Also getting it -- Jonah Goldberg on the PA

Jonah Goldberg draws the most stark comparison of the PA election to an historical event that the Monk has seen to date, and there's more than just "some" truth to it:

There was something unique to Germany [in the 1930s] that made its fascism genocidal. Around the globe there have been dozens of self-declared fascist movements (and a good deal more that go by different labels), and few of them have embraced Nazi-style genocide. Indeed, fascist Spain was a haven for Jews during the Holocaust.

[Daniel] Goldhagen's book [Hitler's Willing Executioners] was immensely controversial in Germany, where an odd cult of victimhood had settled in. According to the victimhood view, Germany was in effect "occupied" by the Nazis, and the German people were victims, too. . .

But variations of the don't-blame-the-people thesis have been around for a long time far outside of Germany. Democracy can be wonderful, but some of its boosters across the ideological spectrum assume that all democratic outcomes are good outcomes, and that's nonsense. The Left historically has located political morality in the interests and desires of the masses, therefore pronouncing it heretical to blame "the people" for evil deeds. In order to be evil, it seems, causes must be "hijacked" by small cabals of bad guys.

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Today, various pragmatists, optimists, and apologists for the Palestinians say they weren't voting for mass murder and terror, but for honest government and efficient social services. Fatah, the "party" of that terrorist carbuncle Yasser Arafat, was corrupt and incompetent while Hamas has successfully delivered much-needed social services. Hamas ran on "change and reform," proclaim the apologists, not terrorism. Fine, but that was equally true of the Nazis, who traded soup kitchens for indoctrination. Fascist movements have always gained popularity by delivering for the needy, the forgotten, and the left-out. They have always captured the imagination of the middle class by promising to reform the government, root out corruption, make the trains run on time. And fascist movements have always promised, as Hamas has, to bring about a moral and national restoration.