MSNBC: The Right models itself on Hitler?
On Thursday’s episode of MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, a frequent slur was revived and a regular tactic of Maddow was again utilized.Â
The slur: “Conservatives are Nazis!”
The tactic: Maddow inviting a guest to do the dirty work of flinging the mud, thereby allowing the host to keep her rhetorical “hands” clean and maintain the image of an objective investigative journalist.
Maddow’s “The Deacon on the Hill” story was a hit-piece on Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK), highlighting some of the social conservative’s more controversial statements (his recommendation of the death penalty for abortion doctors, his assertion that junior high schools are plagued by “rampant lesbianism,” and his criticism of the airing of Schindler’s List by network television).Â
Maddow then cited Coburn and Senator John Ensign’s connection to the Christian group “The Family” (a.k.a. “The Fellowship”) and its congressional lodging house, C Street. At that point, Maddow introduced Jeff Sharlet, author of The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, an expose of the religious group.
Sharlet, a contributing editor for such prominent leftist magazines as Harper’s and Rolling Stone, reported that at the C Street meetings, politicians like Coburn and Ensign were allegedly indoctrinated to view themselves as divinely appointed, totalitarian leaders who could do whatever they pleased — including have extramarital affairs. “It’s a sort of totalitarian idea of Christianity,” the unnamed leader of the Family told the congressmen, according to Sharlet.
Sharlet described the Family as a cult that secretly influences prominent Republicans, and whose director allegedly has claimed that divinely selected leaders are permitted to rape children if they wish. The Family leader, Sharlet added, claimed that Hitler, Lenin, Pol Pot (who engineered the Cambodian genocide of the 1970s), and al Qaeda kingpin Osama bin Laden understood how power should be properly used.Â
The Religious Right is hardly my favorite segment of the Conservative Movement, but Sharlet’s assertions are a bit much. Maybe his claims about the group are accurate, maybe they’re not — I’m in no position to dispute them. But what he and Maddow wouldn’t be correct in claiming is that such wild authoritarian tendencies constitute anything but a remote fringe with no real influence. Yet neither Maddow nor Sharlet would acknowledge that, because then they wouldn’t have had a story or an ideological cudgel with which to strike their political adversaries.
Sharlet’s critique is meant to advance an argument that is continually made by the Left toward the Right: go to the heart of the Conservative Movement (and, by extension, to the heart of every conservative) and you’ll find a Nazi.
I’d hope for better of Maddow than this.
David, what in Maddow’s background, history, or her affiliation with MessNBC would lead you to hope for better from her? Have you actually watched this network?
Gun control; national health care; control of the economy; mandatory service to the state; laws protecting animals: all these were prominent features of NAZI Germany.
Who has been and is now promoting this very same agenda right now? DEMOCRATS!
Who are the real Nazis?
Mark,
Just because my progressive heart hopes for a better world it doesn’t mean my conservative mind has any expectation that it will come. But at the same time I know that if I can go from leftist polemicist to FrontPage contributor, if David Horowitz can go from Marxist theoretician to Republican Street Fighter then anything is possible. Everyone can change and grow.
I can still hope people will do the right thing even though I know they probably won’t.
Thanks for your comment and I hope to hear from you in the future.
-D
Most of this kind of biased coverage is projection. Simple-minded relatively young people who are afraid to look at their own destructive urges–really, that’s a painful thing to do. So, quite aware of what destruction feels like, but unable to admit where they learned the feeling…they announce that their *enemies* are secretly full of Nazi feelings. And they announce it with a prosecutor’s zest.
This Nazi-conservative connection is a tired canard of the left. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been accused of having Nazi sympathies simply because I dared to express conservative viewpoints as a gay man. It’s laughable, really, except that some of these people on the left actually believe it. While I’m sure there are representatives on Capitol Hill who are associated with fringe right-wing groups, the author is correct in pointing out that these groups represent nothing more than a remote fringe without any real influence. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for those with Marxist sympathies. One of them currently occupies the White House.
Years ago a historian named Fritz Stern wrote a book entitled the Politics of Cultural Despair. It deals with writers such as Nietzsche, Dostoyevsky and scribblers such as Spengler, Lagarde, Lanngbehn and Moeller van der Bruck. They endorsed cultural nationalism. More important they attacked the liberal society that grew out of the Enlightenment- liberty, rule of law, equality before the law and so on. They saw that Western Society was in crisis. They believed that the “Death of God” foretold the eclipse of the West. What did Hitler represent if not the total collapse of civilization? The conservatives today do recycle some of the same arguments. The difference is that they don’t want to go back to the Middle Ages but rather support the Constitution as written. That’s a big difference. What’s more the liberalism that was attacked at the beginning of the century bears little resemblance to the “liberalism” of today. That liberalism equates the Hitler regime with “Capitalism”. So it identifies conservatism with Fascism. It’s all very superficial. All I can do is recommend Fritz Stern’s book.
As per usual the liberals project their own actions.
The National Socialist (NAZI – Nazional Socialismus) party of Germany, headed by Adolph Hitler, was a socialist party. It differed from the Communist party of the Soviet Union in being nationalist, as did the Fascist party in Italy headed by Benito Mussolin. The illiberal who call conservatives “Nazis” are not only inaccurate, but they are themselves following Nazi-Communist methods.
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My understanding is that The Family’s view is powerful men are used by God whether they intend to do God’s will or not.
The link within “rampant lesbianism” is a long article worth reading. For one thing, it gives context to the “rampant lebsianism” statement. The hard work of journalism would be to get at the heart of contemporary Bible-believing Christianity, of the men and women who live by it, and of those the few who are determined to influence government through elected office.
Politico – Unfortunately, you have fallen into the trap of seeing a difference between a Marxist and a Fascist (or Nazi). Remember, NAZI was an acronym for the National Socialist party. The only reason that the two fellow travelers are seen as widely disparate is that Hitler used his political opponents for scapegoats to consolidate his power, even if the two groups had similar ideas. Other than that, I agree with your comments. Additionally, if Mr. Sharlet has any evidence to support his claims, he should provide it. I doubt he does.
After the U.S.S.R. fell, the press in the USA seemed to take delight in referring to Communists in the newly-elected Duma as “conservatives”.
I pointed out then the press was proving too clever by half. In fact, the Bolsheviks wanted to preserve or conserve the gains made in the October Revolution. The Russian liberals were doing everything they could to undermine the legacy of Bolshevism.
Likewise, in the USA, conservatives (right-wingers vis a vis left-wingers in Russia) wish to preserve or conserve the legacy of the American Revolution. Also likewise, American liberals are doing everything in their power to overthrow the legacy of our Founding Fathers.
Conservatives are Nazis? Liberals are Communists.
It is truly amazing to see hate-filled, totalitarian, utterly intolerant, sneeringly arrogant liberals loudly accuse everybody else of being hate-filled, totalitarian, utterly intolerant, and arrogant.
And they do this with a straight face, without even blinking. It is as sickening as it is amazing.
What they don’t say is that EVERY dictator for the past 60 years was a leftist.
(Yes, Hitler too. Remember: National SOCIALIST)
A lie told often enough becomes truth – a genuine Nazi approach to control.
How many times have we heard things like “Republicans are Nazis”, “Bush is a Nazi”, etc. Libs and leftists are either too stupid to know the real implications of Naziism, or they are projecting their own wishes onto their opposition.
As I recall, Nazis and their leftist Soviet counterparts (actually they were all leftists, Nazi being a term for national socialism) – built labor, reeducation and death camps to systematically control the population under iron fists; sounds more like the current administration than anything Bush did – and that really sickens me; you don’t want higher taxes, you’re a nazi; you want to keep your constitutional rights, you’re a nazi, etc. – so is the attempt to DUMB DOWN the population so they forget what real naziism was?
Ask your average lib or teenager what a nazi is or was; they’ll say it’s a guy like bush or cheney – such clueless losers; no wonder we’re marching to full blown socialism replete with speech laws and hate crimes… it’s over, folks.
Very good insight, John. Thanks.
I wouldn’t say that’s entirely accurate, Philip. It seems like a bit of an over-reach to claim EVERY dictator of the last 60 years as a leftist. Are the dictators currently running most of the middle east leftists? Was Saddam Hussein a leftist? Is the Supreme Leader of Iran a leftist? And Augusto Pinochet certainly couldn’t be considered a leftist. Plenty of other ideologies (Islamism is one example) can lead to dictators.