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Comparing Republicans to Nazis — Who Started it?
FrontPage Magazine ^ | September 13, 2012 | Larry Elder

Posted on 09/13/2012 5:39:56 AM PDT by SJackson

Maybe comparing Republicans to Nazis started with the 1964 Goldwater/Johnson presidential race.

Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater accepted an invitation to visit an American military installation located in Bavaria, Germany. On “CBS Evening News” hosted by Walter Cronkite, correspondent Daniel Schorr said: “It is now clear that Sen. Goldwater’s interview with Der Spiegel, with its hard line appealing to right-wing elements in Germany, was only the start of a move to link up with his opposite numbers in Germany.” The reaction shot — when the cameras returned to Cronkite — showed the “most trusted man in America” gravely shaking his head.

Or maybe it began when Goldwater accepted the Republican nomination, and Democratic California Gov. Pat Brown said the “stench of fascism is in the air.”

Or maybe the Republicans-as-fascists narrative really jump-started during the 1968 presidential campaign. For commentary at the political conventions that year, ABC hired left-wing pundit Gore Vidal and matched him with conservative pundit William F. Buckley. If the network was looking for fireworks, they were not disappointed. Quarreling with Buckley over the impact of anti-Vietnam War dissidents, Gore called Buckley a “crypto-Nazi.” Incensed, Buckley fired back: “Now listen, you queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi, or I’ll sock you in your goddamn face and you’ll stay plastered.”

More recently, former Vice President Al Gore said: “(George W. Bush’s) executive branch has made it a practice to try and control and intimidate news organizations, from PBS to CBS to Newsweek. … And every day, they unleash squadrons of digital brownshirts to harass and hector any journalist who is critical of the president.”

Entertainer and liberal activist Harry Belafonte, when asked whether the number and prominence of blacks in the Bush administration suggested a lack of racism, said, “Hitler had a lot of Jews high up in the hierarchy of the Third Reich.”

Then-NAACP Chairman Julian Bond pulled out the Nazi card in 2004 while criticizing congressional Republicans and the White House: “They preach racial equality but practice racial division. … Their idea of equal rights is the American flag and Confederate swastika flying side by side.”

Bond later clarified whom he meant by “they.” Speaking at historically black Fayetteville State University in North Carolina in 2006, Bond said, “The Republican Party would have the American flag and the swastika flying side by side.”

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who dared to rein in excessive public employee compensation packages, received the full Nazi treatment.

The hard-left blog Libcom.org wrote: “Scott Walker is a fascist, perhaps not in the classical sense since he doesn’t operate in the streets, but a fascist nonetheless. … He is a fascist, for his program takes immediate and direct aim at (a sector of) the working class …”

This brings us to the recently concluded Republican National Convention. California Democratic Party Chairman John Burton offered this analysis: “(Republicans) lie, and they don’t care if people think they lie. As long as you lie, (Nazi propaganda minister) Joseph Goebbels — the big lie — you keep repeating it.”

In dismissing Republicans’ concern over the possibility of voter fraud, Pat Lehman, a leading member of the Kansas delegation, told The Wichita Eagle: “It’s like Hitler said, if you’re going to tell a lie, tell a big lie, and if you tell it often enough and say it in a loud enough voice, some people are going to believe you.”

Next up, we have the chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party. Dick Harpootlian compared the state’s Republican governor to Hitler’s mistress. When told that the Republicans were holding a competing press conference at a NASCAR Hall of Fame basement studio, Harpootlian told the South Carolina delegation: “(Gov. Nikki Haley) was down in the bunker, a la Eva Braun.”

How casually Democrats make Hitler-Nazi-fascist references to demean their political opponents is astonishing. By calling political opponents “fascists” because of policy disagreements, Democrats trivialize a regime responsible for exterminating 6 million Jews in a war that resulted in the deaths of over 50 million people.

Where does this cavalier Nazi talk take us?

In 1994, schoolteachers in Oakland, Calif., took 70 mostly black high school students to see “Schindler’s List.” Some of the kids began laughing during a scene where a Jewish woman was mercilessly killed. In a Los Angeles Times opinion piece called “Why Would Anyone Laugh at ‘Schindler’s List’?” a theater employee wrote: “A three-hour-plus film in black and white about the Holocaust may not be everyone’s choice, but those who decide to view it must be prepared and understand. I find it hard to believe kids today are so desensitized to violence that when they see the strange convulsions of someone who’s been shot, their first instinct is to laugh. If one of their friends was gunned down on the way home, would they stand there and burst into laughter at the way he/she died?”

This Oakland students/”Schindler’s List” disconnect is aided and abetted by leftists like Gore, Bond and Burton who shout words like “Nazi” or “fascist” or “Hitler” at conservatives.

And, no, it appears they have no shame.


TOPICS: Editorial; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: nazi
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1 posted on 09/13/2012 5:40:00 AM PDT by SJackson
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To: dennisw; Cachelot; Nix 2; veronica; Catspaw; knighthawk; Alouette; Optimist; weikel; Lent; GregB; ..
Middle East and terrorism, occasional political and Jewish issues Ping List. High Volume

If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.

..................

2 posted on 09/13/2012 5:41:06 AM PDT by SJackson (none of this suggests there are hostile feelings for the US in Egypt, Victoria Nuland, State Dept)
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To: SJackson

Commies have been calling the right wing Nazis since Hitler turned against the Soviet Union.


3 posted on 09/13/2012 5:42:36 AM PDT by vanilla swirl (searching for something meaningfull to say)
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To: vanilla swirl

Commies have been calling the right wing Nazis since Hitler turned against the Soviet Union.
___________________________________________________________

Bingo!


4 posted on 09/13/2012 5:43:28 AM PDT by RushIsMyTeddyBear (Bocephus hits a home run! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rt_vjPqAVzI)
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To: SJackson
‘Nazi’ is the most horrid anathema that Liberals can fathom so it's their immediate and preferred insult to cast in the face of all their opponents ....as they support the Iranian nut job leader who denies that the holocaust even took place.

....Hmmmm...? Maybe their failure to comprehend history is showing.

5 posted on 09/13/2012 5:46:31 AM PDT by SMARTY ("The man who has no inner-life is a slave to his surroundings. "Henri Frederic Amiel)
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To: SJackson
Who Started it? Daniel Schorr did. CBS executives were not amused when Schorr reported—incorrectly—that Barry Goldwater was said to "travel to Germany to join-up with the right-wing there", and visit "Hitler's one-time stomping ground" in Berchtesgaden, immediately after he became the Republican nominee for president[citation needed]. For obvious reasons, this did not fare well with Goldwater, who demanded an apology for the "CBS conspiracy" against his campaign for president.[4] In the 1980's - Danile Schorr spoke at my college. A member of the young repubs asked him to apologize for his unfair charachterization of Goldwater - the kid was booed by professors alike. I wasn't a member of any organization - I was allowed to ask a question but instead stated that maybe if he didn't characherize Goldwater in sucha way, the trend of political discourse in this country wouldn't have travelled to such a low road. My history prof's told me I was out of line and should not have ruffled the Great Mr. Schorr. What a Hack!
6 posted on 09/13/2012 5:49:13 AM PDT by hkusp40
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To: SMARTY
‘Nazi’ is the most horrid anathema that Liberals can fathom...

I thought it was either "hater" or "homophobe".

7 posted on 09/13/2012 5:56:53 AM PDT by DuncanWaring (The Lord uses the good ones; the bad ones use the Lord.)
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To: SJackson

It should be the other way around. The acronym does stand for the national socialist workers party (a/k/a union drones) - or something like that.


8 posted on 09/13/2012 5:58:25 AM PDT by jersey117
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To: DuncanWaring; SMARTY

——I thought it was either “hater” or “homophobe”.——

Remember if you will that the Rats are not homogeneous. Homphpobe is favored by queers, racist is favored by Amish, hater is favored by teachers.

Nazi is a generic that all can use


9 posted on 09/13/2012 6:00:02 AM PDT by bert ((K.E. N.P. N.C. +12 ..... Present failure and impending death yield irrational action))
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To: vanilla swirl; SJackson
Commies have been calling the right wing Nazis since Hitler turned against the Soviet Union.

And (amazingly) they could do it honestly (sort of). For despite the obvious historical fact of the common origins, collinear means, and even outright alliance, "popular front" national socialists were to the right of the communist international, only barely.

Absurd as it may be, anyone to the right of them is therefore "right wing" and therefore a NAZI. It just shows how out to lunch they really are. That they get away with it is one of the great propaganda achievements of the 20th Century.

10 posted on 09/13/2012 6:01:28 AM PDT by Carry_Okie (The Slave Party Switcheroo: Economic crisis! Zero's eligibility Trumped!! Hillary 2012!!!)
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To: SJackson

The actual NAZI supporters in the U.S. were Democrats.

i.e. ole Joe Kennedy


11 posted on 09/13/2012 6:05:51 AM PDT by SampleMan (Feral Humans are the refuse of socialism.)
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To: SJackson

National Socialists party that persecuted Christians and Jews.

Segments of the American media at the time was sympathetic to the Third Reich.


12 posted on 09/13/2012 6:09:28 AM PDT by Gene Eric (Demoralization is a weapon of the enemy. Don't get it, don't spread it!)
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To: vanilla swirl

Commies have been calling the right wing Nazis since Hitler turned against the Soviet Union.

13 posted on 09/13/2012 6:13:28 AM PDT by Old Sarge (We are now officially over the precipice, we just havent struck the ground yet)
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To: SJackson
Quarreling with Buckley over the impact of anti-Vietnam War dissidents, Gore called Buckley a “crypto-Nazi.” Incensed, Buckley fired back: “Now listen, you queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi, or I’ll sock you in your goddamn face and you’ll stay plastered.”

Well, we know who had the brass ones in this exchange!

14 posted on 09/13/2012 6:17:28 AM PDT by MissMagnolia (Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't. (M.Thatcher))
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To: SJackson; All
That's why I deny that freaking circular political "map" used to illustrate the various political philosophies.

The socialist educators use it as a tool to make socialism look moderate and benign. They try to tell you that if you go far enough around the circle, to the right, you will encounter Nazism, and they are just as bad as the extreme communists on the left.

The straight line, left-to-right graph tells the story pretty well:
Total authoritarians and oppressive entities on the left.....American Conservatives on the right and genuine no-government anarchists on the extreme right.

15 posted on 09/13/2012 6:22:30 AM PDT by ROCKLOBSTER (Celebrate Republicans Freed the Slaves Month.)
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To: vanilla swirl

So we should just call them Commies and be prepared to counter the inevitable McCarthyism whine. Indeed, we should rehabilitate the name of Joe McCarthy who was a true patriot.


16 posted on 09/13/2012 6:24:34 AM PDT by Inwoodian
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To: Carry_Okie
"popular front" national socialists were to the right of the communist international

Please help me understand.
In what way are the nazis to the "right" of the communists?

From where I stand, it seems they are two branches of the same...well, branch.

17 posted on 09/13/2012 6:38:07 AM PDT by stormhill
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To: SJackson

Harry Belafonte is not a “liberal activist” - unless by “liberal activist” you mean fervent supporter of Fidel Castro who does fundraising for him and sponsors events in Cuba to attract U.S. celebrities.


18 posted on 09/13/2012 6:44:45 AM PDT by kabumpo (Kabumpo)
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To: SJackson

The Democrats are like Charles Manson.

He wanted to spark a revolution of the underclass while he ran to a safe enclave. When the destruction was complete, he would emerge and, being the only one smart enough left, would take over and rule, along with his hand-picked czars -er, I mean group members.


19 posted on 09/13/2012 6:46:32 AM PDT by P.O.E. (Pray for America)
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To: stormhill
In what way are the nazis to the "right" of the communists?

National socialists believe in the existence of distinct nations. The internationalists did not, preferring a global socialist system. The German Nazis maintained the nominal pretense of private property, albeit under total government control. The international communists preferred total government control of all property. While it is not much of a distinction, it is a difference.

20 posted on 09/13/2012 6:59:16 AM PDT by Carry_Okie (The Slave Party Switcheroo: Economic crisis! Zero's eligibility Trumped!! Hillary 2012!!!)
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