By Arthur Weinreb
Thursday, May 3, 2007
Last weekend, Red Green Party leader Elizabeth May compared Stephen Harper and his Tory government's plan to combat climate change to Sir Neville Chamberlain's 1930s appeasement of Hitler and the Nazis. Reaction was swift and May was criticized for the use of Nazi-era atrocities to make her point about how the Canadian government is handling the environment and global warming. Using the defence of the gutless, Elizabeth May said she was just quoting someone else. The party leader said that during the weekend's green conference, author George Monblot referred to George W. Bush, Australia's John Howard and Stephen Harper as the axis of evil and added that they are "more culpable in the eyes of history than Neville Chamberlain's attempt to appease the Nazis."
May's comments are reminiscent of the campaign by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) that used the Holocaust to compare the killing of 10 million people by the Nazis to the killing of chickens. PETA is the organization whose president famously said, "A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy". What is truly sad is that many of these people actually believe the nonsense that the spout. If you honestly believe that the life of a chicken is the same as the life of a human being, then what Hitler did does pale in comparison to that being done by the Colonel and his boys and girls. There was no malicious intent on the part of these true believers to diminish the Holocaust.
And the same goes for Elizabeth May, assuming that she actually believes the alarmist rhetoric she utters about global warming by humans destroying the planet. After all, global warming will even kill blonde, blue-eyed Aryans. And it's not as if she compared Stephen Harper to Hitler. Comparisons of any political leader who is a tad to the right of Stphane Dion to Hitler are common place and trendy and made constantly by elitists on the left. George W. Bush, Stephen Harper and former Ontario Premier Mike Harris have been compared to Hitler so often that any serious reference to Hitler and the Nazis has lost much of its original meaning. But May never compared the prime minister to Adolf Hitler. She compared Harper to Chamberlain and how he appeased the Nazis in order to obtain peace in our time.
The criticism of what Elizabeth May said last weekend seems to suggest that it is now politically incorrect, not only to make Hitler-like comparisons to current leaders who act in a certain way or to liken anything bad to the Holocaust thereby diminishing its enormity, but to use any Nazi era comparisons. This means that in the view of many, references should never be made to Chamberlain and his famous (or infamous) appeasement of the Nazis.
This is going way too far. It's not as if the notion of appeasement is not relevant in today's world. The civilized world is facing a real threat from Islamic extremism and too many people are simply willing to appease the terrorists in the hopes that they will "like us" and stop the carnage. Appeasement didn't work in the 1930s and it won't work now. There are parallels to what happened then and what is happening now and nothing should be done to discourage comparisons to Neville Chamberlain no matter how silly May's statements about Stephen Harper were.
The criticism about May's Nazi era comments overshadowed the most repulsive part of her speech. Far more offensive than invoking the name of Chamberlain was her comment about how Evangelical Christians were "waiting for the end of time in glee". In a letter to the National Post, Ed Morgan, the national president of the Canadian Jewish Congress chastised May for demonstrating "that she considers herself and her religion [May is an Anglican} to be morally superior to another."
There is no doubt that much of the criticism that was directed at Elizabeth May was done in a attempt to embarrass Liberal leader Stphane Dion even though Dion distanced himself from her statements. Every misstep that May will make will be visited upon Dion who made a "deal" with the Green Party regarding the running of candidates in the next election.
Neville Chamberlain's actions preceding World War II provide a valuable lesson in how to deal with evil; a lesson that too many people are in need of. It shouldn't become politically incorrect to refer to his appeasement of the Nazis.
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