Could Hitler happen again?

Capt'n Midnight

MikeC101 wrote: »

Bob Mugabe, your friendly African dictator, head of state of Zimbabwe since 1980.
...
Probably the dictator most frequently compared to Hitler these days, though he's likely no worse than Kim Il Jong, Than Shwe, Islam Karimov or half a dozen other dictators.

Like Idi Amin he's gotten very bad reviews in the UK media, while other far worse people have gotten away with worse. I'm not saying Idi was a nice guy but he got far more attention than Pol Pot. And Pol Pot was far worse than Hitler and would probably still be in power today if he hadn't tried to exterminate the Vietnamese , the same ones who had defied the Japanese, French, Americans, Aussies, South Koreans and China. Liberia and Congo have shown rebel leaders can be pretty nasty too.


You'd think that removing Mugabe would lead to world peace, but when compared to dictators of the past he wouldn't be in the same league. One big problem in our world is the support given to dictators in the past by rich powerful countries. The US in particular has been active in destabilising democracies and installing new dictators.



Here is a one list of this years top 20 - there are other places not on this list that I would not want to live in.
http://www.parade.com/dictators/2009/

1 Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe
Unemployment and inflation high.
2 Omar Al-Bashir, Sudan
Darfur continues to be a hotbed of violence.
3 Kim Jong-Il, North Korea
Runs the world’s most repressive regime.
4 Than Shwe, Myanmar
Delayed access to aid after devastation.
5 King Abdullah, Saudi Arabia
Most oppressed women in the world.
6 Hu Jintao, China
Controls all media and represses religion.
7 Sayyid Ali Khamenei, Iran
Permits execution of juveniles. ( so does the USA btw )
8 Isayas Afewerki, Eritrea
No national elections, controls media.
9 G. Berdymuhammedov, Turkmenistan
Restricts religion, represses media.
10 Muammar al-Qaddafi, Libya
Reports of torture are common.
11 Islam Karimov,
Uzbekistan
12 Bashar al-Assad,
Syria
13 Raúl Castro,
Cuba
14 Teodoro Obiang Nguema,
Equatorial Guinea
15 Aleksandr Lukashenka,
Belarus
16 Meles Zenawi,
Ethiopia
17 Idriss Déby,
Chad
18 King Mswati III,
Swaziland
19 Paul Biya,
Cameroon
20 Hosni Mubarak,
Egypt

ejmaztec

What about Vlad Putin? Prime candidate for the job. He's got Russia pretty much sewn up at this stage.

pikachucheeks

To be honest, it could be going on right now and we'd be none the wiser.

There's many wars and conflicts going on that the western media don't report on.

As for the mentioning of Kim Jong Il, I once mistook him for Gok Wan in the news paper!
I was most devestated to discover the article wasn't about fashion and "bangers", but about nuking and bloody communism!
:mad:

ejmaztec

pikachucheeks wrote: »

To be honest, it could be going on right now and we'd be none the wiser.

There's many wars and conflicts going on that the western media don't report on.

As for the mentioning of Kim Jong Il, I once mistook him for Gok Wan in the news paper!
I was most devestated to discover the article wasn't about fashion and "bangers", but about nuking and bloody communism!
:mad:

I'd prefer a chat with Kim Jong Il than Givit Wan, it would be a lot safer.:eek:

Kev_ps3

Knew this would turn into a lets point fingers at the enemys of the west:rolleyes:

dsmythy

Kev_ps3 wrote: »

Knew this would turn into a lets point fingers at the enemys of the west:rolleyes:

It's a mix of that and "Oh look how evil America is. Bet ya never thought of that one haha".

Cunny-Funt

Cunny-Funt wrote: »

The United States is currently the closest to most likely emulating Germany at the time. Its got a lot of the right ingredients.

1st world military power/empire.

A lot of blindly patriotic people who will go for anything if in the name of America, even more so if there was a recent disaster in their country. (The amount of Americans who think Iraq was behind 9/11 is depressing)

Another amount of people who have such disinterest in whats going on in the world that they wouldn't see the implications of certain actions by their country.

Theres a lot of extreme nationalism sprinkled with a little bit of ignorant racism. But they're in the minority thank ****. Still scary though. For example, this video scares the flying **** out of me. Its hard not to see similarities with nazi germany there.

A lot of Americans wouldn't see anything wrong with that there but that's cause a lot of Americans actually don't know much about Hitler or his rise to power, all they generally know is "Germany were the bad guys and we saved everyone". So the whole learning from history thing doesn't happen.

However luckily there is still way too many decently informed people in the US. People who'll ask questions and be critical. The US may be the most similar but its still far far off.

Then finally they simply don't need to conquer the entire planet. Empire building doesn't work the way it used to. Although they were sneaky with that whole Hawaii thing.

dsmythy wrote: »

Love the desperation to link America with this topic. Do you honestly think multi-racial multi-ethnic America is going to commit genocide in the future?

So Genocide is all hitler did yeah? Maybe if that's all hitler did you'd have a point but its not.

A Primal Nut

brummytom wrote: »

Yep, when I saw the title of the thread, I thought of Mugabe too

Mugabe doesn't have the military power to invade other countries and anyway he's dependant on the support of his neighbours.

'Hitler' has happened many times since....Saddam Hussein was another Hitler...he committed genocide against the Marsh Arabs, the Kurds. He also tried to take over the arab world and unite it as another superpower under his control (like Hitler united Aryan world); which likely would have led to as many jewish deaths as under Hitler....thankfully Iran fought back successfully and America put a stop to his invasion of Kuwait (despite plenty of protests from people who thought it was ok....sort of like when Hitler took back the Rhineland and most people wanted to let him apart from Winston Churchill who unfortunately wasn't in power at the time.)

A Primal Nut

brummytom wrote: »

Yep, when I saw the title of the thread, I thought of Mugabe too

Mugabe doesn't have the military power to invade other countries and anyway he's dependant on the support of his neighbours.

'Hitler' has happened many times since the 1930s....Saddam Hussein was another Hitler...he committed genocide against the Marsh Arabs, the Kurds. He also tried to take over the arab world and unite it as another superpower under his control (like Hitler united Aryan world); which likely would have led to as many jewish deaths as under Hitler....thankfully Iran fought back successfully and America put a stop to his invasion of Kuwait (despite plenty of protests from "anti-war" people who ironically thought it was ok for Saddam to invade whoever he wants....sort of like when Hitler took back the Rhineland and most people wanted to let him apart from Winston Churchill who unfortunately wasn't in power at the time.)

Fracture

Nice double post there.

Seriously tho, you would nearly be quicker pointing out the countrys that dont have a lunatic at the head of power.

An Fear Aniar

A Primal Nut wrote: »

'Hitler' has happened many times since the 1930s....Saddam Hussein was another Hitler...

Well, not quite, he didn't get elected. He also didn't organise genocide along ideological lines, he was just your typical mediaeval tyrant.

.

Dotsie~tmp

Regimes like Nazi-Germany don't just spring from the void. The conditions have to be right. Back then the flow of events from decades previous contributed. Ultra nationalism, racism, crackpot social theories, widespread post war poverty and who knows what else.

I was reading on the Treblinka camp recently. Its hard to believe that that place existed. That if you stood there 60 odd years ago you could see those people running down the "tube", dogs biting at their balls. Ivan Marshenko waiting at the end to lop off a breast or two for a laugh. I was stuck by the fact that so few people seemed to be on hand. Maybe less than 200 on hand to kill almost a million?

It could maybe happen again. But not in the current climate of openness. We would have to over a long way down the authoritarian road to get there. Who knows in some countries though.

dsmythy

Cunny-Funt wrote: »

So Genocide is all hitler did yeah? Maybe if that's all hitler did you'd have a point but its not.

I don't see America any time in the near future invading countries with the intention of claiming them as theirs while rooting out 'undesirables' and populating them with Americans. That was Hitler's worldview foreign policy. So it's a superpower? Someone has to be. It doesn't mean they are turning into Nazi Germany.

Maybe the problem here is that we are trying to make exact connections between the two. They're nothing alike.

Reindeer

We do seem to have an awful lot of jews runnin' around nowadays...

Red Sleeping Beauty

States (or governments) are structured now in such a way that you don't need a Hitler/Nazi type of scenario. Britain and the USA are two states involved in terrorism but we live in a time where the medias reporting of their actions are quite distorted. Both of those countries have approved backed or sanctioned coups, political assasaintions and in the case of East Timor genocide. America (along with a few others) backed various mujahideen factions in the 80s so they could fight the Soviets and these fighters paid no respect to human rights. Now they're backing war lords in Afghanistan.

The world in a broad sense isn't really any more civil than it was 100 years ago or 100 before that. There's still poverty, murder, genocide. Just so happens that we're ("the west") slightly sheltered from a fair bit .

Red Sleeping Beauty

dsmythy wrote: »

So hypothetical moment. America and the UK pull out all troops from all countries all over the world and promise never to intervene again including on Israel's behalf. How do you think the Middle East reacts, not to mention the rest of the world? Something tells me mass kumbaya singing will not be the result.

Ye know, the quickest way of ending a war is to lose it and if America and the UK govts. really wanted an end to terrorism then they could just stop taking part in it. Very very simple. There must be certain conditions met before the army of one country invades the other under the pretence of trying to alleviate suffering. One of the conditions of course are whether or not them people want and approve the help.