Hasner Compares Debt to Hitler’s Reich

Jason Attermann — July 8, 2011 – 11:52 am | Abusive Holocaust Rhetoric | Election 2012 | Republicans Comments (0) Add a comment

Former Florida House Majority Leader and U.S. Senate candidate Adam Hasner (R-FL) penned a disturbing article as an Independence Day message, comparing our national debt debate to Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany. The letter attempts to link the global threat of Hitler’s expansion to our national debt:

On July 4, 1941, as Hitler’s Reich spread its influence across Europe, President Roosevelt used a radio address to proclaim the Fourth of July holiday as an example to the world in its fight for freedom.  President Roosevelt said, ‘several new practices of tyranny have been making such headway that the fundamentals of 1776 are being struck down abroad, and definitely, they are threatened here.’

Nearly five months to the day later, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Despite the challenges, a generation of Americans would answer the call to save America, and the world, from a dark future under the control of brutal empires and savage dictators.

Today, the biggest threat to our liberty is not a foreign government, but our own.

Daniel Ruth of The St. Petersburg Times expressed his outrage at Hasner’s Nazi reference, accusing him of “grazing in the pandering fields of fearmongering and religion-baiting.”

[T]here is no evidence Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s Afrikakorps is getting ready to invade Wauchula. Nor have 6 million Jewish men, women and children been rounded up and murdered. Nor are V-1 rockets hurtling over Two Egg.

It is always a dangerous thing to attempt to connect the terror of Nazi Germany to the travails of American society. Kristallnacht is not the same thing as a partisan tiff over the debt ceiling.

This holds true especially for Hasner, who is Jewish. You would think he would appreciate that associating the darkness of the Holocaust to America’s economic challenges diminishes the horrors of Hitler’s reign and dulls public sensitivities toward the history of World War II. But then again, Hasner would have to actually think.

There is zero evidence anyone’s liberty is being stifled by a paper pusher working within the bowels of government. Nobody from the Department of Agriculture is telling you that you can’t worship, or assemble, or speak your mind, or own a gun.

But Hasner, when he isn’t playing the Triumph of the Will meets the Potomac card, has been grazing in the pandering fields of fearmongering and religion-baiting for quite some time.

In The Buzz section of The St. Petersburg Times, Hasner responded to claims that he compared President Obama to Hitler, but fell short of an apology:

Hasner called to say that he in no way was comparing Obama to Hitler (we revised our initial post), but rather he was referring to the threat posed by debt and our current government.

‘You are now personally offending me…I’m not comparing Obama or anybody else personally’ said Hasner, dismissing a question about why he would bring up Hitler in a July 4 message.

‘I didn’t bring up Hitler on July 4 first - FDR did,’ said Hasner, who once demanded Alan Grayson apologize for describing the deaths of uninsured Americans as ‘a holocaust.’

‘It’s outrageous for you to make the Obama comparison.’

The National Jewish Democratic Council condemns all invocations of Nazi Germany or the Holocaust to make political points. Such inappropriate and insensitive uses have no place in political discourse. Our domestic economic situation cannot be compared to life under Nazi Germany. Previously, Hasner criticized other politicians whom invoked the Holocaust. However, double standards are not acceptable and such references are never tolerable by anyone seeking or holding elected office.

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