A key ingredient in the rise of German fascism was the Dolchstosslegende - the idea that the German army would have won in Word War I if they hadn’t been stabbed in the back by leftists at home. Now some are raising the specter of this same tale in America and the occupation of Iraq.

As I explained back in February, some extremists have tried to use the Dolchstosslegende (legend of the knife in the back) to explain America’s defeat in Vietnam. I’m not aware of anyone trying to use it at the time, it just appears to be coming up now. No such delay is occurring in the case of Iraq, however.

Dean Esmay has included on his blog an approving link of a cartoon that expresses the idea that American troops are being stabbed in the back by leftists at home. The cartoon is quite ironic is that it criticizes the Left for the frequent comparisons of Bush to Hitler — ironic, because it was Hitler who benefited from such imagery in the 1930s.

Why is such imagery a problem? It portrays legitimate dissent from the administration’s policies as if it were a form of giving “aid and comfort” to the enemy. It effectively demonizes liberals by depicting them as a “fifth column” for the enemy, in this case the terrorists, who are hurting our troops by doing awful things like staging protests and being critical. Cowardly traitors, that’s how they are drawn in such cartoons. I’ll leave it as an exercise to the reader to imagine how such impressions can be beneficial to fascist groups.