Gott mit uns:
On Bush and
Hitler’s
rhetoric
Bob Fitrakis
08/31/04 "Free Press" -- President
Bush told Texas
evangelist James Robinson that “I feel like God wants me to
run for President. I can’t explain it, but I sense my
country is going to need me. Something is going to happen .
. . I know it won’t be easy on me or my family, but
God
wants me to do it.”
With 49.3% of New York City residents in a recent Zogby poll
believing that some people in our government knew of the 911
attack in advance and allowed it to happen, the President as
right-wing evangelical prophet is under siege in his Madison
Square Garden bunker. Convention watchers should
take
careful note of the theocratic nationalist rhetoric at the
Republican convention this week.
When was the last
time a Western nation had a leader so obsessed with God and
claiming God was on our side?
If you answered Adolph Hitler and Nazi Germany, you’re
correct. Nothing can be more misleading than to
categorize Hitler as a barbaric pagan or Godless
totalitarian, like Stalin.
Both Bush and Hitler
believe that they were chosen by God to lead their nations.
With Hitler boldly proclaiming, before launching his
doctrine of preventive war against all of Europe, that “I
would like to thank Providence and the Almighty for choosing
me of all people to be allowed to wage this battle for
Germany.”
“I follow the path assigned to me by Providence with the
instinctive sureness of a sleepwalker,” Hitler said.
Hitler stated in February 1940, “But there is something else
I believe, and that is that there is a God. . . . And this
God again has blessed our efforts during the past 13 years.”
After the Iraqi invasion,
Bush announced, “God told me to
strike at al Qaeda and I struck them, and then he instructed
me to strike at Saddam, which I did . . . .” Neither the
similarity between Hitler and Bush’s religious rhetoric nor
the fact that the current President’s grandfather was called
“Hitler’s Angel” by the New York Tribune for his financing
of the Fuher’s rise to power is lost on Europeans.
Pat Robertson called Bush “a prophet” and
Ralph Reed
claimed, after the 9/11 attack, God picked the President
because “he knew George Bush had the ability to lead in this
compelling way.” Hitler told the German people in March
1936, “Providence withdrew its protection and our people
fell, fell as scarcely any other people heretofore. In this
deep misery we again learn to pray. . . . The mercy of the
Lord slowly returns to us again. And
in this hour we sink to
our knees and beseech our almighty God that he may bless us,
that He may give us the strength to carry on the struggle
for the freedom, the future, the honor, and the peace of our
people. So help us God.”
At the beginning of Hitler’s crusade on April 12, 1922, he
spelled out his version of the warmongering Jesus: “My
feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a
fighter.” Randall Balmer in The Nation, noted that
“Bush’s
God is the eye-for-an-eye God of the Hebrew prophets and the
Book of Revelation, the God of vengeance and retribution.”
As Bush has invoked the cross of Jesus to simultaneously
attack the Islamic and Arab world,
Hitler also saw the value
of exalting the cross while waging
endless war:
“To be sure,
our Christian Cross should be the most exalted symbol of the
struggle against the Jewish-Marxist-Bolshevik spirit."
Like Bush-ites, Hitler was fond of invoking the Ten
Commandments as the foundation of Nazi Germany: “The Ten
Commandments are a code of living to which there’s no
refutation. These precepts correspond to irrefragable needs
of the human soul.”
But if you ever wondered where
Bush got his idea for
so-called “faith-based initiatives” you need only
consult
Hitler’s January 30, 1939 speech to the Reichstag. The
Fuhrer begins, “Amongst the accusations which are directed
against Germany in the so-called democracy is the charge
that the National Socialist State is hostile to religion.”
Hitler goes on to document how much “public monies derived
from taxation through the organs of the State have been
placed at the disposal of both churches [Protestant and
Catholic].” Hitler gave nearly 1.8 billion Reichsmarks
between 1933-1938 directly to the Christian churches. In
1938 alone, he bragged that the Nazis gave half a billion
Reichsmarks from the national government and an additional
92 million Reichsmarks from the Nazi-controlled German
states and parish associations.
Hitler made the intent of his faith-based initiative clear
when he noted, “With a tenth of our budget for religion,
we
would thus have a Church devoted to the State and of
unshakable loyalty. . . . the little sects, which receive
only a few hundred thousand marks, are devoted to us body
and soul.”
Bush’s assertion that “I trust God speaks through me.
Without that, I couldn’t do my job” brings to mind God as a
dull-witted, cognitively-impaired nationalist unable to
utter a simple declarative sentence who spends his time
preaching “blessed are the warmongers and profit-makers.”
Bob Fitrakis is the Editor of the Free Press (freepress.org),
a political science professor, attorney and co-author with
Harvey Wasserman of George W. Bush vs. the Superpower of
Peace.
Copyright:
http://www.Freepress.org
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C.
Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to
those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the
included information for research and educational purposes.
Information Clearing House has no affiliation whatsoever
with the originator of this article nor is Information
Clearing House endorsed or sponsored by the originator.) |
