Comments on: RNC Welcoming Committee willing to call off 2008 protest for $5.9 million

By: Charlie Quimby

Charlie Quimby — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 10:04:47 +0000

Nazis or no, I think Ellison was much more on point. He was making comparisons between people in power and those who soon gained it by exploiting a major catastrophe. RWC and a few kids on bikes? Get real!

By: Noah Kunin

Noah Kunin — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 17:14:01 +0000

Just looked back - you did call them Nazis. Your explanation:

Doh. It’s a fair cop. Chalk it up to emotion. Will revise.

And then changed the Nazi references to “facists”.

Again, not saying references to Nazis are off limits, just pointing out the facts.

By: Noah Kunin

Noah Kunin — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 22:02:03 +0000

Thanks for the reply Mitch. Personally, as per my comments when Rep. Ellison made a Reichstag allusion, I have no problem with the political illusion. I’m still researching what actually occurred during the Critical Mass ride - I’m mainly focusing on eyewitness reports right now - others are collecting data from the MPD. We’ll see.

By: Mitch Berg

Mitch Berg — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 14:15:42 +0000

Noah,

Good piece. And thanks for your comment on my blog. However, Noah, I have to ask you to hold up a bit right here (from your comment):

this trips me up a little principally due to labeling the RWC as “Nazis”,

I didn’t!

I invoke the Reichstag Fire as a political parallel - a staged (or, in the case of the actual fire, opportunistically-seized-upon) provocation that the perpetrators used to justify their own outrages afterwards. One could say the same thing about, say, the Gulf of Tonkin incident without implying that LBJ was a Nazi, for example. Or at least that’s my theory.

At any rate, until the RWC starts calling for lebensraum and the elimination of any ethnic group, I’d never call ‘em “nazis”.

While I’m aware that making any parallel to anything that happened in Germany between 1929 and 1945 is fraught with rhetorical peril, and believing me, or not is your choice - I was shooting for the political parallel, not the nazi reference.