Frame Watch: Inverted Totalitarianism

The latest feeble excuse for comparing Bush to Hitler is called “inverted totalitarianism.” It's a way to claim that, even if the current administration is acting exactly opposite the way the Nazis acted, that anti-Nazi behavior is also suspicious.

For example, in Weimar Germany, before the Nazis took power, the "streets" were dominated by totalitarian-oriented gangs of toughs, and whatever there was of democracy was confined to the government. In the United States, however, it is the streets where democracy is most alive--while the real danger lies with an increasingly unbridled government.

Translation: You can say what you want and go where you want in the US. The very fact that the government pays almost no attention to you is evidence of its totalitarian nature.

Or another example of the inversion: Under Nazi rule there was never any doubt about "big business" being subordinated to the political regime. In the United States, however, it has been apparent for decades that corporate power has become so predominant in the political establishment, particularly in the Republican Party, and so dominant in its influence over policy, as to suggest a role inversion the exact opposite of the Nazis'.

Translation: You are not only free at home but also at work.

At the same time, it is corporate power, as the representative of the dynamic of capitalism and of the ever-expanding power made available by the integration of science and technology with the structure of capitalism, that produces the totalizing drive that, under the Nazis, was supplied by ideological notions such as Lebensraum.

Translation: There is no difference in LeftWorld between exerting power over human beings and exerting power over nature.

The article continues along the same lines (the lack of calls for sacrifice is suspicious, the lack of mobilizing hate-filled citizens is even worse, and the lack of concentration camps is simply inexcusable). In related news, leftists will put ice cream on the stove to cool it off and cook food in the refrigerator.