Doherty examines the frequent use of the Hitler and Nazi metaphors targeting enemies of the US Empire to provide propaganda cover for the Empire's military interventions. In this piece he offers an excellent correction to the false history reported widely in the US about what is often referred to as the "good war" (WWII). In reality it was essentially an inter-empire conflict in the 20th century's "multi-polar" capitalist world.
Public support for western interventions in the Middle East and elsewhere depends very heavily on the belief that the Western democratic states are fundamentally benign actors in world affairs. Since that assumption is difficult to square with the ugly reality of Western imperialism, WWII is routinely invoked in an effort to demonstrate that supposed benevolence. Indeed it is hard to think of a post-Cold War era conflict involving the United States and her allies in which Nazi comparisons have not been drawn - from Libya to the former Yugoslavia, Iraq and beyond. If we wish to restrain the Western powers from routine intervention in the global south we would do well to blunt the power of this particular propaganda tool by endeavouring to see that a more critical picture of the Second World War is known to the publics of the imperial societies.
