Are the teabaggers really so dumb as to not know the difference between Nazis and Communists?

The BBQ Pit
21

Well, “down with the Czars” and hammers and sickles are (entirely coincidentaly in this case) a good match.

I’ve had communist and nazist friends, and the first where always going on about the fascist pigs and the other wouldn’t shut the fuck up about the bolsheviks this or that. Put a raving communist and a frothing nazi in a room and you’ll have to pick up a team from CERN to analyse the aftermath.
So this people really are moronic simpletons with much more anger than anything resembling an actual idea of what the heck is going around outside and inside their brains.

22

No. Look, you’re not going to win any points unless you recognize where these people are coming from and address the point they think they’re making.

The idea is that differences between Nazism and Communism were just so much sloganeering for the same basic mindset: consolidate power in the state by stripping rights from the people, so that an untrammeled ruling party – which doesn’t bother with free elections any more than it tolerates dissent – can regulate industries and distribute wealth as it pleases, with no actual regard to the citizenry regardless of which pretense happens to get claimed.

So if I’m a budding totalitarian, the idea is that I’ll use whatever pitch is most convenient; I’d appeal to white supremacists if I’m seeking power in '20s-era Germany, sure as I’d talk up Marxist ideals if I were ostensibly pushing a dictatorship of the proletariat – but I’d only ever really be pushing a dictatorship of, y’know, me and mine.

And so, they reason, in present-day America – well, you’d pitch it as sensible gun-control legislation and health-care reform or whatever, and you’d start cracking down on free expression by talking up diversity or railing against hate speech or whatever, but it’d always be about pushing the same goal: I don’t care how we get there, you’d say; all I ultimately want is my own secret police knocking on doors at midnight when a nation of informants keep turning each other in – and since I need the support of gullible locals to get there in the first place, I’ll use whichever sweet-sounding promises mark the path of least resistance.

23

The ignorance about Hitler is absolutely impressive considering the amount of freely available and reliable information on the man. Things everybody affiliated with the tea parties and the Rabid Right seem to know about Hitler (and, coincidentally, things that they also know to be “true” about Obama):

1- Hitler was an incredible orator. (Fact: most historians believe his oratory was overrated, and it usually degenerated into screams and tirades more like an out-of-control Pentecostal than an intellectual speech.)

2- Hitler came to power in a free election. (Fact: He never received a majority of votes and the Nazis used violence and intimidation and bribery against their political rivals from day one.)

3- Hitler was pro gun-control. (Fact: Hitler had a private militia that he used to kill members of his own party before he ever became chancellor.)

4- Hitler was a socialist. (Fact: The National Socialists were, by the time of Hitler [who was not their founder], socialist in much the same way that Creation Science is science; they were fascists. If Universal Healthcare makes one socialist and socialism makes one Hitler then it’s odd that England, France, and Denmark are all Nazi nations now.)

5- Hitler was alright and preached tolerance… at first! (Fact: even other antisemitic politicians thought he was a rabid fanatic on the subject from Day 1; while Mein Kampf did not mention genocide, he clearly stated that if he came to power he wanted Jews to lose their citizenship and businesses and all non German born Jews to be immediately expelled.)

6- Hitler was pro-choice. (Fact: while Hitler legalized and later mandated abortion for those he deemed “undesirables” he outlawed abortion for German Christians; forcing it on some and denying it to others is about as far from pro-choice as you can get.)

And then the notions of Nazism=Communism as noted in the OP- almost too stupid to address. Hitler hated Communists almost as much as he hated Jews and many of his top echelon (especially Göring) hated them much moreso. THE CONCENTRATION CAMPS WERE BEGUN FOR COMMUNISTS! Göring was loudly calling for the immediate arrests of all Communists and the execution without trial of their leaders in retaliation for the Reichstag fire before it was even proven they were responsible (IF they were responsible).
I can only assume the fact that both communism and Nazism are evil means that they’re the same thing, roughly like serial killers are evil and child molesters are evil and thus serial killers are child molesters (or what a logic professor I had called the “God is love/love is blind/Stevie Wonder is blind, thus Stevie Wonder is God, q.e.d.” school of logic.

Of course I’ve heard several Republican pundits state with a straight face on interviews that the picture of Obama dressed as a witch doctor aren’t racist. The biggest irony is that Obama is about as far from Hitler as you can get ideologically and yet- as much as I hate to Godwinize- Fox News (and Glenn Beck in particular) and the rabid right are pulling stunts and making claims that would give Goebbels an erection from pure jealousy.

Though I can think of many exceptions to the “a person is smart” bit.

And I’ve often wondered why the only things everybody seems to know about history are invariably wrong.

24

No, that’s Sara Lee.

25

Or Yogi.

26

They chose to call themselves “teabaggers”? I think that, right there, answers your questions about their intelligence.

27

could be worse they could be Space Commie Nazis
That aside… it is really weird to see how fear has bred such lunacy. I mean a rational person can be against the reforms suggested and might have good valid points, but the loudest arguments coming out from the opposition seem to be chicken littles hysterically wailing about the death of America.

Do they not know that what makes America great is not its economic or military might but that it is an unending experiment in representative Free Democracy valuing the rights of the individual and adapting to the times to changes itself to become a better nation for its people. (This is from a furriner so take what you will from that)

28

For the sake of completeness, I’m going to assume that everyone here has seen this enlightening little video. A must-see, if not.

29

I do recall a professor of mine saying that living under them wasn’t much different, that their methods of oppression and torture were pretty much the same. It was just the ideology that was different.
That’s the only justification I can think of. But when when it comes to protesting against a hypothetical fascist or commie threat, your methods have to be different.

30

Free Dumb! Free Dumb! Free Dumb!

31

It never ceases to amuse me that, despite their claims that they are the party that speaks for the ordinary Joe in the street, as opposed to Republicans who speak for the rich and big business, it’s the Democrats who show most contempt for those ordinary Joes, sneering at their ignorance and gullibility.

Why don’t you just cut to the chase, guys, and disqualify the ‘ignorant’ from voting. After all, you know what’s best for them, why bother their little heads with politics?

32

Wait. Are you really saying that people who believe that Barack Obama’s name is in the bible, and that it translates to “Antichrist”, or who literally believe that Obama is a Nazi, deserve anything but contempt? Really?

33

Of course they don’t deserve to be treated with contempt. They deserve to be exploited. And you can’t exploit someone if you try to educate them.

34

Don’t know, or are determined to rewrite. A few years ago I heard Andrew Schlafly, founder of the Conservapedia interviewed on NPR. He came across as a moron. One thing he said was that the Conservapedia’s entry on the Democratic Party did not identify it with Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans because they did not want to so “legitimize” it – as if age conferred “legitimacy” on a political party, and ignoring the fact that, whenever you date the Democratic Party’s origins, it was definitely in existence before the Republican Party was founded in 1854. Or maybe it’s just the association with Jefferson that would “legitimize” it in their eyes. Damned silly either way.

The Conservapedia page on the Democratic Party states:

All of which is at least arguable in historical terms; but insistence on the point remains damned silly.

I also, on other boards, have seen conservatives harping and harping on the Democratic Party’s history of racism and Klan associations and the Republican Party’s history of support for emancipation and civil rights – as if any of that still mattered at all today, after the massive exchange of constituencies and regional power bases between the parties that came in the wake of Nixon’s Southern Strategy.

35

Glen Beck, et al., seem to have that exact same idea.

36

Okay, turn in your voter registration at the door please.

You’re defending ignorance? Shouldn’t you be on some other board?

37

Or Commies from Mars.

38

Bingo.

39

By the same token, the Democratic Republic of Germany (East Germany) was a democracy and a republic, because the country’s name uses both words, instead of the one-party police state it actually was.

:rolleyes: at the stupidity of the claim

40

It’s something I’ve thought for a while, especially when I’m being exceedingly cynical about politics. The left tells the average American, “The data we’ve collected suggest you’re not that smart, but we’d like to fix that.” The right jumps in with, “How dare you call this fine, upstanding, patriotic citizen of the greatest nation in the world stupid! This is a real American starts sobbing and you liberals just hate America and everything it stands for!” And lo, the votes and money come rolling in.