Republicans Have Decided to Call Anything a Democrat Ever Does or Says "Nazi"

By Allison Kilkenny, Smirking Chimp. Posted October 1, 2009.

The cause du jour for the Republican Party is to make as many rapid-fire comparisons between the Democrats and the Nazis as humanly possible. There're the posters altered to make the President look like Hitler, Glenn Beck's use of Nazi imagery, and the GOP's tendency to parade around pliant Holocaust survivors, who are willing to lie and convince hapless boobs that they're seconds away from being loaded onto the trains headed to New Auschwitz, located... somewhere -- probably in those FEMA camps Beck has been trying to warn us about.

Crazy, crazy stuff. Insulting and dangerous, too. Such propaganda is insulting to Holocaust survivors, some of whom are rightfully upset by the Obama-Hitler contrasting. "I saw Hitler's soldiers. I saw swastikas every day. To call Obama stupid, even criminal -- OK, that's politics. But Hitler? It's hurting to anyone no matter who is president," a Holocaust survivor told Times of the Internet.

Beyond being insulting, the comparisons are also dangerous. The Washington Independent's David Wiegel reports on this rising fear of fascism as demonstrated at the “How to Take Back America” conference in St. Louis that took place this past weekend. I highly recommend taking the whole bizarre journey yourself, but here are a few choice nuggets to wet your appetite for lunacy.

The article's protagonist is Kitty Werthmann, an 84-year-old native Austrian survivor of the Third Reich. Kitty was one of the keynote speakers at the conference.

“What would you suggest we do,” asked one activist, “if we are asked to give up our guns?”
“Don’t you dare give up your guns!” thundered Werthmann. “Never, never, never!”
“Give them back one bullet at a time!” called out another activist. The tense atmosphere melted a little bit; the room broke up with laughter.

Call the doctor. You see, Republicans are always very quick to say that liberals also altered posters of former President Bush to look like Hitler, and that liberals also drew comparisons between the Republicans and Nazis. Except, liberals were also called treasonous and threatened with arrest for doing harmless things like showing up to Bush's speeches dressed in anti-war t-shirts, or sporting anti-war bumper stickers on their cars. There were many of these kinds of stories. Meanwhile, those who show up to President Obama's rallies with loaded guns are called patriots.

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Allison Kilkenny is a radio host and political humorist, a fancy way of saying writer, who makes shitty world news funny. She is a regular contributor to the Huffington Post, the Beast, 236.com, and Alternet.org's Wiretap Magazine. Her work has also appeared on The Nation and she is a regular guest on SIRIUS radio. She doesn't care if you're offended by anything she has written. Further articles can be found at: www.allisonkilkenny.com.

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