Invoking Hitler retroactively legitimizes Western wars by manufacturing historical justifications

Evidence

As Tariq Ali points out, “Ever since the Second World War the name of Hitler and his philosophy has been recklessly evoked to drum up support for Western wars. It is an interesting reflection on the recent history of the West that it has to reach over half a century back before it can conjure up a justifiable war and an enemy rooted in popular memory… Saddam Hussein only became Hitler when he misread U.S. signals” (The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihad, and Modernity [London: Verso, 2002], 310). — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 755

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s hinge between scholarship and story — the Nazi analogy is itself a narrative device that frames the enemy, directly relevant to how fiction constructs the Muslim threat.