I think to compare Germany to the Third Reich is utterly ludicrous.

History, when they do it, is ancient history, and they sensationalize even that. Contemporary history is virtually ignored on television.

We have populations now in the West with a very short memory span. One reason for this short memory span is that television over the last fifteen years has seen a big decline in the coverage of the rest of the world.

Basically, we are witnessing the twilight of democracy.

Proximity to power has an unsurprising ability to mutate a politician's spinal cord into bright yellow jelly.

Economics and politics are so intertwined and interlinked that politics now, mainstream politics, extreme center politics, are little else but a version of concentrated economics. And this means that any alternative - alternative capitalism, left Keynesianism, intervention by the state to help the poor, rolling back the privatizations - becomes a huge issue. The entire weight of the extreme center and its media is turned against it, which in reality now is beginning to harm democracy.

The implication strongly is that Osama bin Laden is a Hitler, even though he has no state power at all. It's just grotesque if you seriously think about it.