Can we as a nation please stop with the Nazi/Hitler insults?
Seriously.
People speaking their minds at public forums are suddenly jack-booted Nazi thugs? (Forget that they are carrying anti-nazi slogans - or forget the implication they are comparing reformers to Nazis, depending on your political stripe.)
An African American member of Congress has a swastika painted over his Senate emblem?
Obama = Hitler?
Fictional death panels?
Are we really, as a nation, so devoid of anything productive to say to one another about health care reform that it’s just down to a contest about how often we can bring up the Nazi holocaust.
Unless we’re talking about the copy of Mein Kampf up for auction in the UK, or the German high court’s ruling on Nazi symbols, there is no excuse.
I hearby invoke Godwins Law and propose a national backlash against anybody making spurious references to their opponents as neo-fascist Nazis or Hitler, and will chronicle the worst offenders here.
Forget about the pundits - the shock jocks paid to enrage - Rush limbaugh has already been declared the “big fat loser” (can we please stop attacking people’s personal, physical characteristics while we’re at it?) in a Chicago Tribune editorial.
We’re just going to focus on the news media.
Conservative Hot Air’s Allahpundit uses it ironically to describe the other side’s description of anti-reform protesters. But is it even necessary there?
Either indies have suddenly developed a taste for Nazi mobs of political terrorists or the Democrats’ message war on ObamaCare opponents is a rather epic fail.
Already the backlash has begun. American Jewish groups and the Anti-Defamation league cry “enough is enough.”
But that doesn’t necessarily mean they agree on which side is the most egregious in abusing the Nazi analogy.
In Jewish Groups Argue Over Nazi Analogies, Washington Post reporter Jacqueline L. Salmon points out there is a lot of blame to spread around.
Rush Limbaugh’s recent remarks comparing Democrats to Nazis has drawn widespread condemnation among Jewish groups, but has also triggered a fight among them over which party is abusing the Nazi analogy.
Limbaugh was commenting on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s assertion that some protesters at town meetings bore swastika signs. Limbaugh said similarities between the Obama health-care logo and the Nazi logo were “overwhelming.” He then drew comparisons between the Democratic party and the Nazi party.
…
But some Republican Jewish groups, who also criticized the remarks, went after Washington Rep. Brian Baird, a Democrat, who last week decried what he called “brown-shirt tactics” by health-care reform opponents.
Post colleague Dan Eggen ignores the brown-shirt reference by Baird to focus on Limbaugh, Glen Beck and the anti-reform protesters wielding swastikas, including “a toddler in a stroller was photographed holding a sign featuring a crossed-out swastika and the slogan: ‘Say No to Fascism!’ ”
The comparisons appear to stem in part from erroneous claims by opponents, including some Republican lawmakers, that a House health-care reform bill would lead to euthanasia for the elderly.
Eggen ignores Democratic excesses, focusing on the opposition’s abuse of the analogy, quoting DNC spokesman Hari Sevugan without any counter-point.
“The repeated use of Nazi symbolism at community meetings by the Republican-incited mob proves that these protests have nothing to do with health care, but rather that the Republican Party is willing to sink to the lowest, most despicable levels to accomplish their goal of ‘breaking’ President Obama,” Sevugan said.
One commendation goes to National Headlines Examiner Charisse Van Horn for debunking the Obama-Hitler references on the grounds of his civil rights awards given out yesterday.
Lyndon who?
Conservative bloggers Ed Morrissey and John McCormac point to another major offender: the disgraced party of Lyndon LaRouche.
McCormac claims LaRouchies are responsible for the Obama/Hitler references.
To put it mildly, comparing your political opponents in America to Nazis is inappropriate–no matter if the comparison is made by Pelosi or left-wing talker Bill Press or Rush Limbaugh (in response to Pelosi’s “swastikas” statement) or Andrew Sullivan who routinely compares those who support harsh interrogations of al Qaeda members to the Gestapo.
Not necessarily.
Non-LaRouche protester
Washington Independent writer David Weigel points out that not all the Obama-Hitler references belong to the LaRouche camp.
Unfortunately, as NewsBusters writer Seton Motley points out, many news organizations have run the LaRouche posters as color for pieces criticizing Limbaugh and other Conservatives.
Apparently “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” doesn’t hold water in this case, Motley notes, as LaRouche is explicitly calling for an extreme, single-payer solution.
Tags: Allahpundit, Charisse Van Horn, Dan Eggen, David Weigel, Ed Morrissey, Hitler, Jacqueline L. Salmon, John McCormac, Lyndon LaRouche, Nazi, newsbusters, Obama, Seton Motley, Washington Post
