The He's-a-Hitler Awards. posted by Richard Seymour

First, the ball-breakingly obvious: the method of advertising consists mainly in mindless repetition and metonymic association between unrelated items or themes. So, there is an intense advertising campaign on right at this moment to persuade the American public that it's 1939 all over again.

The latest buzz word is fascism. Fascism, fascism, fascism. Concurrently, appeasement is doing the rounds. As Jim Lobe writes, this theme is being pushed forcefully by the neoconservative press, but it is worth bearing in mind that John Reid floated this latest round of the He's-A-Hitler season with his reference to "individual fascists" who were now more menacing than the state. And of course, the fake stories about Iran's intention to make non-Muslims and specifically Jews wear badges was an earlier milestone in this prolonged campaign.

Let's not waste time: this isn't new, and it isn't designed to impress. It isn't analysis and no one is even pretending that it is. It's the same, soggy old pigshit they have been shoving down our throats ever since Anthony Eden called Nasser a fascist. They don't expect the intelligentsia to swallow it (but so much the better if some do). They expect the intelligentsia to snigger and go "huhuhuhuh, Bush is stoopid, yeah yeah, huhuhuhuh, he's so stoopid!" While commentators are busily giggling and coughing up phlegm, the warrior elite expect that the casual viewers will slowly come to make these associations by themselves, as if voluntarily, forgetting where they were first forged and how. Already, there must be quite a substantial number of people who have heard the phrase 'Islamofascism' and used it without ever having given it a moment's thought or scrutiny. That's how advertising works. I'm ashamed to admit it, but I will: I once found myself describing Kirstie Alley as a good actress. When pressed for the reasoning behind this absurdity, I actually realised (but didn't admit) that it was all because I read some puff about her in a magazine article. That was all a long time ago, mind you. The point is, we're all suckers and we're the biggest suckers of all if we fall for that "Bush is stoopid" thing or waste time actually arguing with the advertising campaign. I mean, would you actually sit there and try and debate a soft drink commercial? "So, you're implying your drink will get me laid? Let's test your premisses..." Or would you sit there and go "huhuhuhuhuh, this is dumb, u-huhuhuhuhuhuh!"?

The only thing to do is note it, point at it, and look for what's behind it. It happens, as usual, to be crashingly obvious. Oh, they want your money, they want your vote, they want you to shut up when they bomb Iran, they want you to stop criticising the President, they want you to commit to supporting the troops in Iraq, they want the army to stop seeing its recruitment fall through the floor, they want you to be worried about anything other than energy prices, the collapse in the housing market and the looming recession. The usual. The main thing, I suppose, is that Israel didn't succeed in taking on Iran through its indirect route, so they must be thinking of direct aggression. Hence: He's a Hitler, Islamofascism is coming, they hate our freedom, and what if these madmen had nukes.