A senior Australian politician has received widespread condemnation after she said that Prime Minister Paul Keating had much in common with Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister.
Sen. Amanda Vanstone made the comparison in a speech to the Young Liberals, the junior wing of the Liberal Party of Australia, which supports private enterprise, social justice and individual liberty and initiative.
Keating belongs to the Australian Labor Party, which advocates social democracy.
In her speech, Vanstone claimed that the prime minister shared Goebbels’ passion for authoritarian government, his disdain for the parliament, his malice toward opponents and a close relationship with favored members of the artistic community.
The Australian Association of Jewish Holocaust Survivors issued a statement describing Vanstone’s comments as “beyond the pale.”
The association’s president, Marika Weinberger, said her group “finds it offensive that any Australian political leader could be compared to the excesses of Nazi Germany and the horrors perpetrated by its leaders.”
A statement by the Jewish community’s national body, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, noted that it was only last year that Australia commemorated the 50th anniversary of Nazism’s defeat.
The statement also said, “There is obviously a concern that if people start describing anyone who uses extreme language as a Goebbels or anyone who acts in an authoritarian way as a Hitler, they are making the evils and horrors of that time almost banal.”
Vanstone stood by her comments, but stressed that she said not think that prime minister was “like the vile and demented excuse for a human being that Goebbels was.”
“Nonetheless, there are a few shared traits,” she said, that would be obvious to “anyone reading Goebbels’ biography.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
