The Media's Irony Impairment and the Trump Assassination Attempt

The left-leaning media in the Western world has long used Hitler as the model for a fascist dictator, however, in recent years we've seen Donald Trump repeatedly compared to Adolf Hitler as a means to drive voters away from Trump's agenda.  In this posting, we'll look at one example and how the owner of the media company that published the opinion piece is obviously irony impaired.

  

On December 20, 2023, this missive appeared in the Washington Post:

 

The author of the opinion piece is Mike Godwin, an American attorney and author and formulator of Godwin's law aka Godwin's rule of Hitler analogies which is expressed as follows:

 

"As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Hitler approaches 1." (i.e. a 100 percent certainty)."

  

Godwin's law implies that the level of discourse regarding a subject has devolved to the degree that further discussion is absolutely pointless with the person who mentions Hitler being the loser in any argument.

  

Despite his creation of Godwin's law, he makes the following remarks in his Washington Post opinion piece:

 

"But when people draw parallels between Donald Trump’s 2024 candidacy and Hitler’s progression from fringe figure to Great Dictator, we aren’t joking. Those of us who hope to preserve our democratic institutions need to underscore the resemblance before we enter the twilight of American democracy.

 

And that’s why Godwin’s Law isn’t violated — or confirmed — by the Biden reelection campaign’s criticism of Trump’s increasingly unsubtle messaging. We had the luxury of deriving humor from Hitler and Nazi comparisons when doing so was almost always hyperbole. It’s not a luxury we can afford anymore."

 

He also notes that not only is Trump's authoritarian bent an issue, so is his use of certain dog-whistle words like "vermin" which Trump has used to describe those who oppose him and that the current influx of undocumented immigrants which he claims are "poisoning the blood of our country" which Godwin claims parallels Hitler's rhetoric about the "untermenschen" which included Jews, gays and gypsies not to mention the Slavic people as a whole.

 

His opinion piece closes with this:

 

"Will Trump succeed in being crowned “dictator for a day”? I hope not. But I choose to take Trump’s increasingly heedless transgressiveness — and, yes, I really do think he knows what he’s doing — as a positive development in one sense: More and more of us can see in his cynical rhetoric precisely the kind of dictator he aims to be."

 

So basically, Mike Godwin has fallen into a trap of his own making, hoisting himself on his own petard.

 

Now, you may say that the Washington Post merely published Mr. Godwin's opinion piece in the interest of maintaining political balance and that the intent was not that the piece was to be a dog whistle for the left/Democrats.  I would suggest that you may want to rethink that idea this quote from this Washington Post article in 2013 which was published when Jeff Bezos took over the WaPo:

 

 

Given his leaning to the left of the political spectrum, I would propose that it is highly unlikely that the Washington Post would have published Mr. Godwin's opinion piece comparing Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler if it did not pass Jeff Bezos' approval.

  

Now, let's close with this tweet that Jeff Bezos posted about "Hitler" after there was an attempt on Donald Trump's life on July 13, 2024:

 

So, apparently it's okay for the rulers to be thankful that "Hitler" is safe after his brush with death.

The irony impairment evident among some of the ruling class is, to put it mildly, stunning.  Apparently, running "assassination porn" against Donald Trump is okay until someone swallows the KoolAid and decides to take matters into their own hands, perhaps staining the political left and its pathological hatred of the "far right".

Israel, Syria and an Assassination

According to "The Intercept", an internal National Security Agency document provided by Edward Snowden shows that Israel took rather unusual steps in its long-term hostilities with Syria back in August 2008.

Brigadier General Suleiman, educated as an engineer, was a top military and security advisor and close friend to Bashar al-Assad.  Suleiman played a unique role in Syria's inner circle; he was a member of Syria's research board which dealt with the development of chemical and biological weapons as well as nuclear research and was Syria's contact with North Korea.  As such, he was in charge of security arrangements for the North Korean scientists who were involved in the construction of the Al Kibar nuclear facility which was destroyed by Israel in 2007.  It is also believed that he was connected to the provision of arms from Iran to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

After the bombing of the nuclear facility, Suleiman began to plan for an alternative reactor.  His new mission was complicated by the fact that on August 1, 2008, we now know that a team of Israeli commandos entered the waters off Tartus, Syria and shot and killed 49-year-old Syrian General, Muhammad Suleiman (or Sulayman), as he was holding a dinner party at his seaside chalet in the Rimal al-Zahabieh resort.  

Here is a screen capture from Time magazine showing the story as it was covered by the mainstream media in August 2008:

According to the narrative at the time, Suleiman was shot in the head, neck and stomach/chest at close range and it was believed that the killers escaped by boat.  As well, Syrian authorities kept news of the assassination from the public for five days with some diplomats assuming that he was eliminated by Assad because of an internal power struggle.

Here is an excerpt from a 2008 analysis by the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), speculating about the reasons behind the assassination:

"The internal Syrian arena is the most intricate possibility. The fact that Suleiman was viewed as one of the people closest to Asad suggests a number of individuals, especially at the very top of the Syrian leadership, who might have benefited from the assassination, part of a power struggle at the highest levels of the regime. Since 2000, Bashar al-Asad’s firm entrenchment of his rule has been accompanied by the removal of various senior officials – deposing them from positions of power and replacing them with people from his inner circle. The most prominent examples of this were the 2004 retirement of Syrian defense minister Mustafa Talas and a year later, the dramatic escape of Vice President Abd-al-Khalim Khaddam to France. After Mughniyah's assassination, various reports were published regarding tensions between Asif Shawkat, the head of military intelligence, and Bashar al-Asad.

There seems to be another locus of tension, between Shawkat and Asad’s brother Maher, who heads the elite Republican Guards. In this scenario, the assassination of one of the president’s inner circle may have been intended as a message from opposition elements, either from within the regime itself or from outside. At the same time, it is clear that from the intra-Syrian perspective, the implication of Suleiman’s assassination for the regime is worrisome, as it raises the possibility that there are individuals not loyal to Asad within his inner circle. Oustings, “disappearances,” and banishments of senior Syrian officials in the coming months may turn out to be connected to Suleiman’s assassination and to internal power struggles.

Regarding military issues and special projects: given the lack of available information, it is hard to point to a specific motive or individual who might have wanted Suleiman dead. If involved in this sphere, Suleiman would undoubtedly have been privy to sensitive technological information as well as other state secrets. Neither one of those represents a good enough reason to have him eliminated by someone on the inside. Asad’s regime has ways of removing people from the nexus of power, and assassination is not one of the common ones – unless Suleiman was intending to exploit the knowledge he had in a way detrimental to Syria, e.g., through defecting to the West, like former Iranian officer General Ali Reza Asgari did in 2007. In this light, the assassination might have served the Syrian regime both as a means of revenge and as a potent message to the inner circle."

INSS does go on to postulate that Israel may have been behind the assassination, however, it states the following:

"Moreover, from the Israeli perspective, it is possible that the risk inherent in such an operation would far outweigh its possible benefit; after the reported September attack on the Syrian reactor and the Mughniyah assassination – both of which have been ascribed to Israel – an assassination of one of the Syrian president’s inner circle might prove to be the straw breaking the camel’s back, and would push the two states towards a dangerous escalation."

Now, let's look at the current information.  Here is a screen capture of the partially redacted document which was posted on the NSA's Intellipedia, an internal version of Wikipedia:

Note that the document states that the assassination of Suleiman was the first known instance of Israel (Mossad) targeting a legitimate government official.  The document is also listed as "SI" in the top right hand corner of the first page indicating that the information was gleaned from signals intelligence, likely from the Israeli military:

At the time of the assassination, an investigation revealed that Suleiman had $80 million in cash in a basement room in his home in the mountains between Damascus and the Lebanese border as shown on this secret cable released by Wikileaks:

Since Israel was not involved in armed combat with Syria at the time of the killing, international law states that they had no right to kill the General.  To this point in time, Israel and the NSA have not commented on the release of this information.

The Kennedy Assassination - A Friendly Fire Theory

Fifty years ago today, the world came to a standstill while it digested the assassination of American President John F. Kennedy.  As a young lad, I can quite clearly remember much of the news coverage of that day and the following days, largely because I was absent from school because of an illness.  I can still remember walking through K-Mart and seeing the coverage by the major television networks.  Since that time, one of my "hobbies" has been researching the Kennedy assassination and trying to understand what alternative scenarios are plausible, given that the scenario presented by the Warren Commission seems, in hind sight, to be rather unlikely.

One of the most interesting but little discussed scenarios involves a "friendly fire" incident.  In this scenario, one does not have to invoke a "foil hat conspiracy" that involves the Chicago Mafia or the military-industrial complex, rather, a simple accident could explain the untimely death of President Kennedy.

Decades ago, ballistics and firearms expert Howard Donahue proposed a theory that Secret Service agents in the car following the Presidential limousine may have accidentally shot the President.  According to Mr. Donahue's theory, Lee Harvey Oswald was able to fire twice at the President with the first shot showering the car with fragments that slightly wounded Kennedy.  Owald's second shot then struck Kennedy in the back of the neck, passed through the front of his neck and then went on to injure Texas Governor John Connally (the Single Bullet Theory).  Seconds later, the shot that killed the President was fired from the follow-up Secret Service vehicle.  This shot was fired by 40 year old Secret Service Agent George Hickey Jr. after he picked up and cocked his automatic Colt AR-15 from the floor of the car in response to the sound of gunfire.  When the motorcade came to a sudden halt, Agent Hickey accidentally pulled the trigger, firing a bullet at the back of Kennedy's head.

Here is a photograph showing the Secret Service follow-up vehicle immediately behind the President's limousine just before it enters Dealey Plaza:

Here are several of the arguments for this theory:

1.) The bullet that caused Kennedy's fatal head wound behaved like a high-velocity frangible bullet.  Oswald used medium-velocity, non-frangible ammunition.  Secret Service Agent Hickey was seen with an AR-15 rifle around the time that the head shot was fired; the AR-15 fires high-velocity, frangible ammunition.

2.) Witnesses in Dealey Plaza reported that there were two shots fired nearly simultaneously, far too fast to have been fired from Oswald's bolt-action Mannlicher-Carcano rifle.

3.) The reported diameter of the bullet wound on the back of Kennedy's head was 6.0 millimetres compared to the 6.5 millimetre ammunition used in Oswald's Carcano rifle.

4.) The damage to the windshield on the President's limousine was too high to have been caused by a projectile fired from the sixth floor of the School Book Depository.

5.) Witnesses at street level reported the smell of gunpowder, particularly in the northwest corner of Dealey Plaza.  Texas Senator Ralph Yarborough who was riding in the second car behind the Presidential limousine reported that he smelled gunpowder in the street and that it clung to the car throughout the race to Parkland Hospital.  One of the accompanying motorcycle policemen, Officer B. J. Martin also recalled " ... you could smell the gunpowder ... you knew he wasn't that far away. When you're that close you can smell the powder burning ... Why, you can smell the gunpowder ... right there in the street." 

Interestingly, in 1995 Secret Service Agent George Hickey sued Bonar Menninger, the author of the 1992 book "Mortal Error: The Shot That Killed JFK", a book about the "friendly fire" accidental shooting of the President but the case was dismissed because the judge in the case ruled that the time between the filing of the suit and the publication of the book was beyond the one-year statute of limitations.  After an appeal, the publishers of the book, St. Martin's, paid Agent Hickey an undisclosed sum of money.  In case you are interested, here is a link to the Hickey suit against St. Martin's with a detailed list of the erroneous claims made in Menninger's book.

George Hickey passed away in 2011.

While I think that this theory is more than a bit of a stretch, it is unique in its complete lack of a conspiracy, a rather rare commodity in the world of JFK assassination theories.  That, however, does not necessarily make it more plausible.  Unfortunately, as shown here, fifty years on, the majority of Americans still believe that President Kennedy's death was a conspiracy:

It is our skepticism about government openness that has kept the JFK assassination conspiracy theorists in business for five long decades.  With the current level of mistrust in government now, one can only imagine how many conspiracy theories would exist if there were another high profile political assassination today.