movement actually represented. Bloggers on the right have actually proposed that the evil of the Nazis was what the liberals he hated must have been working toward. He believed that Hitler was the pure embodiment of liberal thought. Obviously this poor ignorant blogger did not have a clue about what the ideology of fascism actually was. If he knew that fascism was a form of extremist nationalism, this extremist nationalist "patriot" might have given pause, at least for a moment. But, reality is almost never logical and people tend not to recognize their own "evil" tendencies. After all, how could patriotism be bad?
I recently wrote about how patriotism can be bad in my piece on Michael Savage. People like Michael Savage, the Minutemen and other nationalist groups have created their personal vision for a future America. They see an American culture, an American language and a military guarding the border from anyone who might enter the country bringing different culture or language with them. This idea is eerily familiar to the Nazi dream. This parallel can easily be corrected by telling those who question it that American culture is superior to German Nazi culture, so there is no need to worry. Of course, every nation believes that they have an ideal culture, or they would correct their culture. No one says, we eat crappy food but we can't do anything about it because this is our culture. No, Americans say McDonalds serves the best food in the world, which's why there are so many McDonalds around the world.
So, if we look at the current situation with the Bush administration we can begin to understand why they might decide to play the Nazi card. First of all George W Bush is down in the polls, perhaps at the lowest opinion of any president in US history. The polls show that 44% of Americans strongly disapprove of the job that George W Bush is doing. Secondly, these people have tied this dissatisfaction with the president to the Republican lead congress who are up for election in November. Third, every strategy that Karl Rove has used in the past to manipulate the people has become less reliable. Whenever this had happened in the past Karl Rove has upped the degree of fear used to garner enough support to win the elections. They used the fear of homosexuals getting married, free abortions for everyone and even the image of the mushroom cloud to raise the fear level. And, since almost every way of raising the fear level has been used the Nazi Specter is the only that remains. So, by calling the terrorists Islamofascists he cleverly creates the idea that the War on Terror is equal to World War II, without actually saying those words.
If George W Bush or any credible person in the Bush administration were to say that the War on Terror were actually equal to World War II he would immediately be asked why the American people were not being asked to sacrifice like those members of the "Greatest Generation." Where is the draft? Where is the build up of munitions? Where are the enormous Manhattan style projects and the enormous efforts to undermine these Islamofascists? Where is the effort to raise the money to battle this evil blight? If George W Bush were to answer thee questions honestly he would need to either admit that the threat was not that serious, or he should actually do these things to actually fight this enormous threat.
So, but calling the terrorists Islamofascists George W Bush has been able to raise the level of fear without being required to do anything about it. This is the clever action of Karl Rove. Since Karl Rove's personal fear of prosecution has been reduced he is now able to raise the fear of the American people in order to get the Republicans re-elected to congress.
The interesting thing about this is that the entire objective of the terrorists is to raise the fear of the American people. Terrorists actually only kill a few people, but they kill them in very dramatic ways that get media coverage. The media coverage evokes fear in the American people, and this fear is the objective. Terrorists hope that the fear will make the American people change their minds and give Israel back to the Palestinians, or give the money from the Middle East oil back to the Arab people. And when the Americans show their fear they give the terrorists more hope that they will win. This hope translates into more recruits for the Islamofascist cause. When White officials and George W Bush repeat the deeds of the terrorists the terrorists actually get even more bang for their bombs. In this way the Bush administration has actually done quite a lot for the cause of the terrorists in promoting their deeds.
It is such a crazy world that we live in where those who claim to be doing the most for the nation are actually doing the most for the terrorists. But like the old saying goes, "It's all in the marketing."
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Don't forget what Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."
Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit