Comparison of Speaker Pelosi To Hitler

David Streeter — October 16, 2009 – 9:23 am | Abusive Holocaust Rhetoric | Democrats | GOP Hypocrisies | Republicans | Stop the Smears Comments (1) Add a comment

Recently, the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) tweeted a link to a video linking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to Adolf Hitler. This incident is part of a disturbing trend that National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC) President David A. Harris told The Hill:

The GOP and conservatives’ use of Holocaust rhetoric has reached and unprecedented levels. It has to stop. It’s profoundly offensive to many many people.

NJDC’s efforts to get NRCCC to remove the video were successful, and a spokesperson for the NRCC admitted their tweet was done “in poor taste.”

But poor taste aside, it appears that conservatives just do not understand why comparisons to Hitler are so offensive. Bill Pascoe of the conservative Foundation for American Freedom believes that it is okay to compare American leaders to Hitler. He even encourages the NRCC in his recent column from Congressional Quarterly:

To begin, no one at the NRCC had anything to do with the creation of the video clip in question, which is a clever melding of a very popular clip from a Hitler biopic, “Der Untertag” — released under the title “Downfall” in the United States. All anybody at the NRCC did was watch the clip, think it was a funny way to parody Pelosi and the Democrats’ approach to health care overhaul, and Tweet it — that is, link to the video clip in the NRCC’s Twitter feed, which has about 4,500 followers. For this, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee went utterly nuts, declaring that the NRCC was comparing Pelosi to Adolf Hitler, and demanding that Minority Leader John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, chastise Sessions and demand the removal of “this vile Tweet.” The proper response from the NRCC should have been, “Man up. Politics ain’t bean bag — and you know it.”

But the most telling part is that Pascoe admits that he finds this sort of “humor” funny:

My personal favorite has nothing to do with politics, unless one counts USC Trojan football as political: Hitler Defends Pete Carroll.

Whether someone is a football coach or a member of the United States Congress, comparisons and linkage to Hitler are unacceptable. They are “outrageous and inappropriate” and it is unbelievable that someone would have the audacity to compare the Speaker of the House of Representatives to one of history’s most vile tyrants. If Pascoe and his right wing ilk, including Glenn Beck of Fox News, truly do not understand why comparisons to Hitler are offensive, then perhaps they need a history lesson so that they can understand the severity of the Holocaust and that Nazism is not a joke. Maybe they should take a weekend trip to the U.S. Holocaust Museum and see what Nazism accomplished and the destruction that still lingers from its tyranny. Maybe then they will get it.

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