The right’s dictator references are nothing new
After the Hamilton County, Indiana, chapter of the “extremist” Moms for Liberty placed a Hitler quote on the front page of its June newsletter, they received unwanted attention and blowback.
The quote, believed to be from a 1935 speech by Hitler, reads, “He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future.”
The Nazi Party trained young people through school and summer camps to indoctrinate them into Nazi ideology.
Paige Miller, chairwoman of the chapter, apologized in an updated version of the newsletter after initially giving an explanation that the quote “should put parents on alert.”
“We condemn Adolf Hitler’s actions and his dark place in human history,” Miller said. “We should not have quoted him in our newsletter and express our deepest apology.”
Maybe not so deep. Maybe not so sincere. I asked last week why the MAGA right keeps Hitler quotes so handy. “Moms” are not alone.
Hitler resurfaced again over the weekend at the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s “Road to Majority Policy Conference” at the Washington Hilton. Presumably, the context was the triple threat of critical race theory, “woke,” and “grooming” in schools.
“Basically, this is an evangelistic movement on the left…. It’s indoctrination. They are proselytizing to the next generation,” alleges Liberty University’s Ryan Helfenbein in a Right Side Broadcasting Network (RSBN) interview.
“What we’re discovering as parents and conservatives is — wait a second — education really is evangelism. So, if you don’t control education, you cannot control the future. And Stalin knew that, Mao knew that, Hitler knew that. We have to get that back for conservative values.”
Nobody indoctrinates our kids but us MAGA authoritarians, dammit!
This is not new
U.S. Rep. Mary Miller, Republican of Illinois, told a “Save The Republic” rally at the Capitol the day before the Jan. 6 insurrection, “This is the battle. Hitler was right on one thing. He said, ‘Whoever has the youth has the future.'” She later apologized.
Prominent MAGA Republicans seem to keep Hitler quotes as close at hand as Trump’s nightstand. Trump reportedly thinks “Hitler did a lot of good things.”
Twitter user Bruce Wilson reacts, “In 2007, I started a research folder of instances of top evangelical leaders saying this sort of thing, the need to indoctrinate children a la Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, etc. This is *not* new.”