Führer Furor
Everyone You Don't Like Isn't Hitler
In 1967, the great comic satirist, Mel Brooks, released his first feature film, The Producers. Starring the legendary Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder, it’s the story of two losers who hatch a scheme to produce a guaranteed Broadway flop and pocket their investors’ money. They choose a play written by a psychotic Nazi as a love letter to Hitler, hire a flamboyant musical theatre queen to direct, and all seems to be going according to plan when the slack-jawed opening night audience witnesses the outrageous, appalling Springtime for Hitler” number. As showgirls high kick in Nazi jackboots, offended audience members begin to get up and leave. Heading up the aisle, one lady exclaims, “Talk about bad taste!” Of course, minutes later, the unintentionally campy performances of “Hitler” and his merry band of Nazis have the remaining audience rolling with laughter. This spells doom for Bialystock and Bloom, the producers, who, much to their dismay, now have a hit on their hands.
Mel Brooks served up his sendup of Der Führer to an audience that had lived, as he had, through the Second World War. Brooks, a New York Jew, served in the Army and was stationed in Germany. He saw the horrors of the war first hand. Hitler and his powers of darkness were defeated, and, to Brooks and his delighted audience, lampooning them was a way of dancing on their graves. The Producers is now a modern classic, and, adapted by Brooks for the stage, the most Tony Award-winning Broadway musical in history as well as a musical film. If you haven’t seen the original, though, you’re missing out on something thoroughly hilarious and, by today’s uptight standards, utterly politically incorrect. That’s why I adore it so much.
Mel Brooks was not the first to skewer ol’ Adolf. In 1942, Ernst Lubitsch’s subversive comedy, To Be or Not To Be, starred Jack Benny and Carole Lombard as husband and wife stage stars who, unwittingly, find themselves undercover amongst the Nazis. Before Lubitsch, before we were in the war, Charlie Chaplin stunned audiences with his first sound film. The beloved “Little Tramp” took on a dual role: the hapless Jewish barber and the fascistic Adenoid Hynkel, The Great Dictator. It is, of course, a masterpiece, and was incredibly popular with the movie going audiences of 1940, who were bracing themselves for the storm to come. Chaplin, Lubitsch and Brooks, each in his individual way, used comedy as a weapon; a talisman against evil. By reducing Adolf Hitler to a bumbling, idiotic clown, his lingering shadow as the symbol of ultimate evil is banished. The light can get in.
Fast forward to 2015. Olney Theatre in Maryland is producing The Producers, and find themselves embroiled in a controversy. A dreary little activist named Jeffrey Imm and his organization are staging nightly protests outside the theatre. What’s the beef? Imm, and his humorless cohort from Responsible for Equality and Liberty, object to Brooks’s send-up of Hitler, which they feel makes light of the atrocities of the Holocaust. Imm, quoted in the Washingtonian, claims to understand Mel Brooks’s satiric intent, but he clearly didn’t get the joke. He insists that “some things we have to recognize as absolute evil. When 6 million people are murdered, we don’t view it with knee-slapping, we view it with reverence.” Imm must have overlooked Brooks’s own lived experience of that absolute evil, and why he chose to lampoon it in his musical. Another great comedian, Carol Burnett, famously said, “Comedy is tragedy plus time.” It’s fascinating to me how public tastes can change, especially around that which we are encouraged to view as somehow sacred; off limits. But, do not take the name of Hitler in vain…? Make it make sense.
Ever hear of Godwin’s Law? It’s an internet adage coined by attorney and author Mike Godwin, back in the ‘90s. The assertion is that “as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches.” Such comparisons, usually hyperbolic, inaccurate and inappropriate, Mr. Godwin believes trivialize the Holocaust. About his Law he says, “Its purpose has always been rhetorical and pedagogical: I wanted folks who glibly compared someone else to Hitler to think a bit harder about the Holocaust.” Now, this I agree with.
Mr. Imm’s protest against making comic hay of Hitler centered on issues of taste and propriety; Mr. Godwin is concerned with proportional response. People nowadays are far too quick to fling about specious insinuations of Nazism, fascism, and other invocations of ultimate evil against their opponents. It’s lazy, it’s nasty. Unfortunately, it’s also easy peasy, in today’s cesspit of social media and the internet, to slap the Hitler label on someone—or indeed, millions of someones—thus creating a diversion or distraction, in order to shut down real discourse and assemble a mob. Mobs don’t care much for facts—or feelings, for that matter—except their own, of course. When I see a pro-Hamas protester waving a sign that equates Zionists (see: Jews) with Nazis, and Israel with The Third Reich, I can see both Mr. Imm’s and Mr. Godwin’s points. Disgusting bad taste, combined with an insanely specious comparison. Only an ignoramus with all the sensitivity of a steaming turd would promote such an idea.
A very close friend of mine, whom I know to be a rational, grounded person, is convinced that Donald Trump intends to be the next Hitler. If elected, once in power he will declare himself dictator, and proceed to launch World War III.
“Have you seen the Trump agenda?” What agenda? “Project 2025!” No, I haven’t read it, have you? “It’s right out of Mein Kampf!” Wow. But have you read it? I mean…it’s 900 pages. I guarantee you, Trump hasn’t read it.
Then the subject of the assassination attempt comes up. All I’ve said about it was that I found it remarkable, seconds after being shot, that Trump had the wherewithal to raise that fist and yell, “Fight!”
My friend said, “Yeah, and then did you see him give the Nazi salute?” When? “When?? It’s on video—as they lead him off the stage, his arm goes up!” Okay…I’ve watched the video over and over. I just don’t see any Sieg Heil there. I mean, just….no. I am no fan of Trump, but come on. Anyone could isolate a shot of anyone—Kamala Harris, arm outstretched, waving at the crowd at the DNC, for example—and call it a Nazi salute. Come to think of it, anyone could snap a photo of anybody in New York hailing a cab and turn them into The Hun.
Look: we should never, ever trivialize The Holocaust. Those who lost their lives, their families; the heroes who fought and died to defeat Hitler and his destructive allies—these deserve our eternal respect, and our commitment to them that such atrocities will never again darken the earth. But I still think that the psychotic monsters who perpetrated those atrocities deserve not only our condemnation—but our ridicule. When my late lamented friend and idol Gary Beach minced his way to the footlights on Broadway, dressed as a cartoon Adolf Hitler, and launched into the hilarious “Heil Myself” number, it was a victory for the Jews, the gays, the musical theatre queens, and every other decent human being on the planet. I know she’s become her own kind of Hitler in some activists’ fevered imaginations, but I love JK Rowling and the Harry Potter books. When Mel Brooks transformed Hitler into a clown, he conquered a boggart. “Springtime for Hitler” was Mel’s version of the incantation “Riddikulus!”
Poking fun at our deepest fears can be purgative. We need to laugh at the things that scare us more than anything else, in my opinion. It’s essential to survival. But demonizing everyone and every idea we fear, branding anyone we disagree with a Hitler, blinds us to the real evils that might be exposed if we took the time to interrogate more deeply into that which we oppose. If we actually expected more of ourselves intellectually, morally, we might not only deepen our commitment and effectiveness on our own side, but by learning as much as possible about the other side, create even the tiniest possibility of eventual agreement—or at least cooperation.
I’ve made my own comparisons here at The Cornfield, between our times and the rise of fascism in Europe in the 1930s, especially the radicalization of youth on college campuses; see: my piece about the film The Mortal Storm, and my musings on the similarities between the college campus encampments and the indoctrination of Hitler youth. I believe very much in another adage: those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it. We should heed the warning signs all around us, and make intelligent comparisons with the past so as to stave off a repetition of what the Nazis and others wreaked upon humankind. I will let Mr. Godwin have the last word about his Law:
I urge people to develop enough perspective to do it thoughtfully. If you think the comparison is valid, and you've given it some thought, do it. All I ask you to do is think about the human beings capable of acting very badly. We have to keep the magnitude of those events in mind, and not be glib. Our society needs to be more humane, more civilized and to grow up. ~Mike Godwin
