We hear Democrats don’t want to be called liberals anymore. Focus groups say the word “liberal” has negative connotations. We hear Democrats prefer to be called progressives. That word has a more positive ring. “Progressive” reminds people of going forward. It’s all a matter of optics.
McMillan writes, “I'm sure Democrats in California and elsewhere don't view themselves as Nazis. But there are some uncomfortable parallels. The Nazis were socialists.” McMillan concludes, “Whatever else you can say about the Democratic Party, one thing is certain. Today's Democrats bear little resemblance to democrats.”
Many Americans may be unable to see today’s Democrat Party the way they were taught to see the Nazis, as a structure of evil. Nevertheless, the Democrat Party today is not your grandfather’s Democrat Party. Be that as it may, is the Nazi analogy going too far?
Deborah Lauter, civil rights director for the ADL, is aware of how the Nazi analogy can be abused.
She says, “Using a Nazi analogy just to say that your adversaries position on health care is bad...demeans the experience of those who died and those who are still around. It is so offensive on so many levels.”
There are others in the media who believe that any argument that makes a comparison to the Nazis is self-defeating. They assume that Nazism was a unique and historically limited political phenomenon. These editors and commentators prefer silence when similarities between Nazis and Democrats are pointed out.
There are also commentators who argue that the idea of Nazism has such a hold on our imagination that sooner or later Nazism will be compared to most any political phenomenon. This attempt at comparison has been called Godwin’s Law of Nazi Analogies. Although intended to be a humorous observation, Godwin’s law has now become an Internet adage. Lord Monckton, for example, has been criticized for referring to the young people in the green movement as “Hitler Youth.”
In spite of that criticism of Lord Monckton, writing in the American Thinker,
Lee Cary discusses the proposal by Barack Obama to establish a national security force that echoes the Nazi youth movement. Obama said, "We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded."
Add to the proposal for a national security force, we now have elected
Democrat Party officials proposing to suspend the 2012 elections. Similar events in Germany led to the rise of Adolf Hitler. “I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won’t hold it against them, whatever decisions they make, to just let them help this country recover,” Perdue said at a rotary club event in Cary, N.C., according to the Raleigh News & Observer. “I really hope that someone can agree with me on that.”
The Nazi comparison also cuts both ways. Another example of “Godwin’s Law” occurred recently at a town hall meeting in San Antonio, Texas. According to an
article by Melissa Vega, “Tempers flared during a town hall meeting on the Dream Act Tuesday night. During the meeting a high school government teacher from John F. Kennedy called the local Tea Party president a Nazi.”
So, just who is a Nazi? We know events do not repeat themselves in politics, but historical similarities do. Hitler's rise to power in Germany and the Nazism of the nineteen thirties and forties will never happen again. Still, current events may appear similar to past events when we compare them. Something like Nazism may return if certain social and political conditions are met.
Birds of a feather
This being the case, it prompts the question: Are today’s new Democrats like the old Nazis; not just liberal fascist, as Johan Goldberg claims? Are they new and the old birds of a feather that stick together? Let’s consider some interesting similarities, some “uncomfortable parallels” between the old Nazi Party and today’s new Democrat Party in an attempt to answer this question.
Both Nazis and Democrats are interested in purity. This purity extends from diet to the concept of the Aryan race. The importance given to healthy foods and vegetarianism was a part of the ideology of purity embraced by Adolf Hitler and, now, seemingly even Bill Clinton.
Smoking bans were in effect in Nazi Germany as they are in many U. S. cities governed by today’s Democrats. The campaign to ban trans fats, sugar and salt are further evidence that both Democrats and Nazis have an interest in a new Puritanism.
Then there is evil oil. For many Democrats oil is the epitome of all that is evil and polluting. One suspects that if oil were not needed to run the war machine or the political machine, we’d all be using solar lights or be in the dark once the sun goes down. Candles are polluting, too, and not allowed.
Both the Democrats and the Nazis need scapegoats. For the Nazis it was the Jews, for Democrats it's white, straight, working class males. This is especially the case with white males who are conservatives or in the Tea Party.
Writing about how white males are used as scapegoats in the revised history taught in U. S. schools,
Holly Lisle says, “And the list goes on, and on, and on. If a dead white guy did it, it was bad. If a woman or a man who wasn’t white did it, it was good.”
Both the Nazis and the Democrats make use of concentration camps. For the Nazis it was camps like Auschwitz and Buchenwald. Today, for the Democrats, the concentration camps are the urban ghettos in cities like Chicago and New Orleans.
Both these cities have long-standing Democrat Party governments that do little to improve the lives of those who more often than not vote Democrat. Chicago, the reputed home of Barack Obama, is the
most segregated city in the United States.
Regrettably, there were Jews used by the Nazis to keep order in the concentration camps. These Kapos played the role many black ministers play today in the black ghettos. They keep order in return for special privileges.
Both the Nazis and the Democrats made alliances with big business. For the
Nazis it was Krupp and Daimler-Benz and other corporations. For the Democrats, today, it is GM and GE.
Writing in the New York Times opinion page,
Bob Herbert claims, “This is the bitter reality of the American present, a period in which big business has cemented an unholy alliance with big government against the interests of ordinary Americans...The great majority of Americans no longer matter.”
It is sobering to consider that
GE plans to help China build a jetliner to compete with the US company Boeing. Because China is a Communist state, the workers who will build this plane are all slaves of the state. This does not bother GE. Slave labor from German concentration camps did not bother the Nazis, either.
Further evidence of the ties the Democrats have to big business is the Solyndra affair. The half-billion dollar government loan to that company seems the direct results of Democrat politics. Peter Wehner,
writing in Commentary claims, "Solyndra, which wasn’t deserving of the money...has now gone belly up. The reason the money was fast-tracked and funneled to Solyndra was because its chief investor, George Kaiser, is a significant fundraiser for Obama. Kaiser, by the way, is a billionaire."
Both Nazis and Democrats are interested in eugenics. For the Nazis it was used to bring about a master race. For progressives, today, eugenics is furthered by abortion on demand and Planned Parenthood, all supported by Democrats.
Writing in Citizen magazine in 1992, we have an example of the similarities between the Nazi desire to further eugenics and those of Planned Parenthood. “At a March 1925 international birth control gathering in New York City, a speaker warned of the menace posed by the ‘black’ and ‘yellow’ peril.”
“The man was not a Nazi (at that time) or Klansman; he was Dr. S. Adolphus Knopf, a member of
Margaret Sanger's American Birth Control League (ABCL), which along with other groups eventually became known as Planned Parenthood.”
In her article, "Hitler Would Love It," Barbara Simpson discusses the new blood test developed to detect Down syndrome. Simpson cites an article by Lisa M. Krieger, writing for the San Jose Mercury News, "According to Krieger, even though there are already tests to show such genetic defects, the new tests will make it 'easier and earlier' to get the results 'to help us decide the delicate question of what kind of babies we want.'"
Simpson notes that the delicate question of what kind of babies we want, is an echo of Nazi eugenic programs. She writes, "If she (Lisa M. Krieger) and the people she interviewed had planned it, they couldn't have done better if they were laying the groundwork for the Nazi super race." Can it be that when it comes to delicate questions, the slide from Democrat to Nazi is greased with good intentions?
Both the Nazis and today’s Democrats are masters of propaganda. They also have control of the state media. When the powers of the media are harnessed for political propaganda it is hard to resist the images they project. Obama’s face and speeches by this time in his tenure of office must rival the images and speeches of Hitler.
Add to this the realization that the White House propaganda machine has gone so far as to make, “
The unlawful use of the National Endowment for the Arts ‘the de facto strategic communications firm of the White House,’” and the propaganda of Nazis and Democrats look eerily similar.
Both the Nazis and the Democrats want to nationalize education. The Nazis and the Democrats teach ideology instead of a search for truth on many college campuses. In education, and especially higher education, the Nazis used their power to advance the political aims of the Third Reich. Today, the Democrats use their power and influence to advance Social Justice.
David Horowitz has documented how the left controls much of what passes for thinking at US colleges and universities. Many professors at those schools embrace the ideology of the left and the Democrats so that they too may keep their jobs. How is this different from the famous German philosopher Martin Heideger? He embraced Nazism to keep his job.
Then there are the Greens. In Nazi Germany, there was a union of environmentalists with the Nazi party that mirrors the union of the environmentalist with the Democrats, today. Writing in Off the Grid,
Tim George claims, "Political totalitarian environmentalism was born in the Third Reich. In fact the slogan of the Reich Nature Protection Act was, “it shall be the whole landscape.” By the mid-'30s upwards of 70 percent of German greens were Nazi Party members. Nazi party member foresters and veterinarians were greater in number than medical doctors and teachers."
Perhaps most controversial aspect of Nazism was the role that gays (homosexuals) played in the rise of National Socialism and the German Nazi Party. The matter of gays in the Third Reich and in American politics today is a complex one. What seems clear is that gays were used by the Nazis and by today's Democrats to advance their political agendas.
The story of Ernst Roehm's career with the Nazis and his friendship with Hitler is an example of how complex the relationship between gays and Nazism is. The relationship between Roehm and Hitler is explored by Kevin E. Adams in his article,
The Other Side of the Pink Triangle.
Adams writes, "But it couldn't have been Roehm's homosexuality that Hitler found objectionable. Pro-gay writer Frank Rector records, 'Hitler Youth Leader Baldur von Schirach was bisexual, Hitler's private attorney, Reich Legal Director and Minister of Justice Hans Frank was homosexual, Hitler's adjutant Wilhelm Bruckner was bisexual, Deputy Feuhrer Rudolf Hess was bisexual and Reich Minister of Economics Walther Funk was homosexual.'"
There are likewise structural conditions in modern American society that make today's Democrats resemble the Nazi's from last century. This is especially the case with the Democrat Party in urban areas and the party's appeal to the working class and national labor unions.
Sam Vaknin, writing about the urban Nazis,
claims, "The Nazis--albeit a quintessential urban phenomenon--aspired to reverse its social costs by reemphasizing the family, tradition, nature, and agriculture."
In a more detailed analysis of Nazism and the German working class,
Sergio Bologna writes, "Already by the early 1980s, work was being done on analyzing election results from the 1930s. This work...has now arrived at the following conclusion: the percentage of votes for the Nazi party deriving from the working class showed a continual upswing in the period preceding the Nazis' seizure of power."
"Jurgen Falter is one of the historians who has researched the phenomenon in depth...In his most recent article, published...in the journal
Geschichte und Gesellschaft, Falter previews the results of his research project carried out on 42,000 Nazi party membership cards, from which it appears that the party's working-class membership stood at more than 40 per cent."
The very fact that eligibility to hold the office of U. S. president continues to be a debated question is more than just a testimony to paranoia in some parts of the electorate or political maneuvering by a rival political party. Lack of constitutional eligibility on the part of an office holder may be the last of the historical similarities need to demonstrate that, indeed, we have arrived at a point where we are correct in modifying labels from the past to describe present political parties.
Transnational socialism
Complex organizations like the Democrat Party or the Nazi Party are made of many individuals who act on various levels with varying degrees of understanding. Some in an organization may never understand the obvious or hidden goals of their organization. They are carried along like driftwood in a current. Besides that, complex organizations also generate unintended consequence.
To see where an organization is heading, we must step back and look at the pattern actions create over the course of time. The above examples, highlighting similarities between today's Democrats and yesterday's Nazi, is an attempt to take that step back. When we do, we not only see similarities but differences as well.
Perhaps the major difference between today’s Democrats and yesterday’s Nazis is their international aims. Nazism was rooted in German nationalism, even though the Third Reich had world domination as its aim.
Today’s Democrats are more interested in internationalism and a new World Order than they are in advancing US national interests or American exceptionalism. They would prefer a New World Order with an American flavor, a United Nations that prefers rock ‘n’ roll to the music of Richard Wagner. Last century the Nazis wanted to expand the borders of Germany. Today’s Democrats want to use illegal immigration to dissolve the borders of the United States.
Perhaps the seeds for this current political development were here all along. The struggle that was W.W.II saw the United States victorious. But for that victory, the United States had to pay a price. To defeat the Nazis you had to become like them.
We may have now, in U. S., politics a fusion of two extremes along the political spectrum. Transnational Communism and Fascism have blended together in the United States to create today’s Democrat Party.
How long a fusion of communism with fascism to make Transnational Socialism can hold together is anyone’s guess. Haunted by the ghosts of anti-Semitism that swirl around the party’s Palestinian policy, today’s Democrats may slip back to being just ordinary Nazis. Then again, we may have to wait until Hillary Clinton is elected president to see how the threads of contemporary politics are braided together to make a noose.
