It’s an old saw that when you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging. It’s apparently an old saw that nutjob “Christian Libertarian” badhair-blogger Vox Day never learned.

You may recall his op-ed piece on Worldnet the other day, which argued about the feasibility of rounding up illegal aliens and deporting them with reference to the ease the Nazis had in rounding up and killing them:

Not only will it work, but one can easily estimate how long it would take. If it took the Germans less than four years to rid themselves of 6 million Jews, many of whom spoke German and were fully integrated into German society, it couldn?t possibly take more than eight years to deport 12 million illegal aliens. . .

Today, when visiting the General’s fine weblog, I learned that WorldNet had edited out the reference to the Nazis “ridding themselves” of 6 million unwanted Jews in just 4 years. But I also learned that Vox Day didn’t see anything necessarily wrong with turning to the Nazis for some good old how-to:

So, there are no lessons to be learned from the National Socialists?

He then defends his use of the gruesome analogy of the Germans “ridding themselves” of 6 million Jews to the US deporting millions of aliens:

Yes, because getting rid of six million people is a logistical task rather similar to getting rid of 12 million people. Whether you kill them at the end or buy them all haciendas complete with margarita bars, the task is largely the same.

Which isn’t true at all, since finding 12 million people haciendas would itself be an enormously complicated logistical task. After empty banter about his supposed superior knowledge of history, which is ironic precisely because the Nazis found the logistical task of expatriating Jews quite difficult, and the task of annihilating them far easier in comparison. In fact, my primary criticism of his use of the analogy, apart from the abhorrent racism apparent in the manner it was phrased, was that it was ignorant.

Peppering Vox’s several posts, he calls his critics “morons,” “illiterates,” and “cretins” for failing to acknowledge the elegance of his holocaust-t0-illegals analogy, his supposed knowledge of German history:

I compared it [deporting Messkins] to what the National Socialists did between December 1941 and June 1945. Perhaps you’ve never heard of concentration camps - really death camps - such as Dachau and Auschwitz. Before they killed the Jews, the National Socialists had to identify them and transport them. The point, as seems to have escaped you and many other morons, is that it is quite clearly possible to enact deportations on the scale required.

Ironically, this once again demonstrates the writer’s ignorance. Yes, the Nazi’s identified and transported their victims in order to implement the Final Solution, but the “deportations” employed were not deportations in the common sense, the were “deportations” from one German controlled territory to another, rather than sovereign nations. The largest of the death camps were located in occupied Poland. The General Government of Poland was not a Polish goverment at all, it was purely a German administrative organization responsible for the occupation of Poland, and facilitating the murder of millions of its people. And they built the death camps where they did largely because of their proximity to the largest Jewish populations.

Apart from the more sinister implications of Vox using reference to the Holocaust to assess the feasibility of mass deportation of illegals, Vox is an ignorant buffoon precisely because the deportation the Right wants is to other countries, while the the “deportations” the Nazis executed in 1941-1945 as a preliminary to mass execution were merely transportation within administrative units of the same country.

Moreover, the logistical task facing the Nazis involved transporting people from contiguous countries comparatively short distances over ground routes. Although most bigots see a brown person and think “Mexican,” there are large numbers of illegal immigrants from many different countries. The Nazis stuffed their transportees in box cars; the United States would likely have to charter aircraft to deport large numbers over much greater differences. The very fact of analogizing the “logistics” inherent in transporting Jews to their death camps and aliens to other countries ignores the brutality of the often lethal conditions under which the Nazis victims were moved from placed to place.

In short, it was a stupid analogy, and one which denies the brutality of mass relocations by the Nazis.

So, to sum up, Vox Day: 1) still doesn’t see anything amiss in using Nazi exemplars on the ease of “ridding” oneself of unwanted populations; 2) is arrogant beyond any realistic self-perception; and 3) an ignorant ass.

Then disposing of these 12 million illegals will be a snap. Or so some on the anti-immigrant Right believe.

John caught and Digby elaborated on the commentary in WorldNet Daily linked above, which contained this chilling illogic on the time needed to rid ourselves of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the US:

“Not only will it work, but one can easily estimate how long it would take. If it took the Germans less than four years to rid themselves of 6 million Jews, many of whom spoke German and were fully integrated into German society, it couldn’t possibly take more than eight years to deport 12 million illegal aliens, many of whom don’t speak English and are not integrated into American society”

As Digby notes: “‘Rid themsleves’ is an interesting way of putting it, don’t you think? I’m not surprised at this.” “Appalling” rather than the understated “interesting” might be a more apt description, but certainly unsurprising, since the commentary’s author is self-described as a “Christian Libertarian” which seems to be the latest in a series of “Christian” appellations siezed by white supremacists.

And I say appalling, because history shows that the leap from “deportation” to “extermination” is not all that great a distance.

Indeed, prior to Hitler’s decision to exterminate European Jewry, the policy of the Third Reich was deportation of aliens, and then emigration. As Hannah Arendt noted in Eichmann in Jerusalem, in 1939, before the Wannsee Conference which announced the pending destruction of Europe’s Jews:

the general directives for the immediate future had been given: concentration of Jews in ghettos, establishment of Councils of Jewish Elders, and the deportation of all Jews to the General Government area. Eichmann had attended this meeting setting up the “Jewish Center of Emigration.”

Prior to this, Eichmann made a reputation for himself in Vienna, as an expert in the “forced emigration” of Jews, when in 8 months he oversaw the flight of 45,000 Jews from Austria, more than double the exodus from Germany during same time frame. Up until the Wannsee Conference, Arendt notes that “‘forced emigration’ was the official formula for the solution of the Jewish question.” It was only after the abandonment of emigration as a means for ridding Europe of its Jews, that Eichmann’s reputation as an expert in emigration — in moving bodies — led to his being entrusted with the more lethal “resettlement” of Jews — their forced evacuation into death camps — after the onset of the Final Solution.

The irony here is that “forced emigration” was soon recognized by the architects of the Reich as being too slow and indecisive a method for solving the Jewish Question — that is, the removal of the Jewish population from Europe. When Nazi Germany expanded its eastern borders to include areas populated by millions of Jews, it concluded it needed a swifter method to “rid itself” of that unwanted race. While “Vox Day” uses the timeframe it took to implement the mass murder of Europe’s Jews as a measure of the time it will take to deport America’s unwanted aliens, one of very the reasons for choosing extinction over emigration was the rapidity with which extermination could be implemented, as opposed to “forced emigration.” Eichmann was responsible for the emigration of 45,000 Jews during 8 months in Vienna; a single Einsatzgruppe on the Eastern Front managed to murder, by shooting, over a 250,000 Jews in a single year. And yet killing at that rate only led the Nazis eager to “solve” the problem of unwanted human beings to the conclusion that a faster and more efficient method of slaughtering human beings be devised, which resulted in the nightmarish system of death camps and gas chambers.

This is why using the the template of the extermination of Europes’ Jews as a milepost for what amounts to the implementation of forced emigration of undocumented aliens is both chilling and repugnant. The fact of the matter is that a totalitartian regime found it could kill persons it found undesireable far more quickly and efficiently than it could expatriate them. And in an actual democracy governed by the rule of law, one can assume that the wheels of deportation will move more slowly still.

Which leads to this question: What if the actual pace of deportation is too slow to satisfy or quell the xenophobia being stoked by the hatemongerers on the right? What happens then?

needles and pins

they find me. they always do.

yesterday at work i was on a call to a designer. we have never met, and this was the first time i have spoken to him.

at the end of the call i said to him,

“well, i’m sorry to have stuck the pin in your creative balloon, so to speak.”

him: “be careful what you say - there are some of us that LIKE that sort of thing.”

um, okay. how the hell do you follow up that kind of response?

President George W. Bush, yesterday, May 1, 2006:

A new Iraqi government represents a strategic opportunity for America — and the whole world, for that matter. . . . This is a — we believe this is a turning point for the Iraqi citizens, and it’s a new chapter in our partnership.

Vice President Dick Cheney, December 18, 2005:

It’s an Iraqi government elected by Iraqis under a constitution written by Iraqis. . . . I do believe that when we look back on this period of time, 2005 will have been the turning point . . .

President George W. Bush, December 12, 2005:

It’s a remarkable transformation for a country that has virtually no experience with democracy, and which is struggling to overcome the legacy of one of the worst tyrannies the world has known . . . . There’s still a lot of difficult work to be done in Iraq, but thanks to the courage of the Iraqi people, the year 2005 will be recorded as a turning point in the history of Iraq.

President Addresses Nation, Discusses Iraq, War on Terror, June 28, 2005:

When the history of this period is written. . . . the liberation of Iraq will be remembered as great turning points in the story of freedom.

Mrs. Bush’s Remarks at Conference of Women Leaders, March 8, 2005:

People in the Middle East and commentators around the world are beginning to wonder whether recent elections may mark a turning point as significant as the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Press Briefing by Scott McClellan, January 31, 2005:

The election is a victory for the Iraqi people. It’s a significant step forward for freedom and it is a defeat for the terrorists and their ideology. It marks a turning point in Iraq’s history and a great advance toward a brighter future for all Iraqis

President George W. Bush, January 29, 2005:

Tomorrow the world will witness a turning point in the history of Iraq, a milestone in the advance of freedom, and a crucial advance in the war on terror. The Iraqi people will make their way to polling centers across their nation.

President’s Remarks in Grand Rapids, Michigan, July 30, 2004:

Saddam Hussein sits in a prison cell. America and the world are safer. . . . When it comes to fighting the threats of our world and spreading peace, we’re turning the corner and we’re not turning back.

President Bush, June 18, 2004:

A turning point will come in less than two weeks. On June the 30th, full sovereignty will be transferred to the interim government.

Remarks by the President to Military Personnel, June 16, 2004:

A turning point will come two weeks from today. On June the 30th, governing authority will be transferred to a fully sovereign interim government, the Coalition Provisional Authority will cease to exist, an American embassy will open in Baghdad.

Remarks by the President on Operation Iraqi Freedom, March 19, 2004:

Today, as Iraqis join the free peoples of the world, we mark a turning point for the Middle East, and a crucial advance for human liberty.

President Bush Discusses Freedom in Iraq and Middle East, November 6, 2003:

We’ve reached another great turning point – and the resolve we show will shape the next stage of the world democratic movement.

National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, June 12, 2003:

The events of the last few months make clear that the Middle East is living through a time of great change. And despite the tragic events of the past few days, it is also a time of great hope. President Bush believes that the region is at a true turning point.

There’s a name for it when you are continually turning. It’s called “spinning.”

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Iraqis Begin Duty With Refusal, Washington Post, May 2, 2006:

The graduation of nearly 1,000 new Iraqi army soldiers in restive Anbar province took a disorderly turn Sunday when dozens of the men declared that they would refuse to serve outside their home areas, according to U.S. and Iraqi military authorities.

The graduation ceremony at Camp Habbaniyah, a base about 45 miles west of Baghdad, had been going well. The 978 soldiers, most of them Sunni Muslims, had just finished nearly five weeks of military training and were parading before a review stand to the sounds of martial music. They took an oath of service while U.S. and Iraqi officials delivered speeches hailing the event as an important step toward the formation of a national army.

Then some soldiers started tearing their clothes off to demonstrate their rage.

The protest was triggered by an announcement that the new soldiers, all residents of Anbar province — widely considered the heartland of Iraq’s Sunni Arab insurgent movement — would be required to serve outside their home towns and outside the province as well.

Heckuva turning point, Bushie.

Update: from yesterday’s press briefing —

Q Could we go back to Iraq? In the last three years, should — don’t the American people — shouldn’t they be somewhat skeptical when they hear a word like, turning point? Hasn’t — haven’t other things been portrayed as turning points

Followed by Scottie responding, “Well, let’s look at the facts. . .” and going on for three paragraphs, all while dutifully not-answering the question.