Of course, he didn't actually say that. I did. But half of us lazy S.O.B.'s won't even get past my first line, which means he now has a new nugget of wisdom for his legacy. You're welcome, Siggie!
Gore Vidal, on the other hand, actually did once call this country "the United States of Amnesia" and accused us of not knowing our history. I agree. And in making my point, I find myself reduced to sticking up for the Trump administration, however reluctantly or nauseated I may be in doing so.
In 2013, when the U.S. was wringing its hands over Bashar al Assad massacring his own people with chemical weapons, MSNBC's Chris Matthews commented on the horrific nature of the crime and, as has been done any number of times throughout history, mentioned Hitler to make his point.
"If you basically put down a red line and say don't use chemical weapons, and it's been enforced in the Western community, around the world -- international community for decades, (then) don't use chemical weapons," he said in an interview on Morning Joe. "We didn't use them in World War II, Hitler didn't use them, we don't use chemical weapons, that's no deal."
Anyone who's sat through any world or U.S. history class in a public school is trained pretty well to draw a line from "Hitler" to "the gas chambers" and might be tempted to call Mathews ignorant, a Holocaust denier or a total buffoon. And some in the mainstream and alternative press did just that.
The Chicago Tribune's John Kass, who never heard of a liberal he couldn't call names, heaped scorn upon Mathews for "playing the Hitler card." "Pardon my moutza?" he wrote in one of his monthly retrospectives. "Hitler didn't use chemicals on innocent people? Really?"
The Blaze wrote that the comment was "not one hundred percent accurate" and quoted Uriel Heilman of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency clarifying that the U.S. used nuclear weapons and that, in case Mathews didn't know it, "Hitler...(gassed) defenseless Jews in the concentration camps."
All of this is wonderful theater, but it didn't actually do anything constructive for the debate we sorely needed at the time. Had the conversation turned to something like "Well, even if we say Assad is worse than Hitler, why does that mean we should be going to war in Syria?" I'd be all for it. Instead, it all more or less remained about "How much does Chris Matthews not know about Nazi Germany?" For all of a day or two, anyway.
So for the record, Matthews was correct. Hitler did not use chemical weapons in World War II.
Of course, "chemical weapons" in this case refer so weapons on the battlefield. Matthews wasn't disputing the Holocaust. He was differentiating between the gas chambers and the actual military fighting going on in Europe.
Don't take my word for it. Not using chemical weapons, The Economist wrote, made them "the weapon that not even Hitler would use."
One historian argues that there was no "value added" for Hitler to use poison gas, since every other industrial nation on the planet could produce them as well. Another writer (I can't remember where I came across this) speculated that Hitler's own experiences during the First World War might have made him pathologically adverse to any substances he would have had available for deployment on the battlefield.
(Of course, "chemical warfare" would certainly include Agent Orange in Vietnam, which wreaked havoc across the countryside, doing unbelievable and cataclysmic damage to the people. But we have to be careful to distinguish ourselves from the Bad Guys, so I'll just go ahead and leave that alone.)
So, much as I enjoy a good sideshow, Matthews' critics were way off. Just like they're off-target today, after White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer's comment about Assad's chemical attack last week and (you guessed it!) Adolph Hitler.
"We didn't use chemical weapons in World War II," he told the briefing room in response to a question about Russia's potential involvement in the atrocity. "You know, you had a--someone as despicable as Hitler who didn't even sink to using chemical weapons."
The Washington Post characterized the comment as justification for Trump's attack, and argued that this was "a bizarre argument...given Hitler's extensive use of poison gas to kill millions of Jews and others in gas chambers." One CNN pundit said Spicer had "stretched for a Nazi Germany comparison." The Boston Globe's Martin Finucane said Spicer was "ignoring" Hitler's use of gas in the concentration camps.
Esquire and the Anne Frank Center even called for Spicer's termination.
Once I heard the comment, I knew I was going to get another ulcer because I wouldn't be able to stop myself from pushing back against all the nonsense. Bad enough when the Trump administration says or does something stupid or dangerous. Even worse when the mainstream media picks the wrong battle to squabble over.
Spicer was correct. There. I said it.
He was correct in saying Hitler didn't use chemical weapons. He wasn't denying the Holocaust. He probably does need a history lesson, like a lesson about how Syria's chemical attack wasn't unprecedented, either in Syria or worldwide. But I don't see any reason to give him one about the death camps, however garbled his followup comments may have been (what the hell is a "Holocaust center" anyway? Sounds like Satan's version of a Help Desk.)
I hate having to even write those words. But if people wish to hold a presidential administration accountable, they're going to have to fight the fights that actually need fighting.
If Spicer was trying to justify an American attack by casting Assad as more evil than Hitler, yes, we should push back against it. But I'm not holding my breath about any of the media outlets I just mentioned doing anything like that.
For example, Kass's own Chicago Tribune published an editorial on Sunday with carefully disguised plaudits about Trump's attack and how it took the world's leaders by surprise, since they aren't used to "that sort of unilateral gambit" from America any more. "If Trump had done nothing but fume," they wrote, "the president at some point would have looked wobbly. Powerless." So as long as he's firing missiles at the Middle East and we're projecting strength, all good.
And as for NBC, The New York Times, CNN and the rest, all the gushing they did over the missile attacks last week leaves me next to immune to any hope that they'll push back with suitable criticism against what looks more and more like a presidential administration more than comfortable with unilateral military action even as it remains ignorant about potential consequences and blowback.
It's almost certainly time to put the Hitler tropes away for good. But focusing gleefully on gaffes that are barely even gaffes in the first place does not make the media the watchdog we actually need.
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| Image from the New York Observer, which is undoubtedly mailing Spicer a copy of Anne Frank's diary and a Good Luck card for further bombings. |
