Ep. 89: How Charges of 'Appeasement' Equate Diplomacy with Treason

“Israel says EU's response on Iran recalls Nazi appeasement,” reported Reuters. “The Biden Plan for Appeasement,” spat a recent editorial in The New York Sun. An editorial in The Washington Examiner pleaded, “President Trump, stop the appeasement of North Korea."

New York Magazine tells us, “U.S. Scraps Military Exercise to Appease North Korea,” and The National Review’s Jonah Goldberg has denounced both Obama and Trump's respective "appeasements". This past June, Fox News ran an article, “Rep. Tim Ryan calls Trump’s historic visit to the DMZ an 'appeasement tour.'”

The ‘appeasement’ charge is shorthand for the weak-kneed naivety of pursuing peace with an implacable, existential, irredeemable, expansionist, and unequivocally evil enemy. Crying ‘Munich!’ works to obscure rational thought and stigmatizes diplomacy––using the horrors of gas chambers and jackboots marching into Paris to equate the deescalation of a conflict with conspiring with the enemy. 

We're joined today by Jim Naureckas of Fairness and Accuracy in Media.

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Guest

Jim Naureckas is editor of Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR). Follow him @JNaureckas.

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Show Notes

The "appeasement" parrots of the GOP

Matt Duss | January 20, 2012 | Salon

A Short History of the Munich Analogy, Part 1

revbludge | May 19, 2008 | Daily Kos

No, Obama’s Iran Deal Was Not a Munich-Style Surrender

Peter Beinart | April 17, 2015 | The Daily Beast

Is the Iran nuclear deal like Munich 1938? Not really.

Dan Murphy | April 22, 2015 | Christian Science Monitor

61 Times Bill Kristol Was Reminded of Hitler and Churchill

Jonathan Chait | April 29, 2015 | New York Magazine

I'm British. America's weird obsession with Neville Chamberlain baffles me.

 Katy Lee | April 7, 2015 | Vox

Republicans' "Hitler" idiocy: Why their hysterical Iran pushback exposes a secret

Simon Maloy | April 3, 2015 | Salon

No, the Iran nuclear negotiations aren’t Munich in 1938

Paul Waldman | April 1, 2015 | The Washington Post

The right's ridiculous Neville Chamberlain obsession 

Simon Maloy | March 13, 2015 | Salon

On the Use and Abuse of Munich

Geoffrey Wheatcroft | December 3, 2013 | The New Republic

Presidents and the Mythology of Munich

Newsweek Staff | June 14, 2008 | Newsweek

Playing the Nazi Card

Noah Lederman | March 1, 2010 | FAIR

Appeasement myths, the realities of Iraq

Steve Chapman | October 6, 2002 | Chicago Tribune

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Transcript

For a full transcript of this episode, go here.

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