Compare and Contrast (why invent a new blood libel when the old ones work so well? edition)
 1924 |
 2007 |
It's pretty amazing. 83 years and there's really no difference between the two. Sure, the Nazi version actually goes out of its way to draw the soldiers as, um, soldiers while the Evil Party version draws the soldier as some sort of overweight shlub, but you've to to understand that they're marketing this sort of sleazy propaganda to the 101st fighting keyboarders, who will identify with the Dolchstoßlegende if the victim looks like they do. (As for the soldiers, it's common knowledge that the Evil Party doesn't give a fuck about them, so insulting one of the finest fighting forces [or at least what used to be one of the finest fighting forces; I don't know how ready the army or marines are for anything now that a large chunk of them have been dumped into Iraq without adequate provisions or leadership] on the planet by drawing them as if they were a bunch of fat bloggers is pretty much par for the course. It's the price of empire, American style; if you're a rich friend of the junta, you'll get glory and gold beyond your wildest dreams, and if you're not you'll get the opportunity to die miserably while the rich friends of the junta make money selling tickets to the show.)
The Nazis had one thing going for their propaganda that the Evil Party does not; The Nazis, unlike the Evil Party, didn't wage the war that they made up a Dolchstoßlegende about. As for the Evil Party? It's their war through and through, and the dolchstoss they're talking about is the perfidious congressional attempt to provide more money than the Coward in Chief asked for in the first place. A good propagandist might be able to dig their way out from under this, but a good propagandist would STFU about the war until it was safely lost and gone from the headlines.
(via Mark Kleiman)