Probably the funniest new right wing media meme, started by Jonah Goldberg but lovingly embraced by Glenn Beck and the Teabaggers, is that liberalism is somehow linked to Nazism. Yeah, and down is up on Uranus. Granted, Jonah and Glenn aren’t the brightest bulbs on the chandelier, but it seems to me that some of their followers, not to mention anyone with high school education, knows better. To review: Fascist leaders, Hitler included, were against, in no particular order: Socialists, unions, gays, ethnic minorities, intellectuals, liberals, artists, civil liberties, etc, and were maniacally pro-war, methodically repressive, solicitous of big business, and devoted to social and political conformity. In short, the opposite of liberals, and a heck of a lot like the Bush/Teabag Right we know today. This fact clearly isn’t lost on Teabagger in good standing Richard Iott of Ohio, as the video above demonstrates, and which you can bet will produce crickets, or perhaps ludicrous denials, from the Campbell’s Soup Kids of Liberal Fascism.
It’s frustrating, really, that historical facts of such blatant obviousness even have to be discussed, but they do, since the right wing media noticed that so much of what Bush did, from wars and torture to nationalistic propaganda and cheap theatrics might lead thinking people to remember der Fuhrer, so they hastily had to put their projection hats on. Luckily, the intended audience was so dumb that they honestly believed that, say, making rich people actually pay taxes and perhaps keeping us down to one war at a time was redolent of the Third Reich. Not so Richard Iott, aka Reinhard Pferdmann, or Portland’s own li’l Storm Trooper, police Captain Mark Kruger. (h/t the Oregonian for its reporting)
Kruger, who has repeatedly been a target of federal lawsuits for using excessive force against war protesters during the Bush years and was widely known to be intolerant of any “dissent from the left,” had already cost the city $300,000 in settlements when it was discovered that he adorned a tree in Rocky Butte Park with commemorative plaques of a guy from the Waffen SS and another guy who executed a whole lot of Greek prisoners of war, among others, and called it an “Ehrenbaum,” or tree of honor. Kruger says he was honoring the men for their military exploits, not their political affiliations, which definitely makes him sound like a hippie to me. In his defense, he did put up this undoubtedly touching memorial in his spare time; after all, he’s been on “administrative leave” a lot due to all the legal unpleasantness he attracts like hookers attract crabs.
Given that Republicans are no longer shy about promoting Final Solutions for atheists, environmentalists, gays, “union thugs,” Muslims, “illegal immigrants,” Democrats, and pretty much everyone else with whom they disagree, is it any wonder that so many of them are turning up wearing their swastikas on their sleeves? What’s not to like, if you’re a Nazi reenactor? When the teabaggers speak of taking our country back, they want to take it to Berlin, circa 1939, or maybe Savannah, circa 1863 or Birmingham, circa 1963, no matter what made-up piffle pours out of Glenn and Jonah, and every once in a while, this fact does get out, inconveniently.
As predicted, fascism has arrived in America, wrapped in the flag and carrying the Cross, not eating granola and driving a Prius. Don’t expect Beck or Goldberg to notice, though.