Hate Speech

by digby

They just can’t help themselves, apparently:

Hitler hearts Pelosi? That seems to be a view the National Republican Congressional Committee [which brought you the put-Pelosi-in-her-place statement last week] seems to be endorsing, judging from what the committee posts on their Twitter account. On Tuesday morning, as the Senate Finance Committee prepared to vote on the Baucus bill, someone at the NRCC posted a bizarre Tweet linking to an altered three-minute section of the 2004 Hitler biopic “Der Untergang” from the conservative site Moonbattery — with a voice-over of the The Fuhrer ranting about how only Nancy Pelosi shares his vision of health care reform. The Tweet: “Funny Video: Moonbattery: Hitler Reacts to ObamaCare Maneuvers” Hitler, played by Swiss actor Bruno Ganz, is trapped in his bunker with his generals, and rants [in the phony subtitles] about President Obama’s revisions to his socialized medicine plan — and how only he and Nancy Pelosi are still fighting the good fight. “What the hell are the Democrats doing?” Hitler screams. “At least I have Pelosi on my side. What’s wrong with them?… I socialized medicine overnight and everything’s going great… Like Pelosi, I don’t give a s**t about the American people.”

There was a time when something exactly like this would cause a hissy fit of epic proportions, as Greenwald laboriously documented here. (Well, not exactly. That earlier controversy involved an outside group, not the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.)

The Jewish groups simply have to weigh in on this one. They certainly wasted little time going after Alan Grayson for using the word holocaust in a completely reasonable context. They were completely beside themselves on the Move On flap and have been very slow off the mark about these “Democrats are Hitler” comments, which have become so common we are starting to get used to them.

I’m not one to be delicate about language, so I’m not going to be too shocked if everyone wants to start allowing Hitler comparisons. But this double standard is out of hand. I’ve heard gasbags in just the last month characterize Move-On as a hate group based on this flap. If that’s so, then at this point the Republican party is too.

Update: Good God:

BECK: When they’re done with Fox, and you decide to speak out on something. The old, “first they came for the Jews, and I wasn’t Jewish.” When you have a question, and you believe that something should be asked, they’re a — totally fine with you right now; they have no problem with you. When they’re done with Fox and talk radio, do you really think they’re going to leave you alone if you want to ask a tough question? Do you really think that a man who has never had to stand against tough questions and has as much power as he does — do you really believe after he takes out the number one news network, do you really think that this man is then not going to turn on you? That you and your little organization is going to cause him any hesitation at all not to take you out? If you believe that, you should open up a history book, because you’ve missed the point of many brutal dictators. You missed the point on how they always start.

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