Here's a clever  topic for a doctoral dissertation or at least an academic article: "The Recurrent Doctrinal Hitlerization and Rhetorical Nazification of Everybody the American Empire Hates."  

It's quite recurrently evident and absurdly predictable in post-WWII U.S. propaganda.  Get on Uncle Sam's wrong side by following an independent path and perhaps even advocating social justice (or whatever else might piss off the empire) within and/or between states and sooner or later one or two or more of his chieftians and propagandists will liken you to Adolph Hitler and your movement or party (or whatever) to the Nazis.  The Soviet Union in the Cold War period was commonly analogized to Nazi Germany by the architects of U.S. policy and opinion, no matter the 25 million lives Russia lost in defeating the Third Reich.  Stalin (who was bad enough just as Stalin) was Hitler. So was Mao Tse Tung (bad enough as Mao), head of a supposedly new Nazi regime in avoweldy Communist China. The North Koreans were and are Nazis, we are supposed to believe.  Same for a Hitler-ized Ho Chi Mihn and the great Vietnamese freedom and independence struggle of the 1950s and 60s.  Fidel and Che and Allende were little Latin Hitlers as far as past and current State Departments and White Houses were and are concerned. 

 Other officially U.S-designated mini-Hitlers and Nazis in my lifetime at least include Ayatollah Khomeni, Quadaffi (sp), the arch sinister American product Manuel Noriega, Daniel Ortega, and of course Saddam Hussein, head of the most immediately targeted state in Bush II's famous "Axis of Evil" (a slightly veiled anaology  to the triple fascist alliance of Germany, Japan, and Italy).  If Iran's current holocuast-denying president (who is certainly a despicable man) hasn't yet been officially anologized to AH, that's just an oversight and a matter of time.   

Now "we" (Americans) have "our" (the empire's)  frankly proto-fascist Defense Secretary likening terrible Hugo Chavez, who dares (a) to engage his nation's poor in the political procees; (b) to repudiate U.S.-imposed corporate-economic terrorism (neoliberalism) on Latin American; (c) to work with other regional and world states and leaders (e.g. Fidel, Evo Morales, and othersa) in advancing global equity and independence from Yankee-imperial domination (in both its economic-neoliberal and its related military/territorial-neoconservative guises), to, well, of couse, I mean, who else but....yes, you guessed it...what else ...to  Hitler.  

Here (below) is a recent report containing the new official Hitler-Chavez analogy from CBS News. 

Recalling Henry Kissinger's comment that he couldn't help it if the Chilean people were so irresponsible as to democratically elect a Marxist (Allende, who was murdered in a U.S.-supported, Third World-fascist coup on 9/11/1973), please notice Rumsfeld's description of populist and indigenous Bolivian president Evo Morales' recent popular election and (by implication) the emergence of  "populist leadership appealing to [imagine! P.S.]  masses of people" in Latin America as "worrisome."   

Notice also how useful it is for men of American empire to notice that Hitler was once "democratically elected."  That's a useful thing for people like Rumsfeld to harp on when their project is all about the subversion of democracy for reasons that put them much closer to the core premises of German fascism than those who dare to resist U.S. dominance.  

Some things never change. 

Here now is the aforementioned report:

February 3, 2006

AP) Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld likened Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to Adolf Hitler, reflecting continuing tension in relations between the United States and the Latin American government.

Rumsfeld, asked during a National Press Club appearance Thursday about indications of a deteriorating general relationship between Washington and parts of Latin America, said he believes such a characterization "misses the mark.

"We saw dictatorships there. And then we saw most of those countries, with the exception of Cuba, for the most part move towards democracies," he said. "We also saw corruption in that part of the world. And corruption is something that is corrosive of democracy."

The secretary acknowledged that "we've seen some populist leadership appealing to masses of people in those countries. And elections like Evo Morales in Bolivia take place that clearly are worrisome."

"I mean, we've got Chavez in Venezuela with a lot of oil money," Rumsfeld added. "He's a person who was elected legally — just as Adolf Hitler was elected legally — and then consolidated power and now is, of course, working closely with Fidel Castro and Mr. Morales and others."

There have been increasing signs of hostility between Washington and Caracas. On Monday Chavez said Venezuela's intelligence agencies have "infiltrated" a group of military officials from the U.S. Embassy who were allegedly involved in espionage.

Venezuelan authorities, including the vice president, have accused officials at the U.S. Embassy of involvement in a spying case in which Venezuelan naval officers allegedly passed sensitive information to the Pentagon.

It was not the first such charge by Chavez.

He has accused President Bush of backing efforts to overthrow his leftist government, and specifically has charged that the United States supported a short-lived coup in 2002, fomented a devastating strike in 2004 and expelled some American missionaries from Venezuela for alleged links to the CIA.

Washington has repeatedly rejected the allegations.

Responding to Venezuela's expulsion of a U.S. naval officer from Caracas, the State Department on Friday declared a senior Venezuelan diplomat persona non grata and gave her 72 hours to leave the country.

Spokesman Sean McCormack said Jeny Figueredo Frias, the embassy chief of staff, has been ordered to leave.

On Thursday, Chavez had said that Venezuela was expelling naval attaché John Correa for allegedly passing secret information from Venezuelan military officers to the Pentagon.

McCormack said the U.S. action was a direct response to Correa's expulsion.

"They initiated this and we were forced to respond," he said.