The Republican platform is so extreme Adolf Hitler would have been proud. Here are a few highlights courtesy of ThinkProgress.
Paul Ryan and Rick Santorum, along with the not-so-christian right get their wish: No abortions in cases of rape or incest, because you know they were probably asking for it anyway. Additionally, the platform has language that would ban post-pregnancy drugs.
The GOP has decided to officially praise “informed consent laws” that create barriers to discourage women from having abortions. What’s next? A big letter “A” stitched into the clothing of women seeking an abortion?
The not-so-christian right has managed to insert extreme language regarding same-sex couples into the GOP platform. It’s bad enough these dirty fags want to have equal rights regarding marriage, but gosh dang it, now they want legal civil unions. Evil.
No new taxes. In fact the platform calls for an amendment to the Constitution requiring a super-majority to approve any tax increase, unless of course, we go to war. Corporate interests who have taken over the GOP come out ahead on both counts. No taxes mean increased profits and, of course, nothing says “boom times” like a good old-fashioned war.
There is so much more, but so little time. Vote this November for an America that does not stigmatize its citizens.
One last burst of humor. Best comment ever on the “homosexual agenda.”
“I asked a friend if I could have a copy of the homosexual agenda, but he told me he wasn’t allowed to share it with straight people. He did mention that after he recruits a certain number of people he gets his choice of a blender or a toaster.”
With Romney’s Mormonism coming front and center, I wonder how many people will realize that Mormons are a socialistic organization. They have the most complete genealogy database in America and send their youth out on compulsory evangelization missions to prepare and test them for their extensive economic network. This type of economic socialism is facism, pure and simple. I can guarantee you they would not treat their own businesses as Bain treated those it closed.
Playing the Nazi card is just plain foolish, and insures that thinking people will NOT take your comments, however meaningful, seriously.
Cut it out. Mass murder of a targeted minority is the only time this analogy is even remotely acceptable. Remember, the GOP is our opponent, not the enemy. As soon as we become that, even only unilaterally in their eyes, the narratives diverge, and American progress becomes partisan progress.
Already there, you say? If so, it is because of this very mentality. Let’s avoid it as much as possible on the Left/Progressive, Democratic side, and keep a few clumps of soil from the Moral Highground on our shoes.
MBB
Fascism is not Nazism. There is nothing wrong in many intelligent people’s minds with fascism. And in a Mormon’s case it works very well. I don’t think it is at all suited for the United States, however.
Really? If you don’t see the trending toward right-wing totalitarianism then you’re not looking.
There were too many who didn’t react to Hitler and his thugs because they thought once in office he could be tamed.
The extreme right is striving for total power. Make no mistake about it.
OK. Remember a few days ago,on this blogsite, when a poster wrote that some Right-wing law enforcement and other officials thought the Obama administration was the biggest threat to America, and that his re-election would spell revolution.
This kind of Total Power Grab talk is the same kind of talk, only now it’s coming from our side of the fence.
Could a fascist regime take power some day in Amerika? Of course it could. Is Mr. Obama a threat to our economic hegemony? Alas, he is not.
So, if the rhetoric keeps heating up on both sides, we will still have a two-nation nation when the election is over.
Should there be more conservative voters out there, and should Mr. Romney win, by electoral and/or popular votes, I would expect my representatives in the House, who are mostly liberal and gay, I might add, to find things to vote for, so that Americans could live, work, and negotiate better. The GOP has held the United States and its citizens hostage, so that their obstructionist reign as the minority in the Senate and the Tea Party majority in the House can insure the Obama admin.’s failure, thus helping the American people to remain jobless and uncertain.
When the Dems take office again, we will see more of these same blocking maneuvers, I am sure. BUT they will be the machinations of elected officials, not dictators. If there is no danger of a benign dictator from the left, there is just as little chance of an oligarch-despot coming from the right.
Let’s tone it down, so that rational people can make rational choices in an atmosphere of partisan but not police-state-type fears.
MBB
I think Dems supporting partial birth abortion is extreme.
And you prove any point better than anyone else could about Right Wing extremism. Partial Birth Abortion is not a medical term. There’s nothing scientific about it. You’ve localized yourself exclusively in propaganda territory – where extremists dwell.
Which is more brutally violent: raping a ten year old child or aborting an embryonic fetus?
It has been stated that this partial-birth term is not a medical one. Can anyone post what the proper medical term for the late-term last-ditch effort to save a woman’s life actually is?
And of course this concept needs to be supported. It is a medical issue between a woman and her family, and the doctors trying to save her. In Many of these cases both the fetus AND the pregnant woman are in danger of death. What grief for those left behind after both an expectant mother and the future offspring perish!
MBB
No.
FMSN: You don’t know what you’re talking about.
Michael BB,
Nothing could be more damaging than what you suggest: self-censorship ala Maher. It is absolutely wrong to make the kind of inflammatory and baseless remarks that Allen West, Christine O’Donnell or Jon Voigt make about a Marxist-Socialist-Communist Democratic Party. But when you insist drawing Nazi parallels is “Playing the Nazi Card,” and is off limits, you lend legitimacy to those analogies that do wrongfully equate systematic death camps for political expediency. As bad, by marking Nazi criticism appropriate only when analogizing mass murder you defuse any legitimate criticism anyone might have on parallels of Nazi rhetoric. I examine Hitler’s rhetoric, I study how and why Goebbels’ was effective in facilitating Hitler’s rise to power, also the rise of fascism and nationalist extremism in modern Europe, how those movements differed, how they were similar… rhetorical parallels are entirely appropriate at this juncture between Goebbels and Right Wing extremism in the United States. Entirely appropriate because Tea Party extremism is built upon Goebbels’ use of propaganda for political warfare – precisely the same kind of political warfare being waged by the GOP today. Other Side is correct. Right Wing extremists are striving for total power and that power struggle is evidenced in their propaganda. But you don’t even have to study the tropes and figures of their current rhetoric, you need only really pay attention to what they’ve said and done during the consolidating years of the Conservative movement. Examine the political infrastructure they’ve been constructing. Karl Rove and Grover Norquist have never minced their message – they are out to create a single-party system. They don’t consider the left opponents. They’re not sparring. I’m not saying we should mirror them. I’m just pointing it out.
We don’t need less understanding of historical right wing extremism, we need more of it. Censoring it from the dialogue wouldn’t be wise and neither is pre-judging any reasonable Nazi parallels. Neo-Nazism is on the rise in Europe and it is on the rise in the United States. I’m not suggesting a Nazi takeover is imminent, but I am suggesting that the ideas and values therein have made a resurgence. What we see won’t appear identical to Germany in the 30s, indeed, there’s a new variety invisible dictatorship, elusive and beyond the authority of government emerging which is much more threatening than adoration of an individual as was the case with Hitler. Adoration of the ideas is the key: subversion of American ideals is the key.
Then let’s talk about political mass manipulation, proto-fascism, and other phenomena you describe, and leave the Nazi parallels for the time when death camps seem imminent.
I am saying is that the Nazi Era means something very powerful, the attempted murder of a people and their culture. Even Stalin’s mass killing was not as directed and focused as Hitler’s. The Russian people were not as complicit as the Germans.
Let’s use the term fascist rather than the term Nazi, so that Nazi will forever mean the worst of the worst, and not become the first place we turn to for a fascist analogy, but will remain the Last.
By the way, your posting was rather labyrinthine in its rationale. Academic writing is tough to read online. If you can make more concise phrases, your arguments will be clearer.
MBB
More on Grover Norquist and why conservative leaders are lining up to ram him in the ass.
“What concerned Norquist were the tactics of seizing and holding power, which he adapted straight from the playbook of Joseph Stalin. Or, as he put it:
First, we want to remove liberal personnel from the political process. Then we want to capture those positions of power and influence for conservatives. Stalin taught the importance of this principle. He was running the personnel department, while Trotsky was fighting the White Army. When push came to shove for control of the Soviet Union, Stalin won. His people were in place and Trotsky’s were not. . . . With this principle in mind, conservatives must do all they can to make sure that they get jobs in Washington.”
Frank, Thomas (2010-04-01). The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule (p. 128).
Read the rest at Crooks and Liars
Try this again. Link to article below.
http://crooksandliars.com/john-amato/grover-norquist-refuses-reveal-donor-li
Michael BB,
Thanks for the writing advice – can’t agree it’s academic, but yes, a bit sloppy at times. Unfortunately, that kind of sloppiness will continue now and again. If ever you can’t follow it, just ask for clarification. Happy to rephrase or make more clear – will try to be more concise – not my best attribute. My pleasure reading tends toward the florid; my writing does as well. No argument there. On labyrinthine rationale: Sorting through the layered mazes of propagandist rhetoric, the trenches of political warfare, and the contours of Right Wing Extremism won’t be a linear affair. As far as the construction of my argument goes – looks pretty linear to me for a topic as vast as the one in question. Again, if I can clarify anything for you, I will. I offer a counterpoint as dialogue.
As to your insistence that parallels to Nazi Germany be reserved for the appearance of systematic extermination programs, well suffice it to say, I won’t comply. How Nazism reached that horrific stage cannot and must not be minimized. Especially in this climate of historical revisionism by the right wing propaganda machine, we must keep a clear eye on the past. The Nazi Era means something very powerful, that is so. I’d urge you to remember the Nazi holocaust was not as narrow as you infer.
Nazism and Fascism operate on an authoritarian right wing continuum, but they are not synonymous. If we are to examine Right Wing Extremism we mustn’t conflate the two. In other words, we cannot adopt an attitude that turns to Nazism last. That position has already has damaged our dialogue.
Yet to your point, don’t forget Grover Norquist’s pals Jack Abramoff and Tom DeLay, apologists and promoters of forced labor camps on US territory in the name of Absolutist Free Market Capitalism. Discount at your peril the deregulated territory of the Marianas Commonwealth that ended up looking a whole lot like Nazi Concentration camps. Another conflation to avoid: concentration camps and extermination camps. Forced labor camps preceded extermination camps in Nazi Germany, and there were a great many more of them. Some camps were combined extermination and forced labor camps. Some camps were labor camps, but effectively “extermination through labor” camps.
If you are waiting for concentration camps to become immanent, you’re too late. If you think the Marianas is isolated or that forced labor in the globalized world hasn’t shifted from the “state” to an unregulated private sector you couldn’t be more wrong.
I do think that your point is well taken in that we do need to recognize the fascist realities of the 21st century aren’t an exact parallel to 20th century fascism. There are a great number of ideological confluences that have occurred within Right Wing American political machine. I think it’s important to note that these Right Wing values systems also mirror the push for a more Conservative culture. Some of these are specific to our times and to our own history. But, that said, It is misguided to categorically dismiss how Extremist Right Wing regimes like Nazism evolve when we have an Extremist Right Wing regime evolving here in the United States.