It's OK Now to Call the President Hitler

Sunday, July 11, 2010

I’m old enough to remember a time long, long ago when it was absolutely the worst thing you could do to compare the president of the United States to Adolf Hitler. And by “long, long ago,” I mean 2004.

That’s the year that the liberal website Moveon.org sponsored a contest for homemade political campaign ads. One of the contest entries featured quotes from George Dubbya Bush to the effect that God had told him to strike the country’s enemies and that he was “taking steps to protect the homeland.”

These were superimposed over stock footage of Hitler speaking to cheering, swastika-waving crowds. It was crude, it was heavy-handed, it was over the top and unfair. It also was taken down off the website, and it didn’t make the cut for the first round of the competition.

Another ad said, “What were war crimes in 1945 is foreign policy in 2003.” The final two frames of that proposed ad included Hitler with his hand raised and then a shot of Bush with his hand up taking the oath of office. That one got pulled, too.

But that didn’t stop Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie from calling the ads “the worst and most vile form of political hate speech” and demanding that the Democratic candidates, none of whom had anything to do with the ads, “repudiate this pollution of our political process” by denouncing them.

It looks like the Republicans are still ultra-super-sensitive, in a “Princess and the Pea” kinda way, about being in any way even vaguely associated with Hitler or the Nazis.

When Vice President Joe Biden recently sent out a fundraising message saying there was going to be a “GOP blitzkrieg” of dirty campaign tactics, Republican lawmakers went verruckt (crazy). Despite the fact that “blitzkrieg” and its shortened form “blitz” have long since passed into common usage as an expression for any fast, overwhelming attack, the GOP claimed they were being compared to the invaders of Poland.

“Invoking the Nazis’ crimes against humanity in a political debate is simply inappropriate,” a spokesman for Minority Leader John Boehner said. But apparently it’s only “inappropriate” or “vile” if you’re a Democrat. As you know, the only principle the GOP has left is IOKIYAR (It’s OK If You’re a Republican), and comparing their political rivals to Nazis is, it seems, A-OK with them:

— Posters and placards of President Obama dressed as Hitler abound at tea party rallies.

— National Review Editor Jonah Goldberg wrote a notorious book entitled “Liberal Fascism.”

— Conservative columnist Thomas Sowell, writing about the $20 billion dollar relief fund paid by BP for the Gulf oil spill, directly compared the fund to laws passed by Germany’s Reichstag that gave Hitler “dictatorial powers.”

— On May 16 of this year, Republican elder statesman Newt Gingrich went on Fox News and asserted that “the secular socialist machine” (his buzzword for the currently elected government) “represents as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union ever did.”

Backed into a corner by host Chris Wallace, Gingrich said that he wasn’t really calling the administration Nazis, he was just saying they were as big a threat as the Nazis. You know, sort of like saying, “I’m not saying your sister’s a prostitute, I’m just saying she sleeps with a lot of guys for money.”

The biggest proponent of associating President Obama and ill-defined “liberals” as Nazis, however, is Glenn Beck. Pretty much any spokesman for the administration or its policies can expect at some point to be compared by Beck to Nazi propagandist Josef Goebbels.

He’s responded to critics of Fox News by invoking a famous poem about the Holocaust and directly comparing Fox to the Jews. (“When they’re done with Fox, and you decide to speak out on something. The old, ‘first they came for the Jews, and I wasn’t Jewish.”)

And the list goes on, with not a peep from the Republican leadership.

In the responses to this column, both in e-mail and in the online comments section, I tend to get some negative feedback for using terms like “wingnut.” Maybe I should become a Republican again. Then I can call people anything, up to and including Nazis, and no one will say a mumblin’ word.

Dusty Rhoades lives, writes and practices law in Carthage. Contact him at dustyr@nc.rr.com.

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nothingspecial 2 years, 10 months ago

You're right in saying that President bashing has gotten out of hand. Seems like it started during the Clinton years, then there was payback against Bush, and now there's payback against Obama.

In the midst of all that crap any objective criticism is also going to put everyone in automatic defense mode.

OldPilot 2 years, 10 months ago

This column is right on point and absolutely correct. Unfortunately using comparisons to Hitler, the Nazi era and the Holocaust extends beyond the political, even appearing in our own beloved home- town newspaper, The Pilot, in the form of a "cartoon". Horrors says you. Can't be. Say it isn't so. Well, just after the Gaza incident, on June 6, 2010, a "cartoon" appeared in The Pilot picturing a soldier, the complete and perfectly obvious image of a Wermacht/Waffin SS storm trooper complete with jackboots, coal scuttle helmet and smoking machine pistol, one gigantic jackboot crushing a group of tiny people holding a tiny peace sign, with a river of blood labeled "flotilla raid" flowing from beneath the jackboot. The tiny people were, or course, the Turkish "peace activists" who manned the flotilla, some of whom came armed and looking for a fight, which they got. So you might ask, why is a 1944 Nazi storm trooper crushing Hamas supporters in 2010? Hint #1: The Nazi storm trooper has a Star of David prominently displayed on the front of his coal scuttle helmet. Hint #2: The Star of David is the national symbol of Israel. No, it's not OK now, or ever, to call the President Hitler, nor is it OK, now or ever, to use such comparisons, in words or in pictures, to denigrate an entire religeon, country or society (except, apparently, when it's done as a matter of editorial policy by our beloved home-town newspaper).

JER 2 years, 10 months ago

steveital, steveitel, look deeply into your computer screen...look long and deeply as you study these words...continue to stare deeply into your screen....deeper and deeper...can you see the Faux News logo? Stare deeper and deeper until you see it. It is making you feel relaxed....do you feel how relaxing it is making you feel? Good...now go to your car, start it up and drive north to Raleigh. As you approach Raleigh from the south, you will see a hill...it is Dix Hill. Go to the hill. See the building....it is Dorothea Dix Hospital...they can help you there. Try on the white coat they will have waiting for you...it will look good on you.

It's OK Now to Call the President Hitler

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