Comparing Obama to Hitler on Right-Wing Radio
| Mon Nov. 17, 2008 9:06 AM PST
Anomalos Publishing, a company that puts out conservative and Christian works and describes itself as "created for authors who...have a talent for writing but have not found a publisher," has announced that one of its authors will appear on right winger Michael Savage's nationally syndicated radio show to compare Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler. From the press release:
Nationally-syndicated talk show host Michael Savage is set to interview former German member of the Hitler Youth, Hilmar von Campe this Tuesday, November 18.The program will focus on similarities, which von Campe sees between the rise of totalitarianism under Hitler and the current social and political trends inside the United States.
"Every day brings this nation closer to a Nazi-style totalitarian abyss," writes von Campe, now a U.S. citizen, and author of "Defeating the Totalitarian Lie: A Former Hitler Youth Warns America."
"Today in America we are witnessing a repeat performance of the tragedy of 1933 when an entire nation let itself be led like a lamb to the Socialist slaughterhouse. This time, the end of freedom is inevitable unless America rises to her mission and destiny."
Hilmar points to events surrounding the election of Barack Hussein Obama as reminiscent of the way the Nazi regime came to power.
Von Campe was one of a bevy of conservative authors who in the weeks before the election whipped up the fear that Obama was the modern-day version of the Nazi dictator. In an October 28 WorldNetDaily column, he wrote, "Socialist Hitler destroyed free society in a few months. Socialist Obama is close to his steppingstone. The following is an attempt to clarify the issue."
Savage, of course, is an over-the-top purveyor of extreme rhetoric. He recently questioned whether welfare recipients should be permitted to vote. Weeks before the election, he proclaimed, "I fear that Obama will stir up a race war...in order to seize absolute power." In July, he created a fuss when he claimed that autism is a "fraud, a racket. ... I'll tell you what autism is. In 99 percent of the cases, it's a brat who hasn't been told to cut the act out."
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And Savage has already shared his bully pulpit with a conservative who has Hitlerized Obama. On his October 8 show, Savage's guest co-host Rick Roberts huffed:
If you look at world history and you look at Germany when Adolf Hitler was not initially but shortly after he first came on the scene and started making his rise to power as a community organizer, and you look at all the people he surround himself -- himself with, and if you look at some of his policies and his guidelines and certain political agendas and even more than that, certain social agendas at the outset, you know, the similarities are staggering between Adolf Hitler and Barack Obama. You know, sorry, that's the way I feel. I can read and I can look and I can compare and contrast and what I see -- the early, early days of Adolf Hitler and the very early days in this presidential campaign of Barack Obama, the similarities are absolutely staggering.
Savage is not breaking new ground by scheduling von Campe as a guest. But it's a signal the say-anything right is not dumping the Obama-as-Hitler argument. Von Campe, according to his publisher, will contend that the recent election is somehow comparable to Hitler's power grab. Will this stuff play even to the GOP base? (Forget about convincing independents with such rhetoric.) This sort of talk, if it becomes widespread in the months and years ahead, is more likely to separate the brimming-with-resentment conservatives from more responsible Republicans--which certainly won't make the GOP's repair job any easier. But politics aside, the continued use of this hysterical rhetoric raises this question: do these agitators who liken the historic 2008 election to Hitler's putsch hate America?
Comments
Submitted by Eric Ferguson (not verified) on Mon Nov. 17, 2008 9:36 AM PST.
On this morning's show, Stephanie Miller played a clip of Savage expressing the suspicion Obama killed his grandmother to cover up his foreign birth. He said her death right before the election and right after Obama visited was too convenient. The right is great at turning potentially controversially statements into controversies where the media call on liberals to denounce the comments. Is there some way to make conservatives denounce Savage or explain why they don't?
Submitted by Donna Anderson (not verified) on Mon Nov. 17, 2008 10:06 AM PST.
How is it that you haven't even read Hilmar's book or listened to his logic, which was learned on the ground trying to survive the Nazi experiment, yet you sideline a man who is listed among Cambridges Who's Who of American Intellectuals!? Isn't it possible that he may be right? Your's is the blind rhetoric dumbing-down a generation of lemmings.
Wait a minute, Hitler was a Socialist, not a Fascist?
Hitler's "rise to power" was an appointment by the Chancellor, he was never elected.
Nice how the bastard uses "community organizer" when describing Hitler. How convenient his hyperbole becomes when a Democrat is elected president.
Reality is bitter - the comparison between Hitler and President Bush is obvious in the invasion of an undefended nation (which had not attacked the U.S.) to grab it's natural resources, the second largest resource on the planet, is the very definition of a corporate terrorist dictatorship. Otherwise known as the Nazi Party.
Why is America so much like Germany when the Nazis came to power? Because Bush and his buds on right wing talk networks paved the way for former Hitler Youths to scare people into doing things their way. So who's the lemming here?
Submitted by William W. Wexler (not verified) on Mon Nov. 17, 2008 11:19 AM PST.
Well, the gent is obviously a couple of boots short of a goose step.
Hitler was a fascist, not a socialist. Yes, I KNOW that the translation of the acronym "NAZI" includes the word "socialist". But the NAZI party was not socialist. You can have your own opinions but you can't have your own facts.
I actually AM a socialist and have been for decades. I find this chatter amusing and particularly so since half the people in the US have no idea whatsoever who Hitler and the NAZI party were. But that's the topic for another thread.
-Wexler
I'm heartened by this. How better to loose what little credibility one may have than by comparing the President-elect to Hitler?
God bless America and its fanatical commitment to free speech - sunlight really is the best disinfectant.
Submitted by capt (not verified) on Mon Nov. 17, 2008 11:59 AM PST.
Well, as long a Savage Weiner isn't just promoting hyperbole. . . .
Please - I hope the looney Reich-wingnuttia manages to make their specific brand of insanity obsolete.
We are in a new age - even Hitler references are dying out. Kind of like the Hoover, Wilson and even some Kennedy references.
Living in the past is passe'
So let's recap:
Obama says we all need to do our part and "sacrifice" financially and socially to get out of the mess we have all contributed to creating, and that we all need to work together to do this. He is of a mixed background, an ethnic minority, working with jews and others in his administration. He is preaching acceptance and listening to ideas of other people, and to speak to leaders of all stripes world wide, in that we may learn from them.
This is somehow similar to Adolf Hitler, who argued that Germany would be great if it wasn't for those darn minorities, that Germany had little to learn from anyone else, and that racial purity is the ideal to which all should try and adhere.
And these two men and movements are similar because...?
I know, I'm giving more credence to the argument than it deserves, but this is getting ridiculous. Obama can and should be criticized for a whole lot of things, but saying he is comparable to Nazis isn't criticism, that's just insanity.
Not that anything else should be expected by the Savage Wiener.
I would liken the far right to the Salem Witch Trials or to the Spanish Inquisition looking for heretics. There is no rational base -- it is fear and what I call "magical religious hysterianism". Probably an acute fear reaction to change and loss of control mixed with deep reptilian territoriality. If they stay riled up, they will soon turn on each other.
This is from the linked article:
"In a specific example, von Campe takes strong issue with Obama's position that America after World War II became similar to Nazi Germany because the Supreme Court has not established wealth distribution as a constitutional guideline."
Since Obama has never expressed an opinion even remotely close to that, I think we can assume that the rest of the "logic" we're missing here is equally full of lies and straw men.
Submitted by Eric Ferguson (not verified) on Mon Nov. 17, 2008 1:27 PM PST.
Elie's right, there's no rational response that can work. It doesn't matter how clearly we communicate that Obama isn't like Hitler. There are some people we can't reach, but merely stop them from getting through security. The political target has to be the enablers on the right who treat Savage like someone respectable. We have to make them comment on his comments, just like the right was able to get the media to make every Democrat comment on MoveOn's Petreus ad.
The funny thing is that when you look at the views espoused by Michael Savage, those are almost verbatim the opinions of Adolf Hitler (well, except for the hate towards jews). His opinions about the disabled, the poor, immigrants, race, culture, liberals, his desire to always blame minorities and liberals for the nation's problems are taken pretty much directly from the Hitler playbook.
That's what makes it extra laughable when he makes these Nazi comparisons.
Savage et al. are playing a dangerous game here. As fawltylogic has already done, others may begin to draw comparisons between NAZI ideology and GOP ideology. That won't win them too many American supporters.
Couple this with increased reports of racial & political violence, and people may begin comparing right-wing hate radio to, say, Rwandan hate radio.
Incitement to commit violence, especially hate or political crimes, is something Savage would be well advised to steer clear of.
Too bad he isn't going to be forced to defend his thesis. He'll just be given a chance to spout his illogical argument without any real debate. Savage wants his listeners to believe that someone who lived through Nazi Germany is, by default, an expert on totalitarianism.
I wish the intelligent Republicans would write off 2012 and just spend the next 8 years outing Republican and conservative demagogues for their empty arguments.
Submitted by KEVIN SCHMIDT (not verified) on Mon Nov. 17, 2008 11:03 PM PST.
Dubya was appointed to the presidency and not elected, just like Hitler!
The parallels with the rise of the Nazis are accurate, but with Dubya/dick as Hitler, noat with Obama.
At this point, we literally are only one law away from becoming just like Nazi Germany. Thanks to Dubya/dick, not to Obama.
Just because Obama is president elect, that does not mean Dubya/dick will allow him to be sworn in.
Submitted by Tim (not verified) on Mon Nov. 17, 2008 11:44 PM PST.
This really is a case of seeing in the "enemy" what you yourself are. All right wingers appear terrified, in varying degrees, that Obama will smash them/take away their money and toys/turn the country into Naziland. Sound like something they might do, maybe? They are afraid of their own shadow. That's one big reason why, by the way, Obama's strategy of reaching out to opposers during the transition is flat out brilliant.
I do see a relationship between Obama and Hitler-they were both men! Incidentally, whoever is making the comparison is very lucky that Hitler is no longer in power-Hitler was a "White" Supremicist and didn't like "Blacks!" He really didn't like Jesse Owens!And Hitler was not ever considered to be a "Liberal!"
Right Wingers are the rich elite in this country that screwed over America's economy to begin with by not taking thier tax breaks and putting it back into thier employees, and businesses like they should have. They instead pocketed thier tax breaks and sent jobs overseas which attributed to the economic crisis.
Obama is going to make them pay for it not the middle and lower class. This is why they hate him. He knows they are the ones to blame for it and since they have no excuse in thier bag they can pull out to justify them not getting heavily taxed they are resorting to petty name calling. Pathetic.
Next thing you know Obama will start trying to classify Americans as "real Americans" and "freedom hating fake Americans" like Hitler did with the Jews labeling them as not being real Germans.
Then Obama will pass a law infringing on our civil rights then give it a flashy name like "Patriot Act" so any opponents will be labled and "unpatriotic" in order to stifle any debate.
Then Obama will pre-emptively invade a country under the guise of "liberating the people" like Hitler did with the Sudetenland.
Wait, what? You mean this happened and the people who are accusing Obama of being "like Hitler" turned a blind eye and/or vocally supported it. Could it be possible these people are partisan hacks with no basis in reality?
I also can see the similarities between Obama's "community organizing" to bring better education to impoverished youths and Hitler's to exterminate an entire religion. I mean you have to "organize" people in order to do both, eerie huh?
Seriously what the f*** is wrong with your country? Is this was passes for intelligent debate in conservative America? Either that or somehow sensationalist agitators seem to get a hugely disproportionate amount of airtime. Either way get a grip. Anyone who seriously thinks that Obama can be compared to Stalin or Hitler, or be called a Marxist or Fascist is so completely out to lunch and ignorant of history that they the presumably mid-way intelligent people who bring their crazya$$ views to a wider audience need to do that audience a favor and cut themselves out of the airwaves. Free and intelligent debate is no longer the American way, it's debasing every single worthwhile conversation your country needs to have by legitimating the opinions of fringe sects and crackpots because everyone's opinion is supposedly inherently valid in a free society and THAT is far more reminiscent of Germany in the 20s, in spit of Obama. This article in particular is an example of what happens when people's sense of entitlement to say and do whatever they want has grown faster than their brains' have.
Hitler? How about this? In an episode that could potentially strain relations between Warsaw and Washington, Radek Sikorski, an Oxford-educated politician who has lived in the US, was reported to have made the jibe by an opposition politician, Ryszard Czarnecki.
Writing in his blog, Mr Czarnecki, an MEP, quoted the foreign minister as saying: "Have you heard that Obama may have a Polish connection? His grandfather ate a Polish missionary."
We see that in Europe(not France though), the highly educated are racists.
LOL... I say we do what a great conservative, P.J. O'rourke, suggested we should do with the loonies. Curse them with over-exposure. Seriously, hang on there every word, and play them all over the place; TV, radio, internet, etc. Make sure that everybody in the country has heard what they have to say, and before you can say "Third Eye Blind", even there most ardent fans will be rolling their eyes and changing the channel. Nothing sends you to the oblivion of irrelevancy faster then mass media exposure.
Ironically, some of these very persons who project fascist tendencies on to the Dems and Dem incumbents are some of the very same persons most receptive to authoritarian government.
I've seen data that suggest that as much as 40% of almost any population would be happy under authoritarian government. One major appeal to the type is the chance to rat out your neighbors for behavior seen as disloyal to the state.
Most French resistance members in WW2 were not found by Gestapo detective work. They were turned in by informers for 30 pieces of silver or for a few francs.
Imagine how one can support the depredations upon our Constitution by the Bushies and still talk about impending fascism under the Dems. Doesn't compute.
You lefties are so ridiculous.
It's as if you have no idea that you compared Bush to Hitler, and are still doing it.
It's like the last 8 years never happened.
You guys picked your own pretty GW Bush doll, Barry, and are going to have to deal with people pointing this out.
Former cokehead and drunk, no resume, bad with big words (Massatoosits), murky history, media manipulation, durrounded by lackeys and shady characters, a religious loon...
I could go on and on friends and comrades...
Submitted by Josep Cannon (not verified) on Tue Nov. 18, 2008 6:00 PM PST.
Speaking of credibility, Mother Jones has done some injury to its own cred with this story.
That's AdolF Hitler with an F. "Adolph" is the American spelling. Germans use F.
And of course you can compare Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler. You can also compare Mother Theresa to Stalin. You can (as George Carlin once did in one of his routines) compare an apple to an orange. You can compare anything to anything else.
I wish to hell people would look up the meaning of the word "compare" in the dictionary.
Submitted by Lipschitz (not verified) on Tue Nov. 18, 2008 6:05 PM PST.
Paralells with the third Reich?
Hitler came to power in 1933 in a contested election after a terrorist incident-the burning of the Reichstag. Using this pretext to suspend civil liberties and to establish rule by executive order, and dispose of his political enemies-Communist & socialists primarily but bsically anyone who opposed the Nazis. I can't pronounce the title of the party in German for which NAZI is an acronym for but in english it is National SOCIALIST German Worker's Party.Neocon morons and senile members of the Hitler youth should peddle revisionist history somewhere else. Sounds much more like Bush than Obama doesn't it?
Lefties calling Bush Hitler for eight years = good.
Righties not actually calling Obama Hitler (though referring to Hitler and Obama) = Bad
Perhaps this whole article is some weird bit of satire? The last sentence seems to allude to it: "But politics aside, the continued use of this hysterical rhetoric raises this question: do these agitators who liken the historic 2008 election to Hitler's putsch hate America?"
Couldn't the same thing be said of the Left over the last eight years?
One thing Hitler didn't have was the fawning bias that Obama enjoyed from the MSM. Obama bought this election on empty promises, fraudulent donations
and a completely-in-the-tank media. So it's more like a Stalin thing where Pravda (NYT, CNN, ABC, NBC, LAT, WaPo etc)was the voice of the Party. Anyway, it's hilarious to see the liberal fascists whine about Hitler comparisons when that's the only thing they could say about Bush for 8 years.
Corn's comrades on the left have spent the last 8 years incessantly comparing Bush to Hitler at every opportunity. In fact, it happened so regularly that conservatives became bored of the whole topic. Oh, another post comparing Bush to Hitler on a liberal blog? Yawn. Republicans are Nazis? Zzzzzzz. Furthermore, to the best of my recollection, in all that time, I don't remember a single liberal who paid any sort of price at all with his fellow lefties for making that comparison. Maybe it happened, but off the top of my head, I can't think of a single time it did.
But, somebody mentions Obama and Hitler the same way liberals brought up Bush and Hitler (or the Nazis) hundreds of thousands of times over the past eight years and suddenly David Corn is horrified. Well, the world's tiniest violin is playing for you and Obama, buddy
Um, I know you leftists are not strong on things like facts and recent history so I will help you out; Bush did not 'invade' Iraq. We had been occupying Iraq for over thirteen years because the UN left us hanging after Saddams pretend surrender. Bush began the action that will finally allow us to leave and with honor having freed 50 million people who were suffering under Saddam. Now they have freedom and self governance and we no longer have to defend the Saudis and Kuwait from them. Bush made the moves that will finally allow us out of Iraq. But of course leftism isn't about facts it is about cult of personality and the ad hominem attacks on opponents.
Hitler was a NATIONAL SOCIALIST my man!!!! Study history. This is where the term NAZI comes from *NAtioanl SoZIalism - to Germnanize the English words). Mussolini in the 20s was a soacialist, even praised by Lenin. Socialism and Fascism are very close, they are cousins, only their methods and slogans are different, the ens result is the same
ok...let's get this straight here and now: Savage is not a conservative, he is a sensationalist who does not believe most of what he says. He does run a media conglomerate. He does not hold a Professorship. He is not making shockumentary films. He is a kook that entertains the bunker dwellers on the right that live next door to bunker dwellers on the left that listen to Noam Chomsky and Ward Churchill. I'm a conservative, and while I didn't vote for Obama, he is my president, and as long as he does not advocate
Bush began the action that will finally allow us to leave and with honor having freed 50 million people who were suffering under Saddam.
__________
Hate to burst your bubble Steve, but Iraq's population is only about 27 million. I know the Toy Emperor managed to get a lot of the locals killed over there, but was it really THAT many, or do you not know what you're talking about?
Bush began the action that will finally allow us to leave and with honor having freed 50 million people who were suffering under Saddam.
__________
Hate to burst your bubble Steve, but Iraq's population is only about 27 million. I know the Toy Emperor managed to get a lot of the locals killed over there, but was it really THAT many, or do you not know what you're talking about?
Posted by: David S on 11/19/08 at 9:51 AM Respond
Quite right David S, that was a slip on Steves part. The 50 million refers to the approximate population of Iraq and Afghanistan. Kind of like Barack saying he had visited 57 states, right?
Let's see...
We spend the last 8 years listening to Chimpy BusHitlerBurton!; during the non-stop Democrat and MSM media campaign to regain power...
Even though the Iraq war was undertaken only after Saddam had violated more than 17 different UN edicts associated with the cease fire following the 1991 war; the left declares it an illegal, blood-for-oil(that we never got) war...
Even though all of the measures that Bush has taken since 9/11 have been in the interest of defending our nation and preventing another terrorist attack-and have worked!
And, last I checked, eeeeeeeeeevil Boooooosh! hasn't arbirarily rounded up or even harased any of his political opponents. Unlike Obama, who unleashed his electronic Brownshirts to shout down, in public, over the internet, or by telephone, any person that tried to reveal or even discuss any inconvenient truths from his deliberately clouded and decidedly chequered past...
And, Obama has been helped along the way by a zealous, sycophantic, and obedient MSM; one that covered for his every error, minimized or changed the subject following any embarrasing gaffe or revelation, and were positively complicit it championing his preferred narrative arc and criminally overlooking his mysteriously shrouded and controversial past; not to mention shaping the public discussion to fit his desired talking points. Not to mention the financial, tort lawyer, lobbyist, and industrial money that lined Obama's gilded coffer; backed by the industrialists just like the one in 1933, who's name must not be mentioned...
Give me a break...Your collective hypocrisy is unsurpassed in human history...
All I wanna know is when can I start referring to Obama as Chimperor ObamaHitlerSoros!..?
No really, you're fortunate in that most of the right is too classy to wish harm on their country in the name of an expedient path to political power; unlike the Democrats who were wishing for us to lose in Iraq, wishing for another hurricane disaster during the RNC, and dancing a gleeful jig as Soros and his offshore hedge fund buddies set off the market crash in September by shorting the market hard-like he did ti the bank of England years ago...
Besides, I don't think that Obama is like Hitler anyway...
He's a communist, more like Stalin!
