Relativising the Holocaust has been one of the classic techniques of some of those engaged in Holocaust denial; they have sought to minimise Nazi atrocities by listing them alongside the British concentration camps of the Boer War, the terror bombing of German cities during World War II and, perhaps most effectively, the purges and Gulags of the Soviet Union under Stalin.

When, during the 1980s, the eminent German historian Ernst Nolte suggested that the Third Reich was a symbiotic product of Soviet terror and that the atrocities it perpetrated might be typical of certain modern States experiencing massive internal reconstruction and expansion, he unleashed an international furore.

WEAPON

Now it is used far more broadly as a convenient debating weapon, by (among others) those with a vested interest in diminishing the genuineness of COVID totalitarianism.

The prehistory of pushback against Hitler analogies in fact started with the Right, but the Left went on often to compare so-called Right-wing figures as the embodiment of Adolf Hitler.

The most popular recent targets have been George W Bush and Donald Trump. This gave rise to what became known as Godwin’s law.

Godwin’s law is an Internet adage asserting that as an online discussion grows longer (regardless of topic or scope), the probability of a comparison to Nazis or Adolf Hitler approaches.

I was once banned from Facebook for displaying a very funny meme featuring Mark Zuckerberg and Hitler.

Comparing the Australian quarantine camps to Nazi concentration camps can give rise to fevered retorts from those with an interest in “nothing to see here” defences of COVID fascism.

Recently I compared Australia’s Biosecurity Act 2015 with the Nazi Enabling Act of 1933 that was triggered by the Reichstag fire.

Here is what I said: “If the architecture of Australia’s COVID fascism and its parliamentary enablement sounds a little familiar, well, it should. Anyone remember the Nazis’ Enabling Act?

“The Enabling Act allowed the Reich government to issue laws without the consent of Germany’s parliament, laying the foundation for the complete Nazification of German society. The law was passed on March 23, 1933, and published the following day.

“Without the consent of parliament. So that’s how they did it. But whatever you do, don’t compare Australia’s COVID State to Nazi Germany if you wish to avoid the acrimony of the social media chatterers.

“And we even achieved our own version of tyranny without the help of a Reichstag Fire.”

The comparison here is entirely appropriate to make the point of the possible dangers of an apparently innocent looking law created ahead of its actual use in alleged “emergencies” and which bypassed parliamentary scrutiny.

In Australia’s case, it may or may not have been completely innocent in 2015. The perpetrators of the legislation were Peter Dutton, Barnaby Joyce and, yes, Tony Abbott. No Hitlers there.

But the legislation was actually prepared by (among others) health bureaucrats who during COVID, as we have seen across the world, leapt to the replication of the essentially fascist “Chinese approach” to managing the virus.

Cutting out the middle man (that is, we-the-people) during a crisis has long been the desire of at least some, possibly many, policy-makers and citizens with a collectivist bent.

INCONVENIENT

Liberal democracy can be mighty inconvenient for these people.

Let’s look at some of the COVID State’s acts of totalitarianism to see if the comparisons to the 1930s stack up.

Remember, it isn’t a competition between different strands of totalitarianism to see whose was worse.

We just wish to make the case that COVID containment responses by parliamentary democracies have, indeed, been classic forms of dictatorship.

Reducing opposition and reducing debate is a shared objective of different forms of totalitarianism. By-pass parliaments, for a start. Didn’t we see a lot of that during the Australian biosecurity “scare” under the guise of emergency orders?

Shut borders. Restrict people’s movement to five kilometres. Secure red zones with army helicopters. Heaps of stuff the dictators of yore never remotely contemplated for the broad citizenry.

What about killing people? Surely, we haven’t done this. Or have we?

Here we should mention the now widely accepted view that lockdowns, the prohibition of life-saving drugs like Invermectin, the use of vaccine mandates and assorted other COVID policy responses have caused tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths. Possibly many more than this.

History is bound one day to record just how many. The excess deaths in 2021-22 now routinely reported across multiple jurisdictions all but prove it.

The architecture of totalitarianism has long been the concern of many political theorists and historians interested in how Nazi Germany happened.

Hannah Arendt’s much cited masterpiece, The Origins of Totalitarianism, is probably best-in-breed. Worthy successors include the Dutch psychology scholar Mattias Demset.

Their interest as social scientists is better to understand how liberal societies (well, moderately liberal in the case of 1920s Germany) can sleep-walk into dictatorship.

Another point of comparison between the 1930s and the 2020s is in the shared popularity of dictators during perceived crises.

Just look at Hitler’s numbers – his popularity rated in the 90 per cent range at various stages of the late 1930s.

Exhibit Two, Dictator Dan south of the Murray. He is more than likely to obtain another Danslide come November 2022.

Exhibit Three. The execrable Mark McGowan, who all but wiped out his opposition in Western Australia.

Of course, the unspellable premier north of the Tweed also marched back to power on the back of fear-driven COVID containment.

TRADUCED

Craven punters seem to love being pushed around, having their rights and freedoms traduced. Especially in the case of an imagined enemy, whether it be an innocent, law abiding race of people like the Jews in 1930s Germany or a middling virus now. So long as those in charge keep us all safe.

Then there is the shared totalitarian silencing of dissent, by Big Tech and Big Media in particular these days and the Gestapo of old.

Silencing, censorship, ridiculing, isolating, gaslighting. All have been critical tools of the COVID class.

The control of information (including language) was core to Orwell’s depiction of totalitarianism, of course.

Finally, there is the use of fear and the creation of enemies of the State.

Here we cannot go past Laura Dodsworth’s 2021 mini-classic account of the United Kingdom’s experience of COVID, A State of Fear, what with the use of Nudge Units in Number 10 Downing Street and the rest.

Here is the excellent Neil Oliver on Laura’s work: “So dark and compelling, and yet woven throughout with the determination – the heartfelt need –  to get beyond these dreadful days. When governments sow fear they must reap a bitter crop. From the beginning of lockdown I have been worried to death about the certain and unavoidable consequences of making and keeping an entire population frightened.

“Already we see that too many people regard their fellow citizens – even family and friends – as the enemy, petri dishes swimming with contagion. As a population and a society we are atomised as never before. I can scarcely imagine how the damage done might be undone. Most of all I fear what all of this has done – and will continue to do – to compromise the futures of our children.

“All of these concerns and many more besides are given a desperately needed airing between the pages of this book. This is a timely piece of work, shot through with the voices of frightened people. Those voices must be heard and properly listened to.

AUTHORITY

“Altogether this is a fascinating consideration of how fear has been used again and again throughout history and in one civilisation after another, so that governments and others in authority might get their own way.”

We are speaking here of the very fabric of society being torn asunder. No minor, passing, everyday crisis of democracy.

One of the defining marks of totalitarianism is its capacity for getting right into our lives and forcing us to change everything we do.

Making enemies of our families and neighbours, another key strategy, is more than a little reminiscent of Orwell’s 1984 Hate Weeks and two-minute weekly hate sessions.

It is essentially a psy-op, like many of the strategies deployed in the COVID era.

The COVID fear campaign, of course, was prefigured by the absurdly concocted “war on terror” conducted by the aforementioned George W Bush, the COVID State lunatic Tony Blair and the NeoCons in the 2000s in response to 9/11 (as Paula Jardine) has noted.