ADL: only in a context we approve

Earlier this week, U.S. Congressman Keith Ellison likened the U.S. government's response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks to what the German government did after the Reichstag building went up in flames in 1933.

After the Reichstag Fire in 1933, Germany's Adolf Hitler "had the authority to do whatever he wanted" and the expansion of government powers after 9/11 "kind of reminds me of that," Ellison told his audience. Ellison had a point: in both circumstances, legislation had been passed restricting individual freedoms; habeas corpus had been suspended and the ruling elite had increased their power to act against domestic subversion. Nevertheless, it was not long before the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) was demanding that the Congressman apologize for his statements.

The ADL is an organization that likes to monitor anything and everything that is said about Nazi Germany, World War II, Adolf Hitler, the Holocaust, Jews, Israel, Zionism, the Middle Eastern Conflict and similar subjects. The organization also wants its views to be maintained by people of authority and credibility. Consequently, if there is a discrepancy in the way the ADL and those with authority and credibility perceive things, the ADL will first ask for an apology and, if that does not work, the organization will try to challenge that person's authority and credibility. The goal is to ruin the heretic.

At first, I was confused as to why the ADL would go after Ellison; after all, the Congressman's speech was just as critical of the response to the Reichstag Fire as the events following 9/11. Then it hit me: the anti-terror legislation after 9/11 has helped to consolidate power under a regime that has the same friends as the ADL and the same views as the ADL on just about everything. With this in mind, one can begin to understand why the ADL reacted to Ellison's statement. After all, who wants what one's friends are doing to be compared to something the Nazis had done, especially when you are the ADL and you work around the clock portraying things like the Nazi consolidation of power as the epitome of evil?

On its website, the ADL claims that it is interested in "securing justice and freedom for all," which has a nice American ring to it. In truth, the ADL only cares about its power and ideological supremacy. Of course, the organization tries to mask this; that is why, in his reaction to Ellison's comment, the national director of the ADL, Abraham Foxman, played himself up to be a "true, American patriot". Foxman called Ellison's comparison "outrageous and offensive to all Americans" - as if the ADL leader was somehow qualified to decide that for all Americans. Foxman's statement also included commentary about the "brave men and women in America" and the victims of 9/11 that even Alan Jackson would find superfluous. Foxman might as well have wrapped himself in the stars and stripes of Old Glory while he made his comments, just in case the public had any doubts as to what he hoped to convey.

There is probably a second, equally-logical explanation as to why the ADL targetted Ellison. This became apparent as soon as Foxman said that Ellison's comments demonstrated "a profound lack of understanding about the horrors that Hitler and the Nazi regime perpetrated." In other words, even though Ellison was criticizing the political maneuvers which had followed the Reichstag Fire, the last thing the ADL wanted was for Ellison's comparison to be heard by Bush supporters, because it might occur to Bush's supporters that, maybe, just like the Administration's reaction to 9/11, Germany's response to the Reichstag Fire was an equally justifiable and logical response to terrorism. Incidentally, the ADL has something to cover up: the truth is, the Reichstag Fire occurred at a time in Germany when the country's militant, radical communist bloc was likely to become insurgent and violent due to the failure to take power democratically as Hitler had managed to.

Of course, it is unlikely that Ellison thought about any of this; in fact, the Congressman was probably just hoping to make the public mad about the Patriot Act and the Bush regime by comparing Bush's actions to Hitler's, a la reductio ad Hitlerum. Ironically, if the Bush regime were really like the Nazi German regime, as Ellison and the Democratic Party would like you to believe, then Ellison, a Muslim and liberal democrat, would have lost his post a long time ago. Instead, because the Americans have made few restrictions regarding who can settle and serve in the United States, it remains to be seen how the problem of Islamic, anti-U.S. subversion will be dealt with.

The U.S. cannot confront terrorists by rooting out Muslims altogether, as it goes against the tenets of a multicultural liberal democracy. Thus, it is likely that we will see more and more of the Orwellian surveillance state, where the prying eyes of a non-discriminatory government monitor everything and everyone equally, without discrimination. The ADL would do well in such a world; after all, the organization already likes to make everybody's business its business and shares the same ideology, goals and friends as the ruling regime. I guess we will have to wait to see what happens.