The (Nauseous) Obama Hitler Comparison.

During this summer of Town-Hall Meeting madness, I thought the Obama = Hitler placards were just the expression of some insignificant nut-jobs, but now I see this analogy taking hold in the right-wing media and I find it very troubling.

• Rush Limbaugh on the radio claiming Obama is "sending out his brownshirts" and extending his comparison of the left to Nazism. (more here)

• Hannity on Foxnews whose guest compared Obama policies to Nazism (a claim not only Hannity did not rebuke but seemed to condone as you can see on this video)

• Glenn Beck comparing the healthcare reform to Nazi Eugenics.

• Even NYTimes David Leonhardt (favorably - yes, really!!) comparing the stimulus plan to Nazi Germany (while admitting that the analogy is ‘uncomfortable’)

Last Thursday, I had a personal encounter with some of those right-wing extremists. As I was downtown Boston to see the motorcade of Ted Kennedy’s funeral, I saw a group of people singing and holding an Obama/Hitler sign (right there on the Commons by the Park Street subway station).
I decided to take a picture and talk to them to try to understand their approach. It turns out they were supporters of Lyndon LaRouche, the conspiracy theorist who patented the Obama-is-Nazi theme. Incidentally, he is also a defender of the authenticity of The Protocols of Zion and claims that Hitler was brought to power by the British and Wall street and that he didn’t actually write Mein Kampf.
In fact, that’s exactly what those people you see on the picture told me. They compared the U.S. bailout to Hitler’s support of banks, claiming at the same time that Hitler was a socialist. They also said that the goal of healthcare reform is to murder the mentally ill, the terminally ill, the invalids, and the disabled just like Hitler’s. (Although, strangely, they did not talk about the Jews).
Of course, by that point, I knew that talking to them was a waste of my time - they see anyone who disagrees as either ignorant and a victim of the cabal or as part of it and downright evil.

The Larouche supporters may not be many but they have caught media attention. According to the Anti-Defamation League, the LaRouche supporters have “contributed to the divisiveness surrounding the public debate on health care reform by producing and disseminating materials comparing President Barack Obama and other government officials to Hitler, Nazis and fascists, and by attending Congressional "town hall" meeting and other events around the country.”
A good example is last week’s much-watched video of the exchange (see our post) between Rep. Barney Frank and a mad woman who claimed that President Barack Obama supported “a Nazi policy” endorsing euthanasia whom Mr. Frank asked simply, “On what planet do you spend most of your time?” which was all over the news. It turns out that the woman in question (a certain Rachel Brown) belongs to the “LaRouche Youth Movement”.

At the same time, there has been an attempt in some conservative circles to re-write history by claiming that Hitler was a socialist, and that the progressiveness of Wilson was a fascist movement. (if you start googling it, it gets scary).

(see the thesis of Jonah golberg's Liberal Fascism given coverage on Fox )

The ridicule of such claims may make you smile but those pernicious images have been all over the regular news channels like NBC, MSNBC or CNN and they only add fuel to an already inflammatory atmosphere. Some people have even come to Town Hall Meetings with guns, and a pastor has recently called for the murder of President Obama. No wonder the death threats against Obama have increased by 400%.

These ‘protesters’ are outside the norm of course but there are enough nuts out there that might act upon the hate-speech and the Larouche and Foxnews people will bear a responsibility if anything should happen. Even comparing Obama to Hitler or the government to Nazism is a way to call for murder or terrorism. What else do you do with pure evil? The other scary part is that so many Americans are ignorant about history and so eager for conspiracy theories (which is a very American habit) that they are more likely to believe in any revionsionist view of history.

This blog is all for freedom of expression but hate speech should (no, must) have limits, especially on a channel as popular as Foxnews and I cannot believe that so many public figures can get away with publically wishing for the death of the U.S. president or with making fun of killing the Speaker of the House. It’s about time the GOP made a stance against such extremist views and stop trying to reap such evil fruit .

70 Years Later.. : Hitler has become a Man of Peace!

In relation to our previous post, here’s another example of a political pundit re-writing history, and on this 70th anniversary of Hitler’s invasion of Poland, it is worth pausing upon it.

This time, it is Pat Buchanan who wrote a column on MSNBC website entitled "Did Hitler Want War?" in which he claims that Hitler didn’t really want war and that the British are really to blame for WWII. (It is also the thesis of his latest book, called “The Unnecessary War”.). His theory is basically that if Britain hadn't aligned itself with Poland, the Holocaust wouldn't have happened. Seriously!

Hitler had never wanted war with Poland, but an alliance with Poland such as he had with Francisco Franco's Spain, Mussolini's Italy, Miklos Horthy's Hungary and Father Jozef Tiso's Slovakia.

As often before, he also makes dubious parallels between WWII and the war in Iraq, and as much as one can be critical of the motivation for the war in Iraq, making such historical comparisons is idiotic, and worse, it is dangerous. (the same can be said about arguments using WWII to support the war in Iraq).

Now in case you are not familiar with Pat Buchanan, the man is not just any one, he’s an influential American conservative political commentator, author, syndicated columnist, politician and broadcaster. He was a senior advisor to American presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan, and was a host on CNN's Crossfire. And today, he's a political commentator on the MSNBC cable network including the show Morning Joe and a regular on The McLaughlin Group. (He also ran for the Republican presidential ticket in 1992 and 1996).

Interestingly, his views are unlike those preached by L. LaRouche, the wingnut who provided the health-care Town Hall protesters with Obama=Hitler signs this summer. Beneath the deceiving innocuous, respectable guise of a simple foreign policy debate, one must remember Buchanan is an isolationist in the (American) tradition of immigrant-bashing nativism which blames everything wrong on the Jews, Hispanics, blacks, the media and large corporations.
Recently, Jonah Goldberg told us that Adolf Hitler was of the Left, and now Buchanan says Adolf Hitler was a man of Peace….

Such historical revisionism would never be tolerated in (Western) Europe and there would be an outcry over this sort of things… but in America, it took The National Jewish Democratic Council to release a statement in which they implored MSNBC to remove the article from their Web site for MSNBC to react and do it.

However, it is not the first time that Buchanan goes off the wall with bigoted speech, yet MSNBC continues to employ him. Maybe they want to show that they are open to a diversity of ‘opinions’ and that they are more “fair and balanced” than FoxNews but this sort of historical revisionism is not another ‘opinion’, it is a dangerous re-writing of history which ignores facts and selects whatever fits a right-wing agenda, but unfortunately not enough Americans know enough about WWII to see that.

The Orwellian World of Laura Ingraham.

"I'm saying with great respect closing with this :

‘First they came for the rich,
And I did not speak out because I was not rich.
Then they came for the property owners,
And I did not speak out because I did not own property.
Then they came for the right to bear arms,
and I did not speak out because I was not armed.
Then they came for me and denied me my medical care, and there was no one left to speak for me…’

If you think there’s something wrong with this poem, that's because…. there is.

The original version is as followed:

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a
communist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out for me.

… and it is about the apathy of German intellectuals following the round up of targeted people in Nazi Germany.

The new version comes from Laura Ingraham [radio host and Foxnews star] during a Tea Party gathering in Washington DC this week.

[Tea parties, for those of you who might not have been in the US for the last year, are gatherings of conservatives who protest against possible future tax increases or healthcare reform.]

And yes, you read it right, Ingraham compared the healthcare reform and raising the marginal tax rate to…. the Holocaust! As Jon Stewart pointed out, she didn’t have to say ‘with great respect’, it is… implied!
And it wasn’t just a few fringe demonstrators at this tea party, there were elected officials too, like former House majority leader Dick Armey, or Republican senators Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, Jim DeMint of South Carolina, Richard Burr of North Carolina and Johnny Isakson of Georgia or Minnesota Representative Michele Bachmann. (CBS)

Of course, the Hitler comparison is nothing new and should not be a surprise. Hitler is the epitome of the villainous monster and the perfect boogeyman who gives people a simplified binary view of life down to good v. evil, and allows them to overlook the differences in the present situation.
It is called Reductio ad Hitlerum, a term first used by Leo Strauss as early as 1953. Reductio ad Hitlerum has been used ever since the very end of WWIIar. It has also been used in American political discourse for a long time: during the Gulf Crisis in 1990, or in the war in Kosovo in 1999 to name just a few examples. However irrelevant the parallel was, it usually meant that the ‘enemy’ (in war) was compared to Hitler and it was used in the context of genocide and tyranny.

But there have been variations of the Hitler metaphor like when in the 1990s, the pro-life movement (Operation Rescue) started comparing abortion to the Holocaust. Little by little the semantics started to shift towards the domestic sphere. Other Americans become the Nazis.
Of course, you always had some extremists who compared US presidents to Hitler, but they were seen as lunatics on the fringe.

Things probably started to change even more under George W. Bush, mostly because of Gitmo, the disregard of his administration for the rule of law and for international institutions, and the use of torture which seemed to make the comparison to the Nazi more relevant for some people. As in any other instance, the Hitler/Nazi metaphor was ludicrous there as well of course.

Meanwhile, as the use of the internet became more widespread so did populist forms of hate speech. Of course, on the Internet, anything goes. In fact, that may be the most important reason why the Hitler comparison has become so widely used in the last decade as we have grown accustomed to online extreme rhetoric and it has seemed to become more acceptable. In fact, it has been observed that
"As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches”.
This is called Godwin’s Law. Although it originally referred to Usenet newsgroup discussions, it has gained relevance for other online communication: electronic mailing lists, message boards, chat rooms, blog comment threads, wiki talk pages, or social networking sites.

On top of that, the influence of Fox News, right-wing radios and the Christian far-right within the Republican Party, along with Lyndon La Rouche has increased the acceptability of extreme rhetoric in the regular media and for politicians. In the meantime, the more moderate elements of the Republican Party have been sidelined, leaving room to extremes. (see our posts)

Finally, the election of Obama unleashed the fury of those on the far-right who, as Jon Stewart put it, are confusing tyranny with losing elections to the point that it has become okay to make all sorts of comparisons between totalitarian regimes and the Obama administration, including the Hitler or the Stalin metaphor, and who cares about historical accuracy!

So here we go now in this Orwellian world in which someone like Laura Ingraham can get away with actually changing the meaning of words, turning the rich into the oppressed, the gun owners into victims, and healthcare reform or raising the marginal tax rate into Nazi oppression.

Thank God for Jon Stewart for making it look all so ridiculous that it actually becomes less scary, and for reassuring us that he’ll be there no matter what:

"If the government begins to round up and kill the rich and the landowning and those who choose to exercise the right to bear arms...I'll speak up.".

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
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Town Hall Meeting Madness

I always thought of town hall meetings as one of the greatest features of New England politics and of American democracy at large (the principle of direct democracy is nothing new of course; it was practiced by the Greeks and has been in use in Switzerland for centuries). They are supposed to be a place for debate, to hold politicians accountable, to express one’s views and to listen to other views.

This summer, however has proved me wrong. Those meetings have been disrupted by people shouting at each other, calling each other names, impugning the integrity of any elected official and not listening to anything that they are told. In fact, if anything, those meetings have worked against democracy by spreading disinformation, fear and rumors. They have shown the worst side of populism.

The worst part I think has been the Nazi comparison.

It is an insult to the millions who actually suffered and died under the Nazi regime and the people who compare Obama to Hitler or the government to Nazism (or even the Soviet Union) should learn a few things about history – and by the way, I felt the same way when left-wing extremists compared Bush to Hitler, although it was much less visible.
The anti-Obama rhetoric started with the “birthers”, and then it was the “deathers”, or “the death panel-ers” – those who believed that the Medicare covering consultations about living wills is a plan to kill the elderly. In most cases, they have been started by corporately funded lobby groups (see here) and partisan Republican strategists (see here for instance) and fueled by politicians (Sarah Palin for one).
The strangest thing is that so many people seemed to actually buy it. But of course, when fear-mongering videos by conservative advocacy groups like 60plus, or the so-called “Citizen for Better Medicare” both fronts for the pharmaceutical industry, are played to seniors, it is easy to understand why it may scare them (older people are easily afraid of change in the first place).

It is the whole concept of town hall meetings that I’m beginning to doubt – at least when it comes to healthcare. Public opinion is so ill informed and shouting and violent disruptions create unease and anxiety. The whole topic of healthcare is a complex one and people often don’t even know their own system. (like when they claim they don’t want to be under socialized medicine because of their fear of the government but are with Medicare and love it.).

In those meetings, it is whoever shouts the loudest that gets the attention, and has the upper-hand not the one who’s right. It also forces the politician talking to take a defensive posture (one against many) and they appear weak which reinforces the impression that they may be lying. It take someone with a strong personality like Barney Frank to not be swayed.

The problem is also that the narrative is framed by the way the media cover the issue and it is up to them –not only Jon Stewart or Rachel Maddow – to correct the narrative, talk about the real issues, and putting the whole supposedly angry dissenting reaction into context. Don’t count on foxNews for that of course. They’ll fuel the anger. But the other more credible media should be more aggressive in debunking the myths and the lies.

From watching a few of the Sunday talk-shows yesterday (Meet the Press, or better yet, George Stephanopoulos’s This Week), there is hope and it seems that they are beginning to tackle the core of the issue. It’s about time…..

How the Republican Party has adopted Extremist Rhetoric.

Related to our pevious post, here's a fascinating interview on Fresh Air (NPR) of journalist Max Blumenthal whose book, "Republican Gomorrah, Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party," seems like a good read - especially if you've been wondering how and why the comparison of Obama to Hitler and Stalin has become more popular in more righ-wing circles this summer. (the influence of Foxnews and the Christian Right is of course mentioned as well as Lyndon La Rouche)

Basically, Blumentahl immersed himself in far-right fringe culture for six years and investigated how the Republican Party has been hikacked by extremists, and how more moderate Republicans like Bob Dole, George H.W. Bush or even John McCain have been pushed to the side.

"The GOP has become subsumed by dysfunctional personalities with no capacity for restraining themselves, either from acting out hysterically or from their most devious urges. For these internally conflicted figures, who will continue to produce new and increasingly bizarre scandals, right-wing political crusading is simply a form of self-medication."

Blumenthal partly explains the far right's new vigor by the fact that it functions best when the government and Congress is democratic so they can more easily throw stones form the outside. It seems like a scary but necessary read as one should face the reality of what is going on.

Indeed, Eisenhower would not recognize his party today.

NOTE :

If you want more, here's another interview of Blumenthal on Democracy Now.