Democrats Should Worry About Their Own Authoritarianism

On Sunday, CNN’s Anderson Cooper asked Bernie Sanders whether he was intentionally downplaying his Jewish heritage. The socialist candidate, demonstrating just how much he cherishes faith, immediately politicized the topic:

Look, my father’s family was wiped out by Hitler in the Holocaust. I know about what crazy and radical and extremist politics mean. I learned that lesson as a tiny, tiny child when my mother would take me shopping, and we would see people working in stores who had numbers on their arms because they were in Hitler’s concentration camps. Like Bernie, I grew up in a family with Holocaust victims. And since we’re on the subject, some of them were also survivors of oppressive collectivist economies. Sanders, who honeymooned in the worker’s paradise of Yaroslavl in the 1980s, may have more personal insight into this misery than I. But if we’re going to panic about looming despotism, it’s only fair to point out that Sanders has much in common with Stalin as Donald Trump—who is less popular among Republicans than Bernie is among Democrats—has with Adolph Hitler. His class warfare and anti-capitalist rhetoric is often indistinguishable from conventional Marxist hokum.

At this point, Hillary “Let’s topple the wealthy” Clinton’s watery progressivism isn’t far behind.

Does Jewish heritage make a person more cognizant of such crazy, radical, and extremist politics? Perhaps. Certainly, anti-Semitism—and Marx was a heavyweight—is often a precursor of authoritarianism. Yet not once have I heard or read Sanders push back against the rising of anti-Semitism within the progressive movement—which is flourishing, not on the Twitter fringe, but in the heart of American college campuses. For that matter, neither has “progressive” Clinton, who was part of an administration that coddled the BDS movement and helped create a nuclear Iran.

Washington Times Letters to the Editor June 7, 1997 - Arlington, VA

During the past several months in the American press, the Democrats have frequently denounced the Republicans as Nazis due to their attempts to control runaway federal spending. How very ironic. I remember the Nazis.

Let me share a little about them and recall some of their exploits.

First of all, “Nazi” was gutter slang for the verb “to nationalize”. The Bider-Mienhoff gang gave themselves this moniker during their early struggles. The official title of the Nazi Party was “The National Socialist Workers Party of Germany”. Hitler and the Brownshirts advocated the nationalization of education, health care, transportation, national resources,manufacturing, distribution and law enforcement.

Hitler came to power by turning the working class, unemployed, and academic elite against the conservative republic. After Der Fuhrer’s election ceased being a political conspiracy and was transformed into afashionablesocial phenomenon, party membership was especially popular with educators, bureaucrats, and the press.

Being a Nazi was “politically correct”. They called themselves “The Children of the New Age of World Order” and looked down their noses at everyone else. As Hitler acquired more power, he referred to his critics as”The Dark Forces of Anarchy and Hatred”. Anyone who questioned Nazi high-handedness in the German press was branded a “Conservative Reactionary”. Joseph Goebbels, minister ofcommunications, proclaimed a “New World Order”.

The Nazi reign of terror began with false news reports on the Jews, Bohemians and Gypses who were said to be arming themselves to overthrow the “New World Order” and Hitler demanded that all good people register their guns so that they wouldn’t fall into the hands of “terrorists and madmen”. Right-wing fanatics of the “Old Order” who protested firearms registration were arrested by the S.S. and put in jail for “fomenting hatred against the Government of the German people”.

Then the Reichstag (government building) was blown up and Hitler ram-rodded an “Emergency Anti-Terrorist Act” through Parliament that gave the Gestapo extraordinary powers. The leader then declared that for the well-being of the German people, all private firearms were to be confiscated by the Gestapo and the Wermotten (federal law enforcement and military). German citizens who refused to surrender their guns when the “jack-boots” (Gestapo) came calling, were murdered in their homes. By the way, the Gestapo were the federal marshals’ service of the Third Reich. The S.W.A.T. team was invented and perfected by the Gestapo to break into the homes of the enemies of the German people.

When the Policia Bewakken, or local police, refused to take away guns from townsfolk, they themselves were disarmed and dragged out into the street and shot to death by the S.A. and the S.S. Those were Nazi versions of the B.A.T.F. and the F.B.I. When several local ministers spoke out against these atrocities, they were imprisoned and never seen again.

The Gestapo began to confiscate and seize the homes, businesses, bank accounts, and personal belongings of wealthy conservative citizens who had prospered in the old Republic. Pamphleteers who urged revolt against the Nazis were shot on site by national law enforcement and the military. Gypsies and Jews were detained and sent to labor camps. Mountain roads throughout central Europe were closed to prevent the escape of fugitives into the wilderness, and to prevent the movement and concealment of partisan resistance fighters.

Public schools rewrote history and Hitler youth groups taught the children to report their parents to their teachers for anti-Nazi remarks. Such parents disappeared. Pagan animism became the state religion of the Third Reich and Christians were widely condemned as “right wing fanatics”.

Millions of books were burned first and then people. Millions of them burned in huge ovens after they were first gassed to death. Unmarried women were paid large sums of money to have babies out of wedlock and then given medals for it. Evil was declared as being good, and good was condemned as being evil. World Order was coming and the German people were going to be the “peacekeepers”.

Yes, indeed, I remember the Nazis and they weren’t Republicans, or “right wing”, or “patriots” or “militias”. They were Socialist monsters.

— Thomas Colton Ruthford

Who is Thomas Colton Ruthford, and why are you reproducing a letter-to-the-editor published in the Washington Times in June of 1997?

Specifically, why did Mr. Ruthford write First of all, “Nazi” was gutter slang for the verb “to nationalize”. The Bider-Mienhoff gang gave themselves this moniker during their early struggles. ?

Was he perhaps referring in actual fact to the Baader Meinhof gang, which was part of the Red Army Fraction (young, radical, militant W. German communists) in the 1970s and 1980s - and had nothing to do with the Nazis? Did these avowed leftists (akin to the Symbionese Liberation Army in their Weltanschauung and methods) really give themselves the moniker "Nazi?" That would be extraordinarily mixed-up!

I'm confused! Please clarify! I'm trying valiantly to make sense of your posting!

Regards,

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