A great article on fanatcism and intolerance

One could just as easily say that Mahatma Gandhi was an anti-smoker, and a vegetarian, just like Adolph Hitler ... yet I doubt one could draw any conclusions from a statement like that.

I realize that anti-smokers can be aggressive, but I doubt there's ever been anyone before Hitler or after him that we could say was just like him, except perhaps Stalin or Pol Pot, and didn't Stalin smoke cigars? Certainly your average anti-smoker is not the kind of person to try to take over the world, or the kind of person to engage in ethnic cleansing on such a horrifying scale. Hitler was a product of his time, and an anomaly even then.

The fact that Hitler was a vegetarian and a non-smoker doesn't particularly indicate anything about other vegetarians or non-smokers. It gets trotted out on occasion, especially as the right would be happy to lose this member of their group, and pass him off to the left.

Not trying to be critical, in the sense of insulting or negative, but critical in the sense of looking at the question from a slightly removed perspective.

There is only one parallel that I can think of between Hitler and anti-smokers. Both believe/believed in keeping their bodies pure. That's about the extent of it, and even then, Hitler was trying to embody the ubermensch, and your average anti-smoker just wants to be healthy and prolong their lifespan. They also want to wipe out tobacco use, not because they're nasty people, but because they see smoking as a health crisis, like the avian flu, and whether or not that's accurate, it's not a hateful stance. It's a concerned stance.

Hope you're well,

Ian

The anti-smoking crowd are with the same concerned bunch that want the world and scientific community alike to eschew biogenetic foods believing they are of poorer quality and hence their "concern". This is not to say billion's of people in third word countries (and some not so third world) are sustained by this horrible man made (sic) food. Of course I am speaking of the organic food nuts (no pun intended) and their idealist views of healthy. From their ivory towers we must all seem so trivial but alas it is all about our health and the health of others so their concern must be legitimate. Hitler was also concerned come to think of it so maybe it is the left who is trying to lose him as a member of their group...... Some say tomato (organic of course) some say tomoto.... Smoke in good health all..

"I have some friends, some honest friends, and honest friends are few;
My pipe of briar, my open fire, A book that's not too new." -Robert Service

I'd give an answer, but would instead point you to the article the OP linked to. That would basically sum it all up.

There are more similarities between Stalin, Hitler and various anti-smoking groups than one would think. That part that bothers me the most is that all of them seem to think they're entitled to tell me what I ought to do. There seems to be no respect involved at all for personal choices made by responsible adults about what they lawfully do in their own time.

Cheers!

Corneel Vermeulen

http://pipelore.net

Thanks for the post and the link Will.

"The heart and soul of piping is smoking good tobacco".

If you read up on the Third Reich, such as through William Shirer's excellent book, there is no doubt that Hitler was far-right, although this doesn't indicate anything about other people who are on the right. Also, Stalin was far-left, and just as much a megolomaniac as Hitler. That's really what made them who they were: the desire for total power--not their politics. This is not what anti's are about. I'm not an anti-smoker, but I strive to always look at both sides of an issue, and to give credit where credit is due.

I think, as smokers, we're too close to the issue. I would trust the opinion of someone who's never smoked more than I would someone who is smoking, because that person is removed from the whole situation. They're not an ex-smoker, who has to stay angry in order to stay quit. They simply have no horse in the race, so to speak. These people tend to do two things (from my experience): they tend to dislike being around smoke, and they tend to find smoking a curious and baffling thing to do. It is baffling in some ways. We talk so much about the flavor of tobacco, when a cheeseburger would have more flavor to offer. We search through the ashy taste for some kind of pleasant taste, and whenever I try to talk about smoking for the taste of it, non-smokers tend to chuckle. To them it's like running full speed into a brick wall, because I like the feeling of passing out.

I don't think discussing the liberal view on genetically-modified food to be of relevance, except as a way of painting liberals as nuts, which is unfair, and without ground. There's just as many nuts on both sides of any issue, but there are even more people with a rational view of things. I wish every smoking rights discussion didn't turn into an attack on anti-smokers. They're not these nuts living in ivory towers, as you suggest. They're just people, and yes, their concern is real. It really degrades them to compare their concern to whatever concern you say Hitler had for his people. The two are not analogous.

I think that it's very difficult, as a smoker, to try to understand the viewpoint of people who want me to stop smoking, but I treat it on an individual basis. Pretty much everyone I know doesn't smoke, and their "anti" behavior is to say that if I ever decide to quit, that they'd help me buy some patches. That's it. If one of them comes over, I smoke in front of them, and they don't say anything. I really would like to see anti-smokers treated as human beings, with their own opinions, and their own concerns, and not as people analogous to the Nazis--a comparison that easily breaks down once you start drawing parallels. The only thing people can latch on to to make the comparison is that Hitler was an anti-smoker and a vegetarian. This is a very limited way of making a comparison, and easily seen through, if you're of a mind to see through it.

Anyway, hope this came across in a friendly fashion. I despise argument, but I like friendly debates.

Hope you're well,

Ian

Ian, your posts in this thread have been thoughtful and honest. It is good to hear a voice of reason in this kind of debate because it is all too easy to label anti-smokers as fascists (or whatever term of abuse we smokers choose to bestow upon them) when, by and large, they are well-meaning (if, in my view, generally misguided) people. The problem arises when the vocal minority of non-smokers behave as if they somehow have the moral right to force me and others to believe and do exactly what they say we should. It is perhaps for this reason that many anti-smokers appear totalitarian in their attitudes and earn for themselves the epithet "fascist". 

Blessings and peace. - Patrick

Patrick, I don't know the figures, I really don't, but I'm under the impression that non-smokers (as opposed to just anti-smokers, which are kind of a sub-class of non-smoker) comprise the majority in the US. (I don't know about elsewhere.) Most people I know don't smoke, and even though they're not rabid in their beliefs, they are the people who are going to vote yes for smoking bans. Not out of spite, but because they really don't like tobacco smoke. That's a reasonable feeling. I don't see them as brainwashed by the scientific community, or out to get me. They just want to live their lives in a smoke-free environment, and I would bet that most smokers who quit feel the same way.

I wanted to start a separate topic about this, and maybe I will, in more detail, but I see this all as the will of the people. It's like the old idea that the only people who want to legalize marijuana are the people who smoke it. (Bill Bailey said something very accurate--and funny--about that. He said, "Pot smoking and cogent political debate do not go together," meaning that no one in Congress is going to move to legalize marijuana, because they wouldn't be able to do their job if they were potheads. Thus it's not in their best interests.) It's sort of the same thing. If legislators adhere to the same proportions as the general population, then of course they're going to want to do something about smoking, since most of them don't smoke. This, again, is in their best interests. I believe they're not thinking about the smokers who will be inconvienced, but of the non-smokers who will find life more convenient without having to breathe in someone else's smoke.

I would never label all anti-smokers as fascists. I only know a few, and those are the trolls who post to alt.smokers.pipes. Keep in mind, there are only three or four of these trolls, as opposed to the millions, or tens of millions, or even hundreds of millions in this country who either have quit smoking, or never started in the first place. It's not simply politically expedient to abide by the wishes of the majority ... in a representative democracy, a legislator is most likely to vote in whatever way the majority wants them to vote, out of a sense of moral obligation.

It's hard for me to demonize people. There are some people who should receive this treatment, like murderers who get away with it, ala OJ Simpson, but to demonize an entire group of people is to use the same mechanism in the mind that leads to prejudice. I don't know all the non-smokers and anti-smokers out there, so I don't know what they're about. I know anti-smokers are activists, but, you know, activism is not, in itself, a bad thing. Lobbying, I think, cripples the democratic process, but activism does not. I just believe in bringing people together, and not pushing them apart. I'm sure all of us know at least one non-smoker who doesn't fall into lecturing.

Hope you're well, and thanks for the kind words,

Ian