The Radical Right and the Hitler Nazi Parallels

Sound far fetched? Don’t be so certain in your assessment, as the push from the Tea Party and the Radical Religious Right has so many parallels, that it has become frightening and cannot be ignored any longer.

The Complete Irony

When one reads the protest signs (if spelled right) or articles from the right and comments from the religious right, they are pointing fingers of Nazism at President Obama and the Left. You don’t have to take my word for it, just Google “Obama and Nazi” and 26 million entries are found at the time of this writing.

In an interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News in 2010 Newt Gingrich himself was quoted in saying the following…

Wallace Quoting Gingrich: “The secular socialist machine represents as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union once did.” Mr. Speaker, respectfully, isn’t that wildly over the top?

If You listen to the stupid and asinine logic that Gingrich is touting, it is the same Republican Political line of protecting the rich at the cost of the Middle Class. He twists words of the President and puts a “Nazi/Communist” twist on it. What The President has been trying to do is get the Super Rich to pay their fair share in taxes like the rest of America, but Gingrich likens “equal responsibility” as a form of Nazism or Communism. Further in the article the writer makes this observation comment…

Newt’s argument frames the usual fear-mongering, boogie man beliefs that have been passed on for generations through the Republican Party. The “Commie threat” has been used for decades and was made popular by Joe McCarthy until he was ousted as a nut.

But the College Republicans of the 80s–people like Jack Abramoff, Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed–took the Soviet Union “spies have infiltrated our government” paranoia to the kind of heights that can only be described as downright delusional, coupled with a Robert Ludlum-hero worship syndrome.

These guys read Russian spy novels and dressed up in army fatigues, flying around the world trying to embed themselves into the action, fighting against communism while supporting the South American Apartheid regime. And it’s this mindset untethered by facts that Gingrich philosophizes on.

The REAL Parallel Facts

The Right tries to associate President Obama and the Democrats as following the same path of Nazism or Communism and if you look in how they make these comparisons, it is always associated to the protection of the Rich so that the Rich don’t have to pay their equal share of the tax burden. Trying to promote “Equal Responsibility” has nothing to do with Hitler and/or Communism. This just goes to show you how inept the right are.

So let us look at the REAL Facts about the Right that shows a very close alignment to Hitler and his beliefs.

The Race Connection

Adolf Hitler, the Führer (Leader) of the Nazi party, formulated and articulated the ideas that came to be known as Nazi ideology. He thought of himself as a deep and profound thinker, convinced that he had found the key to understanding an extraordinarily complex world. He believed that a person’s characteristics, attitudes, abilities, and behavior were determined by his or her so-called racial make-up. In Hitler’s view, all groups, races, or peoples (he used those terms interchangeably) carried within them traits that were immutably transmitted from one generation to the next. No individual could overcome the innate qualities of race. All of human history could be explained in terms of racial struggle. Hence Hitler’s view of the Master Race of “Pure” superior beings.

The current Religious Right and Tea Party exudes this same ideology and the pure fact that the Right hates the idea that there is a “Black Man” in the White House and the head of this country proves race hatred. The Right has done every dirty trick in the book to bring down this current President from the Birther debacle to the current effort of playing with the financial position of this country to lay blame on the President as their Birther effort failed.

The Nazis also adopted the social Darwinist take on Darwinian evolutionary theory regarding the “survival of the fittest.” For the Nazis, survival of a race depended upon its ability to reproduce and multiply, its accumulation of land to support and feed that expanding population, and its vigilance in maintaining the purity of its gene pool, thus preserving the unique “racial” characteristics with which “nature” had equipped it for success in the struggle to survive. Since each “race” sought to expand, and since the space on the earth was finite, the struggle for survival resulted “naturally” in violent conquest and military confrontation. Hence, war — even constant war — was a part of nature, a part of the human condition. What is and has always been the position of the Republican Party? “Constant War” and treating lesser races as the enemy. This even ties back to the Klu Klux Klan and the war against the black race in this country.

While the Nazis classified Jews as the priority “enemy,” the Nazi ideological concept of race targeted other groups for persecution, imprisonment, and annihilation, including Roma (Gypsies), people with disabilities, Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, and Afro-Germans. The Nazis also identified political dissidents, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, and so-called asocials as enemies and security risks either because they consciously opposed the Nazi regime or some aspect of their behavior did not fit Nazi perceptions of social norms. They sought to eliminate domestic non-conformists and so-called racial threats through a perpetual self-purge of German society. Here again the identical tie to the Radical Right in this country, as it is overwhelmingly proven how the Radical Christian Right has these very same views and that homosexuals are bad and immoral and that the Muslim people are an immediate threat to the security of the United States.

The Nazis believed that superior races had not just the right but the obligation to subdue and even exterminate inferior ones. They believed that this struggle of races was consistent with the law of nature. The Nazis pursued a strategic vision of a dominant German race ruling subject peoples, especially the Slavs and the so-called Asiatics (by which they meant the peoples of Soviet Central Asia and the Muslim populations of the Caucasus region), whom they judged to be innately inferior. For purposes of propaganda, the Nazis often framed this strategic vision in terms of a crusade to save western civilization from these “eastern” or “Asiatic” barbarians and their Jewish leaders and organizers. This statement is a complete parallel to the views of the Radical Right as they believe the elimination of the Muslim populations will “Save the Western civilization.” There have even been times where the Republicans and the Right have indicated that “We were on a Crusade” against the barbaric Muslims.

The Political Ideology Connection

It is truly a laugh when the Radical Right & Republicans call President Obama and the Democrats not only “Nazi’s” but also “Socialist Communists” as they are a complete opposite. What was even funnier was the fact that during the early Tea Party Protests they called the President a Communist, Socialist, Marxist, Fascist and Nazi. This just goes to show you the ignorance level of the Right.

Various right-wing politicians and political parties in Europe welcomed the rise of fascism and the Nazis out of an intense aversion towards Communism. According to them, Hitler was the savior of Western civilization and of capitalism against Bolshevism. Among these supporters in the 1920s and early 1930s was the Conservative Party in Britain. During the later 1930s and 1940s, the Nazis were supported by the Falange movement in Spain, and by political and military figures who would form the government of Vichy France. A Legion of French Volunteers against Bolshevism (LVF) and other anti-Soviet fighting formations, were formed. Notice the references to “Right-Wing” and “Conservative Party” and how these groups viewed Hitler as the “Savior of Western Civilization and of Capitalism”

The British Conservative party and the right-wing parties in France appeased the Nazi regime in the mid- and late-1930s, even though they had begun to criticize its totalitarianism. Some contemporary commentators suggested that these parties did in fact still support the Nazis.

Hitler admired the British Empire as a shining example of Nordic genius. Racist theories were developed by British intellectuals in the 19th century to control the Indian people and other “savages.” These methods were often copied by the Nazis.

Similarly, in his early years Hitler also greatly admired the United States of America. In Mein Kampf, he praised the United States for its race-based anti-immigration laws. According to Hitler, America was a successful nation because it kept itself “pure” of “lesser races.” However as war approached, his view of the United States became more negative and he believed that Germany would have an easy victory over the United States precisely because the United States in his later estimation had become a mongrel nation. Just as we have witnessed lately, the Right has been pushing the issue of immigration and they do not want the borders open to foreigners, specifically Muslims. We have also seen the extreme laws enacted in Arizona against the Latin population.

The United States has always been a melting pot of races and religions and it has been that diversity that has made the US strong. Yet in the last couple of years the Right has been pushing this “cleansing” effort to lock down immigration in the USA just in the same manner and views of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.

The Religion Connection

The Nazis often used the Church to justify their politics, by using Christian symbols as Reich symbols, and, in other cases, replacing Christian symbols with Reich symbols, Nazism thus conflated Church and State as an ultra-nationalist political entity — the Nazi Germany embodied in the motto Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer (“One People, One Empire, One Leader”)

The First Amendment to the US Constitution calls for the separation of Church and State…

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The Establishment Clause prohibits the federal, state or municipal establishment of an official religion or other preference for one religion over another, non-religion over religion, or religion over non-religion.

But, according to some Conservatives, the Establishment Clause solely prevents the government from establishing a state church, not from publicly acknowledging God. Sixty Seven Percent of Americans feel the United States is a “Christian nation.” With this view from the Religious Right, we see the last few years a push to allow “Prayer in Public Schools” as well as the addition of the “Under God” clause added to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954.

Additionally we have most all Conservative Politicians continually referencing God and America being a “Christian” nation and founded on Christianity. This of course is in complete alignment with the beliefs of Adolf Hitler as previously noted: “Nazism thus conflated Church and State as an ultra-nationalist political entity.” Additionally, the Conservative beliefs that the United States was “Founded on or around Christianity” is false and in violation of the First Amendment to the Constitution.

In 1797 the Treaty of Tripoli was added as Article 11 and it stated:

As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

According to Frank Lambert, Professor of History at Purdue University, the assurances in Article 11 were “intended to allay the fears of the Muslim state by insisting that religion would not govern how the treaty was interpreted and enforced. President John Adams and the Senate made clear that the pact was between two sovereign states, not between two religious powers.”

Supporters of the separation of church and state argue that this treaty, which was ratified by the Senate, confirms that the government of the United States was specifically intended to be religiously neutral. Yet even with all this as defined in the Constitution and subsequent Amendments and Articles, the Conservative Religious Right continue to push “Christianity” as the basis of the United States much like Adolf Hitler pushed in Germany.

The Holocaust Connection

The Holocaust is an event central to our understanding of western civilization, the nation state, and modern bureaucratic society as well as human nature. It was the premeditated mass murder of millions of innocent civilians. Driven by a racist ideology that regarded Jews as “parasitic vermin” worthy only of eradication, the Nazis implemented genocide on an unprecedented scale.

The Nazis defined Jews as a “race.” Regarding the Jewish religion as irrelevant, the Nazis attributed a wide variety of negative stereotypes about Jews and “Jewish” behavior to an unchanging biologically determined heritage that drove the “Jewish race,” like other races, to struggle to survive by expansion at the expense of other races.

The Nazis believed that superior races had not just the right but the obligation to subdue and even exterminate inferior ones. They believed that this struggle of races was consistent with the law of nature. For Hitler and other leaders of Nazi movement, the ultimate value of a human being lay not in his or her individuality, but in his or her membership in a racially defined collective group. The ultimate purpose of a racial collective was to ensure its own survival.

Maintaining race purity was important, according to Hitler and others, because mixing with other races would over time lead to bastardization and degeneration of a race to the point where it lost its distinguishing characteristics and, in effect, lost the capacity to effectively defend itself, thus becoming doomed to extinction.

The GOP / Tea Party take the same issue with the people in the Middle East, specifically people of the Muslim Religion. Just like the Nazis in their goal to eliminate the Jewish people, the Radical Christian Right want the elimination of people of the Muslim faith. We can clearly see this with war in Iraq and Afghanistan along with the desire to be at war with Iran. The Nazis felt that the Jewish People were a threat to the Nazis and Germany, just as we see the Religious Right’s belief that the Muslim People are a threat to Christianity and the United States.

At the time of this writing, there was only data over 2 years old through 2010 for the death and casualties toll to the Iraq and Afghanistan people. Total deaths through 2010 are 911,931 people and the total severe casualties through 2010 are 1,687,780.

The Propaganda Connection

The way Hitler, Goebbels, and the Nazis used Propaganda was to simplify the message and play on people’s emotions (video).  They played on the dissatisfaction of the status quo and the ways they would use keywords and phrases endlessly.  Even the color Red played into stirring people’s emotions.  Also notice that Goebbels portrayed the Jews as a threat to Germany. Adolf Hitler believed the spoken word more than the written word was more important and it allowed direct contact with your audience and you could play on the hopes, fears and frustrations and get media feedback on what worked and didn’t work.

Goebbels was in charge of everything from newspapers, radio and newsreels. and controlled the Nazi Propaganda machine. Goebbels said…

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

In Berlin, Goebbels was able to give full expression to his genius for propaganda, as editor of the Berlin Nazi newspaper Der Angriff (The Attack) and as the author of a steady stream of Nazi posters and handbills. “He rose within a few months to be the city’s most feared agitator.” His propaganda techniques were totally cynical: “That propaganda is good which leads to success, and that is bad which fails to achieve the desired result,” he wrote. “It is not propaganda’s task to be intelligent, its task is to lead to success.

The Great Depression led to a new resurgence of “left” sentiment in some sections of the Nazi Party, led by Gregor Strasser’s brother Otto, who argued that the party ought to be competing with the Communists for the loyalties of the unemployed and the industrial workers by promising to expropriate the capitalists. Hitler, whose dislike of working class militancy reflected his social origins in the small-town lower middle class, was thoroughly opposed to this line. He recognized that the growth in Nazi support at the 1930 elections had mainly come from the middle class and from farmers, and he was now busy building bridges to the upper middle classes and to German business.

Goebbels was also able to indulge his heretofore latent taste for violence, if only vicariously through the actions of the street fighters under his command. History, he said, “is made in the street,” and he was determined to challenge the dominant parties of the left – the Social Democrats and Communists – in the streets of Berlin. Working with the local S.A. (stormtrooper) leaders, he deliberately provoked beer-hall battles and street brawls, frequently involving firearms. “Beware, you dogs,” he wrote to his former “friends of the left”: “When the Devil is loose in me you will not curb him again.” When the inevitable deaths occurred, he exploited them for the maximum effect.

Goebbels’ was cool, sarcastic and often humorous: he was a master of biting invective and insinuation, although he could whip himself into a rhetorical frenzy if the occasion demanded. Unlike Hitler, however, he retained a cynical detachment from his own rhetoric. He openly acknowledged that he was exploiting the lowest instincts of the German people – racism, xenophobia, class envy and insecurity. He could, he said, play the popular will like a piano, leading the masses wherever he wanted them to go. “He drove his listeners into ecstasy, making them stand up, sing songs, raise their arms, repeat oaths – and he did it, not through the passionate inspiration of the moment.

Summary Comparisons

As we can see from this graphic, there is an uncanny, but frightfully true parallel between Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany and the current Radical Right Wing in today’s USA Political system. Even in the Graphic representation the Tea Party uses the Coiled Snake and there have been many images linking the Nazi Swastika to a Snake or even a Two Headed Snake.