The power of Nazi symbology

My recent activity on Flemming Rose's blog (here) prompted this entry.

In my thesis (that I finally submitted last week - woohoo!), I noted that parties on both sides of the Danish Muhammad cartoon issue equated the other to the pre-WWII Nazi movement. Today still, they have not backed off. There are certain concepts or symbols that are very basic to society. Whether they are ideas, symbols, or words that refer to but have outgrown those ideas, they are fundamental to our discernment and identity. The Nazis or Hitler, for example, being universally condemned as representatives of the lowest of human potential, are one of the most powerful symbols in Western culture.

On the other end, so I argued, was an abstract and amorphous concept - or perhaps lack thereof - called 'freedom.' This word means a lot of things to a lot of people, but over all, it means what they want it to mean. It is representative of 'goodness,' personal worth and respect. For example, is the 'freedom' that crops up some couple dozen times in a speech by George W. Bush the same as the 'freedom' in Dutch PM Geert Wilders' "Party for Freedom" who wants to ban the Koran in The Netherlands? Mr. Wilders, by the way, routinely compares the Koran to Hitler's "Mein Kanpf," which, incidentally, is banned in the Netherlands.

Though these two do not form a perfect duality, they are useful tools of rhetoric. Tip: Use 'freedom' to talk about yourself and your beliefs, and find a way compare your opponent to Hitler. The qualitative nature of these concepts are basic premises with which no one can argue without discrediting themselves :)