Gerard Henderson, Kyle Sandilands, Nazi and Stalinist metaphors, and remembering the Holocaust

(Above: Ralph 'Raef' Fiennes as Amon Goeth in Schindler's List. If you want some background on the movie, Plaszow concentration camp and Goeth, you can of course read Keneally's book, or do a quick primer here).

Tricky scoring this week for devotees of columnist Gerard Henderson and his devotion to former PM John Howard, and the so called legacy wars which have now erupted in a way reminiscent of the ferocity of the fighting in the second world war.

Who are the good guys and who are the Nazis is also a little obscure, but let's read on with Nazi remarks go way over the top to tote the score, and count the winnings and the losses.

First it takes a fair average four paragraphs for John Howard's name to appear, because Henderson purports some kind of modernity and relevance by bagging hapless shock jock Kyle Sandilands for his remark about Magda Szubanski losing more weight if she were to be put in a concentration camp.

Then as if that wasn't enough astonishment for the morning, John Howard gets only two mentions in the entire column. It almost makes a punter think there's been some kind of organized gambling coup going down, a Fine Cotton racket designed to pull off a big win in the culture wars. Even those running a secondary book on the number of times Paul Keating appears will be alarmed that he's earned only one mention, and only then because Amanda Vanstone noted a resemblance to arch Nazi propagandist Goebbels.

But even if you lost your shirt there's still fun to be had. After all, it's not just about the gambling, because the game is always bigger than the players and there's always a special thrill watching the horses go round.

How's this for an insight, up there with the probing depths of a story in New Idea?

There is some debate about the actual circumstances of Sandilands's youth in Brisbane. He maintains he was homeless for a time aged about 15. Some of his family deny this; others confirm it. But it is accepted Sandilands had a limited secondary education. It would be unreasonable to expect he is conversant with the sordid details of Hitler's murderous Third Reich.

Say what? Talk about a superior Mr. Sniffy in action looking down his nose.

You mean Sandilands didn't even watch Schindler's List? Well I guess that's an old movie now, and he's probably never watched any of the hundreds of hours that have littered the SBS these past few years detailing more than you'd ever want to know about the Nazis.

Yep, I guess it's entirely unreasonable to expect that Sandilands has a brain or any interaction with the past at all, based purely on the fact that I've never met him but love to indulge in idle, fatuous thinking and common gossip. Especially as I'm the sole repository of historical awareness, an awareness lacking in the general and generally sordid populace.

Moreover if I didn't know better, I'd be inclined to think of Sandilands as a left-winger because his flippant use of Nazi metaphors is uncomfortably leftie. Assuming of course he was referencing Nazis rather than gulags because of his extensive reading of Solzhenitsyn. A bit like Jonah Golberg and his discovery that liberals and lefties are the real fascists:

... the reaction to his comment - widely interpreted as a reference to Nazi Germany's concentration camps - exhibited a double standard. In recent years, in the West particularly, it has become a common to attempt to link public figures with totalitarianism - usually fascist/Nazi but sometimes communist. Many on the left, or centre-left, use the word "fascist" as an adjective to describe people with whom they disagree ...

... If he were the first to attempt to equate contemporary Australia with Nazism, or the communist regime established by Lenin and Stalin, he would deserve the bagging he received. But it seems Sandilands is simply repeating a line of attack which he has heard well-educated Australians use over many years.

Yep, he's just a pawn and a dupe, unaware of Hitler and the Third Reich (well so I'm assured because of his failure to experience the joys of Australian schools) but somehow quite mystically infected by the culture wars. The wrong way by the wrong people.

And just in case Sandilands by now isn't fully informed, Henderson naturally seizes the moment to remind all of us of the take the Nazi name in vain sinners. There's Bruce Kent, an academic at the ANU, and his thought crime is perhaps the most shocking because he wrote an article:

... alleging there was worrying similarity between some of the policies of the Coalition government and the Third Reich. Kent linked John Howard with such mass murderers as Hitler and Himmler.

But wait there's even more. It seems Guy Rundle (a part time comedian) has indulged in historical vaudeville by comparing Chairman Rupert with Stalin (and News personnel in Australia to the leading Bolsheviks of their day). And then to balance the books, we sadly have to report that Amanda Vanstone made a speech equating Paul Keating to Goebbels, thereby sadly ignoring her own physical resemblance to Goering.

Oops, this kind of fiendish metaphor is catching, which perhaps explains why the terrible Chris Maxwell described the Howard government's counter-terrorism legislation as "redolent of Stalinist Russia." Wash out your mouth Maxwell, lest you sound like ABC journalist Liz Jackson describing a call for balance in that den of socialists the ABC as verging on Stalinist.

Never mind. It seems now that it's an ongoing crisis:

On the ABC AM program yesterday, John Shovelan expressed concern about the tone of protests in the United States about some of Barack Obama's policies. He quoted one banner directed at the President which declared "Hitler gave good speeches too". And he quoted, with evident approval, a comment by a Washington Post journalist, Colbert King, that "the ugliness and hatred" directed towards Obama "takes the breath away". Obama has also been equated by some critics with communism.

Well they would say that - "concern" and "evident approval" - wouldn't they, seeing as how they work for a socialist organization, full of trendy left people, which even so, somehow strangely managse to produce copy in favor of the Liberal coalition, at least if you accept the gobbledegook equations deployed by some wretched academics with way too much time on their hands that suggest the ABC is notoriously unbalanced towards the right.

That said, if you hold your nose to avoid the stench of the socialists lurking in the ABC you can find it in your heart to agree:

There is much to be said of the concern exhibited by Shovelan and King.

But, of course, this will lead to a but, because that's how this line of story telling always works. After all, where would we be without billy goats butting? But?

But it should be remembered that George Bush was also linked to Hitler and was pilloried by the left. Some who, quite correctly, object to the sledging of Obama said little or nothing when Bush was the recipient of ugliness and hatred.

Hah, see. Nah nah, the lefties did it first, so really deep down, by the laws of the playground (which Kyle Sandilands wouldn't understand because he's never really been in a playground), the lefties did it first, so it's fair dibbs to get back at them, and next thing you know they've turned into teacher's pet dobbers, and even worse an ignoramus like Sandilands is following their example.

So the current tea parties and anti-Obama follies are all the fault of the lefties who started it, and now everybody's doing it:

If some opinion leaders use ''Nazi'' or ''fascist'' or ''communist'' to denigrate political opponents, is it any wonder some demonstrators in the US and shock jocks in Australia will follow their lead?

So Glenn Beck is just following the lefties! QED.

Hyperbole has become a way of getting noticed in the never-ending news cycle. Exaggerated comments about the applicability of totalitarianism to contemporary democracies get a run because so little is known about the suffering of the victims of Hitler and Stalin.

Yep, the Holocaust is so little known! Roll that around on your tongue for a little while and play with that thought. So little is known.

Why only the other night I was watching Daniel Craig (that's James Bond to you) in Defiance playing the leader of a Jewish band of refugees who lived in the forest and fought the Nazis to survive. Talk about historical distortion.

Let's welcome the fact that Sandilands's comments on concentration camps have been bagged. But let's hope that such condemnation is extended beyond the shock jock brigade.

So people bagged Sandilands about his comments without understanding why because so little is known about Nazi concentration camps or Soviet gulags? Perhaps because they thought it was somehow offensive without understanding precisely why?

Well there you have it. My own personal hope? That pious presumptions by prattling Polonius's about the level of ignorance of someone they've clearly never met will never in the future be rendered into print, nor nonsense about so little being known about the suffering of victims of Hitler and Stalin ever see the light of day, especially when disguised as a dressing down of pundits for using Stalinist and Hitler-ite metaphors.

Because unless you happen to be an ardent Holocaust denier like a David Irving, the reality of the Holocaust is still remembered, though contemplation of it - like the contemplation of the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - can lead to profound depression.

But enough seriousness for the moment.

Now it's time to put down your cash and take up the challenge. In the next Gerard Henderson column, when will John Howard first be mentioned, and how many times will he be named? Well are you feeling lucky punk, are you?

(Below: the real Amon Goeth).