14 Reasons Why The "Enemy of my Enemy is my Friend" Thing is Bullshit

Over the last few years, criticism of Never Trumper's acts of bad faith, failures to deliver any substantive changes to the GOP and failure to transform tens of millions of dollars in credulous Liberal donations into electoral victories have been batted away by claptrap like this.  

The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Stalin/Roosevelt, for instance. https://t.co/PVoTlTx2ul

— Noble J (@iii_ns) February 13, 2021

It took an alliance with Stalin to take down the Nazis.

I am fine with temporary alliances on specific issues but one must be VERY careful because "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" often ends in huge blowback. (Like our alliance with Osama Bin Laden or Israel helping Hamas.)

— Spec9🇳🇴 (@SpecAlt) May 16, 2021

If Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill could ally themselves with Joseph Stalin to beat Hitler, Democrats can make an alliance with Project Lincoln Republicans to defeat Trump. Never has "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" been more true. pic.twitter.com/MvKnv487Wt

— Lois Murray (@ezrateach) July 20, 2020

The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
The Lincoln Project was a useful ally.
Sorry not sorry.

— Keith M. (@ksecus) March 9, 2021

So let's get into it.

1. I appreciate the Never Trumpers taking the part of Stalin in all of these analogies about "Well, to defeat the Nazi's, the U.S. and Great Britain were willing to team up with the USSR".  Thanks guys!


2. The proverb is "The enemy of my enemy is my friend", not "The enemy of my enemy is my Supervisor" so stop trying to order Democrats around.  We're the party that didn't lose it's fucking mind so stop bitching about Democrats.  Stop demanding that Joe Biden smack around the party's most loyal and active members to balm you're unreconstructed, Liberal-hating hearts.  Stop justifying your Liberal-bashing as necessary in the pursuit of a handful of non-existent, jelly-spined Centrists.  Stop whining that Dems are not doing things your way. Remember, your party did do things your way for decades which is how you lost your fucking party in the first place, so shut up. 


3. The Russians didn't get to run the United States army.  Stalin didn't get to shove Eisenhower out of the way and decide where, when and how the D-Day invasion would be conducted, and the citizens of the United States weren't subject to constant, public bitching by Stalin that we were doing everything wrong.


4. WWII was a shooting war between nations.  What's happening in the United States is a political struggle between two parties within a single country.


5. The allies' plan wasn't to pick off Hitler and go back home and leave Germany intact.  To win the war, the entire nation of Germany had to be conquered, its army and its war-supporting industries destroyed, its leaders tried and executed, its territory occupied and the Nazi party outlawed.  I'm pretty well up on Never Trump talk-talk, but I haven't heard any such plans from them regarding the future of the GOP. 


6. Historically, World War II began on September 1, 1939 when England and France declared war on Germany in response to the German invasion of Poland.  But this was not when Russia entered the war.  In fact, according to the terms of their non-aggression pact, far from objecting to the invasion of Poland, Russia divvied up Poland with Germany once the German invasion was complete.


7. In fact, Stalin didn't give a shit what Hitler was doing or why as long Germany agreed to abide by their pact and leave the USSR alone.  It wasn't until Germany swept into Russia in June of 1941 and got within 200 miles of Moscow that Russia became an "ally".  And the United States wasn't involved at all until December of 1941 when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.


8. So with history, timeline and motives out of the way, let's talk about wartime assets.  What the Russians brought to the fight was manpower.  Although the Nazis mounted a huge invasion force and got within 200 miles of Moscow, at the time of the invasion the USSR had over 5 million men at arms, and 14 million in reserve and in training.  (By way of comparison, in 1939, the U.S. army's strength ranged between 174,000 and 200,000 soldiers which was smaller than Portugal's military.) And even though they were scattered and poorly armed, the massive Soviet military was able to absorb staggering numbers of casualties and keep coming until the German army was forced to retreat.  So remind me again, what critical, war-making assets are Never Trumpers bringing to our  fight?  Money?  Manpower?  Elite combat troops?  Scientists cooking up advanced weapons?  Decryption expertise?  State secrets?


9. So let's dispense with the idea that Never Trumpers are Stalin's Russia in this analogy.  Never Trumpers were not an autonomous group who were off doing their own horrible shit in their own territory when they were suddenly invaded by an outside force.  They were dog-loyal Republicans until the party base rose up and drove them out.  They don't have an army.  They don't have great wealth.  They don't have any special skills.  The only possible Russia-based analogy that works in this context is the one I wrote about four years ago here and that got me blocked by a number of Never Trumpers.  That Never Trumpers behave exactly like exiled Russian aristocracy after the 1917 October Revolution.  
   • Aristocrats who had been run out of their out of their country by the serfs they had exploited.
   • Aristocrats who suddenly found themselves financially dependent on the largess of people they detested.
   • Aristocrats who, with that special, asshole-arrogance that comes with an inbred sense of entitlement,  become indignant when their hosts don't snap to and do as they're told.
   • Aristocrats who still believe in their God-given right to command a national spotlight and who go right on airily insisting they know what the serfs really want.


10. And let's face it  Never Trumpers are also not analogous to the Germans who fled their own country when they saw the direction the Nazi party was taking either.  Most of those who fled Germany during the rise of the Nazi party were from groups who had been explicitly targeted by the Nazis.  Scapegoats around whom their whole ideology of racism and hate were built.  


11. If anything, in this analogy Never Trumpers would be loyal National Socialists.  Party leaders and influencers who helped bring their party to power.  Who created and spread their propaganda.  Who believed in the party's vision and goals -- and were either unconcerned with or supportive of the despicable means the party was using to achieve those goals -- but bugged out for safer spaces during the GOP's own version of the Night of the Long Knives when dissenters were purged.  Loyal National Socialists who now swear:
    


12. Over the years there were a number of failed attempts to assassinate Hitler, but other than the failed July 20 plot, none of them had been planned much beyond, "Kill Hitler".  And none of them contemplated eliminating the Nazi party as an institution.  Instead, very much like certain recently-former Republicans, the plotters hoped to blame everything on an "...unscrupulous clique of party leaders":  
    

    An unscrupulous clique of party leaders alien to the front has attempted, under the exploitation of this situation, to betray the hard-struggling front and to seize power for their own selfish purposes.



13. Of the small number of Germans who did emigrate to America before the Nazis consolidated power, probably the most famous were the scientists --

    The scientific exodus from Nazi Germany
    
    Two months after Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor, the German government issued the Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums—the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service. With some exceptions, none of which lasted for long, the 7 April 1933 law ordered that those in government positions who had at least one Jewish grandparent or were political opponents of the Nazi Party be immediately dismissed. Thousands of people lost their jobs as teachers, judges, police officers—and academics at the country’s top universities.
    
    Over the next several years, hundreds of German scientists and other intellectuals would flee to the UK, the US, and dozens of other countries to protect their livelihoods and their lives. The Nazi regime pushed out leading researchers such as Albert Einstein, Hans Krebs, and even national hero Fritz Haber, who had helped develop chemical weapons during World War I. The extraordinary intellectual exodus would have tremendous implications for not only Germany but also the countries that took in the refugees...

    and the artists --

From the time Adolf Hitler became Germany’s chancellor in 1933 to the opening salvos of World War II in 1939, about 800 actors, directors, writers, composers and producers fled Europe for the safety of America. The Third Reich’s loss was Hollywood’s gain as the infusion of artistic talent changed moviemaking for decades to come....

Among the talent were directors Billy Wilder (“Sunset Boulevard,” “Some Like It Hot”), Fritz Lang (“Fury,” “The Big Heat”), Henry Koster (“Harvey”), Fred Zinnemann (“High Noon,” “From Here to Eternity”) and Robert Siodmak (“The Killers”); composers Frederick Hollander, Franz Waxman and Erich Wolfgang Korngold; cinematographer Rudolph Mate; and actors such as Hedy Lamarr and Peter Lorre. And there were others who left Germany before Hitler took power, including director Ernst Lubitsch and actress Marlene Dietrich.

-- and among these groups I can find no examples anywhere of them trying to defend the misunderstood virtues of "true" Nazism.  Or setting up their own propaganda networks to badger Roosevelt and Eisenhower into conducting the war on their terms.  Or using their influence to start up their own "Dritter Weg" movements, arguing for a Sensible Centrist position between the Extremes on Both Sides.  

And finally, I can find not one examples anywhere of anyone seriously trying to blame Churchill for the rise of Hitler because Churchill spent years warning about the rise of Hitler.

And finally, finally, if you think spilling all these words over this stupid analogy is overkill, well so do I.  And I will be happy to pack it up and send it down to cold storage once goofs on the internet stop using it.  

Burn the Lifeboats