OK. Hitler and all his lieutenants, along with all the martyrs of the civil rights movement, just sat bolt upright in their graves and shrieked at the idea of a black man as a Nazi. I think old Ed may be having some very special visitors in his dreams.

Team Obama has outdone themselves on symbolism with this choice. They’ve managed to make their hosts uncomfortable for a second time with their choice of rallying point, and perhaps more so this time. If one wanted to talk peace, what worse location could one choose than Adolf Hitler’s favorite monument to militaristic domination? One has to wonder how France, Denmark, and Austria will feel about Obama rallying German masses under the Siegessäule. Deja vu?

Of course Germans were completely comfortable with the idea that world unity can be accomplished by Bush giving a German female head of state a massage during an international conference. The symbolism inherent in THAT sort of disrespectful gesture speaks volumes. Did Ed ever stop to consider that maybe Obama’s lackeys were deliberately misinformed because some Germans are STILL po’d with the current President, and are skeptical about the possibility of change in the near future from ANY American political party?

Three things:

I think of the Germans really thought of it that way, they’d have torn the thing down.

We’re about 2.5 generations away from most sane people automatically thinking “German = Nazi.”

Lots of projection from a movement anchored by the asshole who equated SS officers with Anne Frank.

The Siegessäule is not exactly world famous. I doubt one Dane in a hundred could tell you what it commemorated. Even if they did know, it doesn’t follow in the slightest that a speech there by an American politician would be read as a celebration of German militarism, anymore than the French public would suspect him of hostility if he spoke at Trafalgar Square. Western Europe isn’t the Balkans. History and the Urban environment in large European cities will always throw up this symbolism-by-numbers because large public spaces where crowds can gather tend to be decorated by monuments, often in reference to military struggle.

Most Europeans will hope a good crowd for Obama indicates to the American public that the continent is desperate for American leadership it doesn’t feel obliged to despise. The reason the Brandenburger Tor was blocked is because a speech there would be too resonant with an American audience and would show a degree of impolitic favouritism. It doesn’t mean Merkel wants a McCain victory, though.

There must have been black Nazis — how else could Hogan use Kinch outside the camp?

Can you Digg it?

Yeah, fuck those fucking Germans, especially since they got it right and refused to join the Coalition of the Violent and Profoundly Retarded. And fuck Obama, too, by golly.

It was never meant as a symbol of peaceful, multicultural co-existence.

So, now these guys want peaceful, multicultural co-existence?