Quote:
Originally Posted by QueenAdrock
It's asking for voluntary information, that people are willing to give. It's not subversive tactics. It's just gleaning information from people who are willing to help him fight the smears. Their personal information will go into a database that he can later hit up for money. That's the way politics works.
As someone with a BA in European History and a Master's in Information Science, I can assure you this has no parallels to Nazi Germany or propaganda. I could give you a whole long diatribe explaining why comparing Obama's politely asking for voluntary information is completely different from the Gestapo, who did not have to answer to judicial review and were exempt from all German laws, but I have a feeling it would be an exercise in futility. I could see this being a concern if Obama was actually demanding information from the people and saying something like it's their "patriotic duty" to do give information. He's not. He's asking. You can refuse to give information, without having to worry about responding to the SS.
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Yesssssssssss.
As someone with a nearly complete Masters degree in History (Canadian History, but believe me I've paid my dues with global history courses
), I agree with QA entirely. There's nothing even remotely close to anything Hitler or the Nazi Party in this very innocent action. They aren't even asking for names, they're trying to help dispel the insane misinformation being produced by the same people who screech SOCIALISM and SECRET MUSLIM on a daily basis.
I tried very hard to swallow the whole discussion of Nazi tactics and understand this weird fear-mongering, but in the end I just threw up a little. I'm not suggesting that anyone here is entirely uneducated on the history of fascism, or even totalitarian regimes, but this kind of comparison is messed up and inconceivable. Even ignoring the complete misunderstanding of socialism, Marxism, fascism, Stalinism, and all the other political "isms", I can't wrap my hear around how people continue to compare leaders of today to someone like Adolf Hitler.
As someone who doesn't like Obama in the first place, you should have known better than to evoke the Nazis to demonstrate your point, Rob. I can understand your argument to the extent that the government could possibly be collecting data through seemingly innocent means. If it weren't for the very clear wording of the short statement in the original post (your post, by the way) I would be interested in the motivations of the government as well. However, as is, this needs to be taken at face value as a simple attempt to dispel wingnut allegations spread by spam mail.