Bush-Cheney Invoke Hitler Sounds and Imagery
Listed in: Other Domestic Policy, NJDC News, Press Releases
Washington, DC: The official Internet site for the campaign to re-elect George Bush and Dick Cheney (http://www.georgewbush.com) is currently featuring a campaign video including imagery and sounds of Adolf Hitler. The video, titled "The Faces of John Kerry's Democratic Party," intersperses the Nazi sound and video with segments of speeches by Senator John Kerry, as well as several former Democratic presidential candidates including former House Democratic Leader Richard Gephardt, former Vermont Governor Howard Dean, and former Vice President Al Gore. The GOP video -- which is featured on the central page of the Bush-Cheney campaign Internet site -- falsely labels the Hitler imagery has having been taken from ads that were "sponsored by MoveOn.org." MoveOn.org in fact never sponsored the ads, and they were never aired.
"It is unconscionable that the Bush-Cheney campaign would invoke this horrible imagery and knowingly lie about where it came from," said National Jewish Democratic Council Executive Director Ira N. Forman. "The Bush-Cheney campaign knows full well that this footage was never promoted by any of the Democrats shown in the GOP video, and it was also never 'sponsored by MoveOn.org,' as the GOP spot claims. This completely unacceptable footage was submitted by two individuals to a MoveOn.org Voter Fund contest last winter, as two submissions among more than 1,500. These entries were promptly and properly rejected by MoveOn in January, and removed from MoveOn's Internet site. Both the NJDC and MoveOn.org quickly denounced these submissions.
"The Bush-Cheney campaign is utterly disingenuous in its claims, and it is equally sickening for them to be further circulating this footage. But it is certainly in keeping with a Republican theme of inappropriately invoking Holocaust imagery -- including Republican Representative Tom Cole's assertion in March that voting against President Bush is like voting for Hitler, and White House insider Grover Norquist's October comparison of the estate tax and the Holocaust. We can only hope that the Bush-Cheney campaign gains some sense of civility and engages in a discussion of the issues, instead of resorting to a campaign focused on the most loathsome Hitler footage," Forman added.
