Nazi images make politicians act like ... Nazis

Josey1

Nazi images make politicians act like ... Nazis By BLAIR LEE Gus Alzona is a political gadfly. He's run for the State Senate, House of Delegates and school board - without success. He's a member of the Montgomery County GOP Central Committee, an officer of the county's Philippine-American Association - and he's serving his second term on the county's Committee on Hate/Violence. But most of all, Gus Alzona is a gun nut. For instance, he belongs to the Tyranny Response Team, a group of gun-rights activists who, dressed in tricornered hats, demonstrate at gun-control bill hearings. It was at such a hearing in Annapolis that Alzona handed out his flier showing three Montgomery County legislators - all gun-control advocates - dressed as Nazis with the message, "Montgomery County Democrats have a final solution for all of Maryland's gun owners." In the background stands a concentration camp victim. In terms of political stupidity, Alzona hit the trifecta - on behalf of an unpopular cause he offended a powerful voting bloc during an election year. Overnight, Alzona became a human pinata - every politician pandering to the Jewish vote took a whack at him. "A hate-filled message," said Douglas Duncan; "anti-Semitic and disrespectful," added Mark Shriver; "hateful and inappropriate," remarked Brian Frosh; "outrageously unacceptable," commented Howard Denis; and so on. Nor were Jewish groups amused. "He took the biggest evil mankind has developed and used it in a carefree manner," said Ron Halber of the Jewish Community Council of Greater Washington; "using Nazi imagery is inappropriate in a political campaign," said David Bernstein of the American Jewish Committee; and so on. As punishment, Duncan is kicking Alzona off the Hate/Violence Committee, the county's Republicans want him off the Central Committee and the media is treating him like Osama bin Laden. But before we hang Alzona from the nearest lamppost, let's take a look at the magnitude of his crime - or hate crime, as the politicians call it. Is the flier hateful? Clearly not. Alzona's heavy-handed attempt at parody sends a political message about gun control, not Nazism. He's advocating gun ownership, not the Holocaust. He picked Nazi imagery to emphasize his view that, to him, gun control is similar to fascism. It's impossible to interpret his message as pro-fascist when it's so clearly anti-fascist (and anti-gun control). Insensitive? Yes. A hate message? No. OK, but isn't he guilty of ``trivializing the Holocaust," and isn't using ``mankind's biggest evil" as political imagery off limits? Sorry, folks, we live in America, where almost everything - even the Holocaust - is trivialized and almost nothing is off limits. We call this freedom of thought, speech and expression. If you're offended, turn the page or change the channel; but we don't believe in shutting people up. Besides, where are the Trivialization Police going to begin? With the Broadway hit "The Producers," the hilarious spoof on Nazism complete with its show tune, "Springtime for Hitler"? How trivial can you get? Or the Holocaust exhibit showing at New York's Jewish Art Museum, featuring controversial works by Jewish artists, including an artist holding a Diet Pepsi surrounded by skeletal Holocaust victims? Imagine the outcry if poor Alzona put that picture on his flier? Is it OK for art, but not for politics? Nazi imagery has become part of the American lexicon, whether it's Jerry Seinfeld's "soup Nazi" character or liberals calling Judge Charles W. Pickering's supporters "boondocks Gestapo," as recently occurred. Nor is there any hierarchy of historic atrocities so off limits that no one may invoke their image. Who says the Holocaust is "the biggest evil mankind has developed"? Victims of American slavery might disagree. And how about the genocide against America's Indians? Or what the Japanese did in China? Or what the English did to the Irish? Or what Stalin did to his own people? Will Duncan and the pandering politicians please tell us which of these atrocities are off limits and which are not? Hate, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. And because people disagree, we should resist efforts seeking to decide for us what's hateful - or, for that matter, what's beautiful. For instance, retired NBA star Charles Barkley recently lashed out at the Masters Golf Championship for lengthening the Augusta golf course. Barkley is convinced that making the fairways longer is a "racist attack" on Tiger Woods. Forget that Woods hits the ball longer than anyone else and forget that Woods doesn't agree with Barkley. In Barkley's eyes, the Masters Tournament is committing a hate crime. People don't view events or messages identically. I've heard reactions to Alzona's Nazi cartoon ranging from outrage to amusement to indifference. Let's leave it at that. What we don't need are politicians dictating for us the proper "group-think" reaction to what we see and hear. Nor do we need them to tell us which images are "off limits" for parody or not. During the Dark Ages, when kings and churches ruled the land, someone like Alzona who offended the crown or the Pope would have been executed. Likewise, gadfly Alzona wouldn't have lasted 10 minutes in Hitler's Germany. But in America, Gus Alzona can express himself freely, even if it makes some politicians act like Nazis.

---

Blair Lee, Montgomery County's former lobbyist to Annapolis, is host of Montgomery Community Television's ``21 This Week" and does commentary for WAMU-FM 88.5. His column appears Wednesdays in The Journal. http://www.jrnl.com/cfdocs/new/mc/story.cfm?caldate=03272002&paper=mc&section=fp&snumber=26