I know I may be preaching to the choir here, but there is a certain irony in the recent healthcare brouhaha that stupefies even my cynical soul; the fact that affluent, conservative, right wing demagogues like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Tim Philips, and the various conservative lobby groups like “Patients United Now” (PUN intended, evidently) are invoking…Nazism. Time, I think, for a patented Fearless History lesson.

In the 1920’s, in the wake of WWI, conservative elements of the German Weimar Republic looked around them at the devastation wrought by conservative, war-mongering leaders with a passion for Empire and blamed relatively liberal or non-political groups for their problems; Jews, Gypsies, Bolsheviks….anybody but the very people who got Germany into its mess. And what a mess it was! High unemployment, wounded veterans returning from an ill-conceived war with life-altering injuries and psychological scars that were inadequately treated by a populace ashamed to look at the wounds of their brave soldiers, and an economy in shambles which stifled creativity and entrepreneurship. Into this maelstrom of self-loathing came a figure that fired the imagination of the crowd, saying what they wanted to hear:

It’s not the German people’s fault!

Someone else must be to blame for the woes of society! Adolph Hitler’s speeches did not encourage lively debate, an exchange of ideas, nor a method for achieving equality and justice. Instead it incited the basest, most vicious instincts of a crowd that gave up its rational thought processes in favor of simplistic – and violent – urges.

In the 1920’s, this rhetoric came to a head with the so-called “Beer Hall Putsch” where the grass-roots nature of Nazism was directed to overthrow and derail the policies of the Weimar Republic through vitriolic, rabid, unthinking mob-mentality disruptions, protests, and violence. Hitler himself was apprehended and thrown in Jail (the same jail he wrote Mein Kampf in, by the way) for inciting the crowd to use violence – and not democratic voting – to overthrow the government. The whole while, the right-wing Nazi movement claimed MORAL SUPERIORITY and a devotion to GOD that they claim was lacking in their liberal opponents – most of whom were painted as Godless, atheist, non-Christian, and anti-Christian. The fact that Protestant Christianity would later be replaced in Hitler’s Germany with neo-Germanic paganism and a new trinity (The Fuhrer, the Fatherland, and The People) is beside the point; after all, once you’ve stripped people of the Christian notions of charity, love, compassion, passivity, and brotherhood while using the rhetoric of Christianity, it’s really just a slight nudge to bump the populace into believing in a new religion.

Of course, those who do not understand history are often forced to repeat the darker tragedies of the past, particularly if they allow themselves to be manipulated by forces that cynically use Anti-Nazi rhetoric while employing the very same tactics of the Nazis. Let’s run through the checklist:

Conservative demagogues blaming a relatively liberal or non-political body of people for the ills brought about by a previous conservative government? Check

Large crowds incited to violence, the quashing of rational debate and open dialogue? Check.

High unemployment, wounded veterans average citizens would rather not be reminded of, and an economy in the tank? Check.

Claims that the “grass roots” groups holds a monopoly on godliness and morality while simultaneously claiming atheism or anti-Christian values in the government? Check.

Conservative demagogues urging political assassination and discouraging rational exchanges of ideas? Check.

Is Tim Philips the new Fuhrer? Probably not, but combined with Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and the host of right-wingnuts intimating that violence and political assassination are legitimate methods of enacting political change, we certainly have a rather willing SS in place and the brownshirts from small town America are right there, manning the stockades of Berlin…I mean moral, upstanding small-town Main street.

By the way, how many Hitlers have there been? Fearless History counts at least half a dozen: Hitler himself, Stalin, Ayatollah Khomeini, Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong-Il, and now (and perhaps most ironically) our President of the United States, Barack Obama. I have no doubt that Glenn, Rush, Tim, and all the other conservative pundits out there are smart, perhaps even well educated, but they are cynically selling something; conservatism. And like any salesman, they will do anything it takes to make the opponent look like the scion of the devil himself – Amway stoked the fears of Satan in its smear campaign against Procter and Gamble; a claim that is unbelievable now but which worried the bejezus out of “small town” (and small mind) America. And just as Amway wanted you to buy their product at all costs, so too does the neo-conservative elements want you to buy their version of history.Of course, if you believe them, then you probably believe that a pill can enlarge your penis, an exiled Prince from Namibia wants YOU to help him move money, and that cute girls want to talk to YOU right now.

“God! What fools these mortals be!” – Puck

I think George Orwell had a name for the kind of rhetoric being employed by conservative evoking Nazism: Doublespeak