Anybody that thinks that after my "Obama is the Man" post, you think I'd be all hugs and kisses about the man? Um, no.
Now this is where I have to proclaim the usual blah-blah-blah disclaimer that Obama is not evil or Hitler or the anti-Christ. It's ALL JUST OBSERVATIONS and for "entertainment" purposes only. So don't send me any emails or leave any comments about how much of a racist or evil bastard I am. Then again, what do I care?
It's interesting to me when hard-core leftists assume and indeed label Republicans in general and certain conservatives in particular with them being Nazis, fascists, or above all else, Hitler.
You've heard it said and seen it in print; Rumsfeld is Hitler from the View's Joy Behar, the conservative Supreme Court justices are fascists and homophobes from mainstream newspaper editorialists, Dick Cheney is Darth Vader from left-wing bloggers and of course, President George W. Bush is a war criminal, a Nazi, a fascist, a racist, a mass murderer and of course, an idiot from everyone in between from the far-left political sphere. And all of them and their supporters, including conservative talk-radio hosts, suffer from Islamophobia.
But interestingly enough, it is the left that has historically been the champions of fascism, elitism, demagoguery and totalitarianism. Everyone from Pol Pot and Benito Mussolini to Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro and yes, Adolf Hitler.
Now, let me be clear on this:
Again, I do not think that Barack Obama is an evil, Jew-hating, anti-Semite. I do not believe he would stand idly by and allow a second Holocaust to come to pass. In short, I do not believe Obama equals Hitler.
However, if you look at the propaganda, slogans, symbolism and even some of his words, when not scripted (or sometimes even when scripted) or on teleprompter are indeed very eerily similar to that of the German dictator. Besides, if Time magazine can compare Obama to Jesus, why can't I compare him indirectly to Hitler?
In his book, Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning, in Chapter 2, entitled, Hitler: Man of the Left, Jonah Goldberg uses passages from Adolf Hitler's own book, Mein Kampf to relate to the reader the wants and influence of the "fuhrer," to the German people. Some of those similarities are very much applicable to Barack Obama's means of getting his message across.
Again, I am not comparing Obama to Hitler, but I am comparing his, shall we say "tactics," language, and rhetoric to Hitler's. It is inescapably similar, like it or not. This is not a message of hate; as much as many of you out there will invariably say it is. It is simply an very interesting and scary comparison. It's just a different time, so a different way of delivery is needed. I do not believe Obama would consciously act and sound like Hitler, he's too smart for that. Smart enough in fact to know how to use the language and symbolism to get his message across.
Adolf Hitler hated communism and communists, as well as religion and Christianity-Obama does not. However, with Obama clearly being a socialist, the only difference being that in a socialistic democracy, you can elect your socialist leaders, with communism you cannot-unless you want a choice of nothing but communist idealists.
But, Hitler was more apt to convey the messages and influence of socialism and obviously, fascism.
However the words "fascist" and "fascism" barely appear in Mein Kampf. In over 700-plus pages, only two paragraphs mention either word. But a sense can be felt of what Hitler thought of Benito Mussolini's Italian experiment with fascism and what it had to teach Germany.
"The appearance of a new and great idea was the secret of success in the French Revolution. The Russian Revolution owes it's triumph to an idea. It was only the idea that enabled Fascism triumphantly to subject a whole nation to a process of complete renovation."
Now regardless if you believe that both the French and Russian revolutions were "successful," it does indeed show that believers and followers of that ilk survive today in the words and platforms of people like Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama.
Now you may not want to believe or want to compare the ideology of those two men (and others in American politics) to Mussolini and Hitler (with exception to the evil deeds of Hitler like the Holocaust, as Mussolini did actually despise) but again, history and documentation say otherwise
Some will argue that Obama's plans for America are more in line with Mussolini than Hitler and that argument can be made, but again look at the comparisons:
"What Hitler got form Italian Fascism and from the French and Russian revolutions," writes Goldberg, "was the importance of having an idea that would arouse the masses. The particular content of the idea was decidedly secondary."Hitler's ultimate utility of ideas was not their intrinsic truth but the extent to which they make a desired action possible-in Hitler's case the destruction of his enemies, the attainment of glory and the triumph of your race.
Of the three, Obama is surely seeking the second-glory. The first I would not put on Obama, although it may certainly be for Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid (along with Diane Feinstein, Chuck Schumer, John Kerry, et al) with their goal of implementing the "fairness doctrine" to suppress the free speech of conservative radio, along with Howard Dean's wish for a one-party system. The second of Hitler's desired actions was not Obama's plan, but the "triumph of 'his' race" surely was attained when he became the first black President-Elect.
And much like Hitler, as his history shows, Obama's "opportunism, pragmatism and megalomania often overpowers any desire on his part to formulate a fixed ideological approach.
For socialists there was and is "no aim they would not take up or drop at a moments notice. Their only criterion being the strengthening of the movement."
It is Obama's lack of record, experience and alliances with radical people and ideas that allows him to to break promises , flip-flop and say or do anything to achieve and hold power.
"It is a commitment entirely to action," Goldberg advises us.
Like Hitler, Obama's "genius" lay in the realization that "people wanted to rally to ideas and symbols," if not necessarily the person delivering them.
Obama's success (other than his protection by the media via their collective omission of his past record-or lack thereof) is his techniques and comparisons of himself to past political icons (Lincoln, Kennedy, Reagan) his marketing, advertising and most of all "oratory to exquisitely staged rallies," in lieu of a substantial record to run on. The American people didn't necessarily vote for him because of who he is, it was because of who they thought he
could be.
"Time and time again, in Mein Kampf, Hitler made it clear that he believed his greatest gift to the party wasn't his ideas, but his ability to speak," said Goldberg.
Then and today the ability to sway the masses through oratory is the key to power.
"Without the loudspeaker," Hitler once observed,
"we would have never conquered Germany.Note the use of the word
conquered. Could it be likened, in that sense at least to Obama's use of the word
change?
"Hitler had many ideologies. Indeed, he was an ideology peddler. Few 'great men' were adept at adopting, triangulating and blending different ideological poses for different audiences."The Nazis staged a reactionary coup by exploiting patriotic sentiment and mobilizing the "conservative"-often translated as racist and religious-elements in German society. Once in power, the Nazis established "state capitalism."
"As we all know, the most effective lies are the ones sprinkled with the most actual truths. For decades the left has cherry-picked the facts to form a caricature of what the Third Reich was about. Caricatures do portray a real likeness, but they exaggerate features for a desired effect," Goldberg says.
In comparison, this isn't
just like what the Democrats have done to the integrity and history of the Republican party, but
exactly like it, while at the same time embellishing on their own accomplishments-if not downright lying about non-existent ones. And Barack Obama's legacy, like Jimmy Carter's will be twisted by them and sheltered by the liberal media.
Now, this doesn't describe Obama's personal traits (not yet at least) but, again, it does describe the methods of his party. A party line that Obama has
never parted from or stood up against.
Goldberg again explains,
"The Nazis rose to power exploiting [the problems of the status quo and] anti-capitalist rhetoric they indisputably believed...It is impossible to deny the Nazi rank and file who saw themselves as mounting a revolutionary assault on the forces of capitalism."From today's standpoint, that would be the left's war on "big oil," Wall Street, anything or anyone standing in their way of combating "global warming" and of course the rich-which they conveniently don't see themselves as.
Now this next passage is again in no way comparing the anti-Semitic rantings and beliefs of Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf to the beliefs of Barack Obama. But it is interesting to note Obama's observations of caucasians and how they treated a young, college-going Obama as he noted in his own book,
The Audacity of Hope:
Hitler wrote:
"I could no longer doubt that there was not a question of Germans who happened to be of a different religion but rather that there was a question of an entirely different people. For as soon as I began to investigate the matter and observe the Jews, then Vienna appeared to me in a different light. Wherever I now went, I now saw Jews and the more I saw of them the more strikingly and clearly they stood out as a different people form the other citizens."Goldberg notes on this:
"The leading intellectual in Vienna touting 'Teutonmania'-the neo-romantic 'discovery' of German exceptionism very similar to some forms of Afrocentrism today-was George Ritter vonSchonerer, whom Hitler followed closely and whom he later called a 'profound thinker."Although admittdely, Ritter von Schonererwas a "drunk" and a "loutish anti-Semite and anti-Catholic," two things that Obama most certainly is not. Although Hitler's praise of Ritter von Schonerer and Obama's early praise of Rev. Jeremiah Wright is interesting to say the least.
"In September, 1919 [Hitler] was ordered to to attend a meeting of one of the countless new 'workers parties,' which at the time was was generally code for some flavor of socialism or communism."The comparison of this to Obama's
voluntary appearance of Chicago's Marxist New Party in 1995 cannot be ignored.
"Young Hitler showed up at a meeting of the German Workers Party ready to dismiss it as just another left-wing fringe group. But one of the speakers was Gottfried Feder, who had impressed Hitler when he had heard him speak previously. The title of Feder's talk that night: 'How and by What Means is Capitalism to be Eliminated?'Feder was a populist ideologue who had tried to ingratiate himself with the socialist revolutionaries who briefly turned Munich into a Soviet-style commune in 1919. Like all populists, Feder was obsessed with distinction between 'exploitative' and 'productive' finance.Hitler instantly recognized the potential of Feder's ideas which would appeal to the 'little guy' in both cities and small towns. Hitler understood that, just as in America the increasing power of big banks, corporations and department stores fostered a sense of powerlessness among blue-collar workers, small farmers and small business owners."Tell me you don't see vast similarities there.
In 1920, the Nazi Party issued it's "unalterable" and "eternal" party platform, co-written by Hitler and Anton Drexler that was dedicated to the overwhelming principle that "the common good must come before self-interest."
The most striking thing about the platform was its "concerted appeal to socialistic and populist economics," including providing a "livelihood for citizens, abolition of income from interest, the total confiscation of war profits with labor, the nationalization of trusts, shared profits with labor, extended old-age pensions and the "communilization of department stores."
"Nazism's one-nation politics appealed to people fron all walks of life. Professors, students and civil servants were all disproportionately supportive of the Nazi cause.Patrick Leigh Fermor, a young Briton traveling Germany shortly after Hitler came to power, met some men in a Rhineland workers' pub. One of his new drinking buddies offered to let Fermor crash at his house for the night. When Fermor climbed the ladder to the attic to sleep in a guest bed, he found a 'shrine to Hitlermania.'The walls were covered with flags photographs, posters, slogans and emblems. His SA uniforms hung, neatly ironed on a hanger.'You should have seen it last year [my host] said. You would have laughed! Then it was all red flags, stars, hammers, sickles, pictures of Lenin and Stalin and Worker of the World Unite! Then, suddenly when Hitler came to power , I understood it was all nonsense and lies. I realized Adolf was the man for me.' All of a sudden , he snapped his fingers in the air, 'And here I am!''Had a lot of people done the same then?' 'Millions! I tell you, I was astonished how easily they all changed sides!"The only reason for the last couple of paragraphs was not about Obama per se, but the way Democrat Party supporters, and especially the media, had an unabashed love for the Clinton's only to turn on a dime and portray such unapologetic devotion for Barack Obama.
There are many more similarities of the Democrat tactics and symbols to that of the Nazi Party and Hitler himself in this chapter alone of Goldberg's book. Not to mention the eery comparisons of Hitler's rise to that of Obama's meteoric one. That's all I'll leave you with, since I've no doubt already been labeled a disgusting hater and a fool. But if you consider yourself open-minded and tolerant to other views (which Liberals always want others to see them as) you'll see these comparisons as, if obviously not the gospel, then at least as mildly interesting.
