Nazi Environmental Policy

I guess that most Canadian politicians haven’t heard of Godwin’s Law. If they did, I suppose that they’d care more about the fact that they have been making new (Internet) legal precedent over the past few days.

A few days ago, our old friend Elizabeth May (who honestly just seems to be a really nice, though somewhat misguided lady) compared the new Conservative environmental policy to Chamberlain’s appeasement of the Nazis before the Second World War. Now, according to Godwin’s Law, she has already lost her argument by invoking a comparison to Nazis. Sorry, Liz, but the law is the law.

However, in an unprecedented turn of events, the Stephen Harper has managed to make the comparison even worse, thus adding a new clause onto Godwin’s Law. Somehow, the Prime Minister (along with numerous very sensitive Jewish groups) have managed to turn “appeasement of the Nazis” into “the Holocaust! I hate JEWS! Graaagh!”

Therefore, I hereby propose to modify Godwin’s Law by adding in the Politics Clause:

• Whereas, therefore, furthermore, incongruously when the response to the original invocation of a comparison of an argument to Nazis, Hitler, or Nazi Germany is further escalation of the invocation of the Holocaust, both sides lose. Rocks fall, everyone dies, argument over.

Were May’s comments a rash? Yes. Harper’s political spin of attempting to portray May as insensitive and/or an anti-Semite? A wee bit ridiculous. Unfortunately, in our House of Commons, May’s comment will be used as a repeated jeer against left-wingers – for at least the next week.

What seriously disturbs me, however, is the frequently-heard assertion that Nazis, Hitler, the Second World War, or all things German equal the Holocaust. Growing up in a predominantly Jewish area, I’ve been raised with a fair amount of Holocaust education (never forget and all that jazz). My high school even offered a Holocaust and Genocide Studies course, which I eagerly took. The main thing that I took away from the course was that the Holocaust, like genocide in Rwanda and Darfur, was characterized by international indifference – for the most part other countries simply ignored it while it was going on.

Early in our relationship, I discovered that my partner (who grew up in the rather-whitewashed suburb of Whitby) always thought that the Allies went to war as a response to the Holocaust. Apparently, this was a pretty common misunderstanding among those who came out of their schools, where education about the Holocaust consisted of a day of grade ten history class.

Unfortunately, this was not the case. Simply put, Europe was afraid of Nazis. That’s why Chamberlain committed history’s greatest blunder by continual appeasement. By the time war were declared Nazi militarism expansionism was something that threatened all of Europe. The British didn’t want lovely little book-burnings and goose-stepping parties to interrupt afternoon tea. The Jews didn’t quite have a monopoly on being able to say that Nazis were bad. Germans were invading countries left and right, and the Allies didn’t want to be next. When push came to shove, as the Evian Conference demonstrated, most national leaders simply didn’t give two pennies about the Holocaust until after the war, when the entirety of such horror was revealed. Canada itself denied immigration to most Jewish refugees fleeing from Europe. There weren’t many good guys.

The Holocaust was a horrible consequence of the Nazi regime, but it had little to do with the war itself and more to do with administration of occupied territories – which fell to to the Wermacht and more to do with the SS. Most of the folks fighting in the army, while brainwashed by Nazi propagnda, wouldn’t have been able to carry out the acts of atrocity that made up the Holocaust.

The Nazis did a lot of really, really, really, bad things. The Holocaust was one of them – but it wasn’t all of them. To instantly relate the Nazis to the Holocaust not only diminishes every other atrocity committed by the Nazis, but is poor and simplified historical thinking. Of course, when used as political fodder, comparisons to Nazis or the Holocaust just end up becoming Godwin’s Law.

Also, is John Baird scary, or is it just me?

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