CAPT Brad:

1. I still think you should read the article. You brought up the military and the article has nothing to do with the military.

2. If you still think state-sanctioned torture came about because of bad apples, you have some homework to do. Directives from the top of the Bush administration, backed by Justice Department crony appointees, encouraged extreme treatment of detainees that led to systematic problems. "Taxi to the Dark Side" was released in 2007; much more information has come out in the past decade. I referred you to the movie not to see objective truth (there are more up-to-date sources), but to hear from servicemen in their own words how they came to abuse detainees. Torture was normalized. Hell, it almost certainly still is normalized. Other war crimes have been normalized in a similar fashion through different parts of the armed forces and there is no reason to believe it couldn't get worse if orders come done from the White House.

3. Bias doesn't exist. Statistical bias in media would mean that the media would have to consistently hide certain facts from the public. This doesn't happen outside Fox News and authoritarian police states, and even then the concept of bias isn't very helpful.

Yonni: I did. Have you gotten a chance to?

3. Bias doesn't exist. Statistical bias in media would mean that the media would have to consistently hide certain facts from the public. This doesn't happen outside Fox News and authoritarian police states

NBC news knew of signs in people' s yards that said Hillary for jail but didn't publish that fact because they wanted to be politically correct. That lent to the perception that Pennsylvania was going to go to Hillary. New media outlets constantly vet out stories and facts. They use news as entertainment and revenue sources. You need to take your head out of the sand. Bias exists everywhere

@Yonni, yes i thought it was a very interesting article, i read it before posting.

I learned a lot about Hitler's rise to power and particularily his 'war' with the Munich Post. I find it interesting parallel with Trump comments about 'failing' newspapers...

The one thing Trump lacks is a dedicated wing of extremists engaging in violence/murder on his behalf. The red hats (for all i may despise them) are no brown shirts, and the random myrders of muslims or setting on fire of the odd mosque doesn't really match the narrative of targeting journalists and politician who opposed hitler.

Similar comment on judges. I wonder if Trump will manage to suppress the resistance by 'legal' means, and propoganda, instead of violence... Only time will tell.

@Daily Trump Thread, i have used it before, but couldn't find it on the front page... So.

Also this is mostly about Hilter's Biography.

Although: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-airport-inhumanity-20170206-story.html

Yeah, I did. It was a pretty decent article but none of the dialogue here seems to have stemmed from it. Orthaic, your title for the post definitely didn't help but, jeez, people really missed the point.

I guess it may be difficult for trump supporters to read an article like this (especially after they see Orthaic's title) and not colour their understanding with the thought that they are being called Nazis. But that definitely isn't the case.

Yeah, there is a lot of differences, particularily the political violence in Munich in the 20s and early 30s. I definitely learned a lot about Hitler's rise to power.

Of course any comparison with Hitler is coloured by later facts. The Holocaust and the defeat in World War 2 - followed by demonisation of Hitler for the following 80 years.

But he was just a man. Not a demon.

The Holocaust was after decades of popular science talking about social darwinism. And concentration camps were a British invention. (Perfected in German east Africa later, but also practically seen in the US in Indian reservations, and maybe Russian Gulags??). Death camps =/= Internment camps, but in either case, first you have to round up the people you don't like and send them away.

Really death camps are the logical extreme or internment (locking people away with no trial) and comparable to what we see today in Guantanemo Bay - which at least Obama tried to close.

So i will not liken Trump to the Hitler of Death Camps, until he starts locking people up with no trial and either executing them or letting them suffer and die without adequate medicL care...

As for the defeat in world war 2, nobody seems to blame Hitler for that, or use it as a sleight on his character. Sure he is remembered badly for it, and history being written by the victors means his defeat and history's memory of Hitler is pretty damning (i wonder how many more would have died in death camps if Hitler had won, perhaps all non-white non-Aryans... But who would admit to knowing about it??)

But that isn't the Hitler discussed in the article.

@Yonni, ehat title would you have recommended?

Carumba, JECE, what is this ? Those CIA run "black sites", rendition and all the rest of it, do you really think that was anything more than a few servicemen scallywags acting alone ? Resources wise, all those activities could be funded with a few nickels & dimes from the NCO's mess spare change tin at Fort Bragg, doncha think ? ( to state the blindingly obvious that was an attempt at satire )
Plausibility of the denial theory advanced by Capt Brad.... imho. 0%. ( sadly that's not an attempt at satire )

I dunno. Something like
"Against Normalization: The Lesson of the “Munich Post”"

Yonni: It's not that people missed the point. See my first post. It's that a couple users hijack the thread and start discussions on unrelated subjects.

CAPT Brad: So nothing for discussions 1. or 2.? You just want to talk about bias? Well fine. I'm always annoyed when articles are dismissed as 'bias' when the author holds opinions. And yet many are accustomed to dismiss sources because the reporter has opinions. Yet you take things a step further. You dismiss the media as 'biased' because they don't report certain 'facts'. Stick your head out of the sand. The mainstream media (in the States) shamelessly manipulates and all-round fails to present even the most obvious connection between stories to their audience and readers. But they did report on 'lock her up'. Could they have taken the 'lock her up' mentality more seriously? Yes, but the truth was out there, so there was no statistical bias. Instead of ignoring media reports, read beyond the headlines or front-page stories and absorb what you can. Hell, just go straight the wire sources like AP, Reuters and AFP if you can't stand the mainstream media. Facts are out there; don't dismiss everything just because real stories are hard to find.

@Yonni, touché

The idea that bias is something to be avoided is absurd. Everyone is biased. There is no such thing as an objective viewpoint. It is on the consumer to get information from a broad array of sources and come to their own conclusions.

Ultimately there is just too much information out there, the news' job is to break it down into consumable packets and there's no way to do that without bias.

When Trumpettes scream "bias", what they're really saying is "I like my echo chamber".

Normalising. Where you call the opposition 'biased' to make your opinion look like the norm.

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/normalization-lesson-munich-post/

Well, a number of us with roots in Germany have been sounding the alarm about how Trump uses the Hitlerian playbook to a T. More worrying we have also been warning that Bush and Obama set up a turnkey totalitarian state by empowering the NSA and CIA unchecked surveillance powers to deal with a threat of the order of magnitude of falling furniture. If you think that will not be turned against the opposition, you're not paying attention

Of course, one of the key points in that article is the notion that Hitler merely used existing anti-Semitism as a vehicle to come to power. Here we have trump supporters who seem to be so hostile to democracy that they'd be very satisfied if we never had another election at all but instead unleashed the power of the state against all opponents from the press to minorities to liberals to the judiciary. In that sense, the red hats might not yet be as organized as the brown shirts (but see Cliven Bundy for an example of what a heavily armed group with implicit support from the government can do) however, by the same token that Trump isn't quite Hitler, just with some striking similarities, Trump supporters aren't (entirely) quite Nazis (though some clearly are) but still show remarkable similarities.

I find it very hopeful that people are refusing to normalize this an blow off past historical convention to use every lever of opposition possible. It is the only decent response. For my part, I'm getting my kids their foreign passports next week so that can flee of they have to.

On that last point, my family has fled before and we can do it again

@Ogion...my understanding, incomplete and fallible, is that when Hitler's Nazi party first stood candidates for elections they had minor support until an election about 1932/33? when the electorate split,the Communists got about 30 to 35% of the vote, the Nazis about the same, and the old "middle ground" parties were decimated. Also that fighting the Communists was the first priority, way ahead of attacking the Jews. Early legislation introduced by the Nazis was designed to smash Labour Unions, particularly those trouble making Communist infiltrated "Maritime based" unions, as a tactic to smash the Communist party's support base within Germany
The propaganda used was " we have to get the economy into recovery " which suited the times..economic chaos of the depression... and the powerful Capitalists decided to throw their support behind Hitler and the Nazis eg Krupps, Siemens etc. Another powerful Capitalist who supported the Nazis in the 1930's quite generously was good old Henry Ford, that icon of USA carmaking fame. Ask any employee of the Ford Motor Company about that shameful part of their corporate history.. They refuse to even comment, pretending ignorance, and most probably are unaware, it has almost been completely "airbrushed" out of the records. Call me cynical, but at least most modern Germans will acknowledge the evils of Nazi Germany, whereas at Ford Motors USA their in denial. Similarly there's a very popular fashion label known for their suits..perhaps it's Hugo Boss.. Ho ho, did they made Gestapo uniforms etc ? Check it out for yourselves..then ask a suit salesman if they have a "traditional Gestapo style " overcoat available..like they used to make.. Ho ho.
So when I hear modern day Politicians say they need to limit Union powers to improve economic performance, alarm bells ring..of course if you ask them, " what, just like the Nazis did in the 1930's ? " you are as the old saying goes, as welcome as a pair of drunken harlots at a wedding.

Man you really need to work on making your shit more readable, there is no way anyone is going to parse that wall of text.

"Call me cynical, but at least most modern Germans will acknowledge the evils of Nazi Germany, whereas at Ford Motors USA their in denial. Similarly there's a very popular fashion label known for their suits..perhaps it's Hugo Boss.. Ho ho, did they made Gestapo uniforms etc ? Check it out for yourselves..then ask a suit salesman if they have a "traditional Gestapo style " overcoat available..like they used to make.. Ho ho."

American companies were afraid of losing a paycheck in Europe. Warner Bros got critically flamed for producing films critical of Nazi Germany prior to US involvement in WWII.

It still continues with Pepsi supporting the Arab Boycott of Israel since there was more to be made in selling to all the Arab countries than to Israel. Countries that view Russia and China as the bigger markets to sell to and ignore those that would hurt their sales to those two.

Or the Trump supporters that are calling for boycotts of companies that made commercials that seem to go against Trump. Even commercials made years before Trump ran like the 2014 Coca Cola one with America the Beautiful sung in different languages.

Roughly yes. (Nazis came in second in 1930 after being nowhere in 1928). In fact some of the fuel for the anti-Semitism was because a number of Jewish thinkers were associated with labor activism.

Remember the Niemoeller quote:
First they came for the socialists, then they came for the trade unionists. Only third did they come for the Jews

Anyone comparing Trump to Hitler or the Republican Party to the Nazi Party is extremely delusional (at best).. I don't want to even say what, at worst is.

If anything the Democratic Party and SJWs are closer to the Nazi Party.

ND, you're the delusional one. Nazis are authoritarian, reactionary and right wing. Democrats fail on all those marks.

The left is extremely reactionary and authoritarian. Also the Nazi Party wasn't 'right wing' and it wasn't 'left wing' it was beyond the spectrum of modern politics.

The left through suppression of speech, targeting of those with different view points, etc is much closer to the old Nazi Party then the Republicans which actually stand for a constitution and established legal system.

This is where 'right' and 'left' fail.

there is collectivism vs free markets, and there is anarchists vs fascists.

the nazis were collectivist fascists.

democrats are more collectivists than republicans, though both sides' tendencies towards big gov't.

I mean, say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, dude, at least it's an ethos. Yeah, Nazis want a constitution and established legal system...their own and no one else's.