MEME STREETS

Increasingly, there's a furor over comparing Bush to the Führer: Continuing grief for the commander in chief. (Beth Gillin, , Jun. 18, 2003, Philadelphia Inquirer)

Did you notice that when the Architect in The Matrix: Reloaded tells Neo about human evil, the faces of George W. Bush and Adolf Hitler flash on video screens?

Did you catch CBS's mini-series, Hitler: The Rise of Evil, which implicitly compared the burning of the Reichstag and the suspension of Germany's constitution to the events of 9/11 and the passage of the Patriot Act?

Did you see the posters of the President with a little brush mustache held aloft by protesters in antiwar marches from San Francisco to London?

It's the latest incarnation of the Nazi meme - a word that rhymes with dream and describes an idea that spreads like a virus, regardless of whether it is true or false.

In the age of the Internet, when anyone with a computer can download a peace song accompanied by a slide show of Bush and Hitler in similar poses, or print out lists of their alleged similarities, the Bush-equals-Hitler meme has spread like SARS.

Given who's making the comparison isn't it equally possible that rather than being meant to discredit George W. Bush it's meant to legitimize Hitler? Mightn't it be as much a function of anti-Semitism as anti-Bushism? Posted by Orrin Judd at June 20, 2003 8:29 AM