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OpEdNews Op Eds    H4'ed 11/21/13

America's Eichmann

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Godwin's Law is an assertion, widely credited to Mike Godwin of the Electronic Freedom Foundation, basically holding that a discussion essentially ends when a Nazi or Hitler analogy is raised and signals that the party making such a comparison has lost the argument. It is widely cited, particularly in the blogosphere, whenever the inevitable comparisons are made between current U.S. repressive/invasive procedures and those employed by an earlier repressive regime that according to Godwin, must remain nameless when discussing despicable state tactics. 
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Godwin's Law, credited to Mike Godwin, has diminished the discussion of parallels between current U.S. policy and Nazi Germany  


 

Various players have different motives for promulgating Godwin's Law. There are the victims of Nazi oppression who seek to ensure a unique place in history for themselves, and in order to do so must see that any other villainous regime is perceived to be relegated to a level no greater than penultimate evil. Then there are the regimes themselves which have a vested interest in quelling any embarrassing or unwanted comparisons. Regardless of the motivation, there seems to be little doubt that absurdities like Godwin's Law do little to advance meaningful analysis and more likely stifle necessary and legitimate discourse.  

An honest examination of the prison-industrial complex in the U.S. demands a total defenestration of Godwin's Law and anything else interfering with the ability to compare the U.S. "justice" system with those of other similarly malevolent regimes. Those who seek to defend the status quo in the U.S. will reflexively cite the fact that Hitler, Stalin, Mao and others have killed more of their people, etc., but while true, this misses the real point and inherent maliciousness of the current situation in the U.S. 

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Adolph Hitler is uniquely evil and exempt from comparison according to Godwin's Law


 

Much of the damage done by the U.S. justice system is allowed to occur with little or no oversight as a result of the U.S.'s self-proclaimed role as the world's moral arbiter. Indeed, much in the way in which Richard Nixon claimed that "when the president does it, that means it is not illegal," it is now similarly asserted that if the U.S. does it, it must be permissible. Even the most egregious violations can be explained away by attributing their necessity to something as vague as "terrorism." Godwin's Law prevents the interjection of the historical fact that similar claims were made by another regime that relied upon comparable and similarly vague justifications. 

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Adolph Eichmann was executed for crimes arising out of overseeing a network of prisons for the Third Reich


And so in the spirit of breaking free from the artificial constraints of Godwin, it can be straightforwardly reported that America has its own equivalent of Adolph Eichmann in the person of Charles E. Samuels, Jr., director of the federal Bureau of Prisons. There are obvious parallels between the governmental tasks performed by Eichmann and Samuels. Like Eichmann, he is responsible for the management of prisoner logistics, heading a nationwide network of gulags where enemies of the regime are dispatched for an ever-expanding variety of infractions, both real and imagined.

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Charles Samuels currently serves as the head of America's vast network of federal gulags  


    

Samuels, installed by President Barack Obama, is the first person of color to hold the post. This fact was widely celebrated by a fawning press following his installation but given that minorities are the largest victims of the prison-industrial complex in the U.S., placing a black man in the position was recognized by more seasoned observers as a cynical ploy to sugar-coat the face of systematically repressive mass incarceration. 

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Despite promises of "hope and change," the Department of Justice and Bureau of Prisons have only grown more repressive under the Obama regime

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Barry Scott Sussman- Born and raised in New Jersey. Graduated from Rutgers University with a BA in Sociology. Graduated with a JD from the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law specializing in Federal Criminal Procedure and Federal Prosecutorial (more...)
 

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