When Nazi Charges Fly, Democracy is in Trouble

August 8, 2009

Dear Citizens and Elected Officials:

I had hoped to call my next economic post "Look Back in Anger: Wall Street Insiderism, Oligopoly, and the Threat to Democracy," but it looks like the anger and the threats have already arrived early, this August, in a different forum. I'm talking about the Right wing "game plan" on health care, and more specifically, the charges of, and comparisons to, Nazis leaders and policies made by Rush Limbaugh here:
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_080609/content/01125106.gues... [1]

I know many Democrats and progressives will say it's "just a waste of time to listen to Limbaugh," but I disagree, and I urge all interested citizens and officials to read his brief posting, which is entitled "Whose Swastikas, Speaker Pelosi?"

If you scroll down to the third image in Limbaugh's article, you'll see the outrageous and completely fabricated comparison of the Obama health care campaign symbol with a Nazi totem at a large rally. They are not similar at all, and please note that the blue coloration tries to make up for the lack of any physical similarity.

The Obama health care symbol is basically the "Caduceus" of the ancient Greeks, the rod/wings and entwined serpents, which was adopted by the US Army Medical Corps in 1912, and by the AMA briefly, but abandoned for a simpler version. Then it is wielded into the presidential campaign symbol and national colors. Thanks to Wikipedia at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caduceus [2]

I would invite any good defamation lawyer to weigh in on this fabrication: accusing a political leader or policy movement of adopting Nazi symbols and worse, policies, is about as defamatory as you can get, in my non-legal opinion. But this is direct political combat of the basest sort, so my own amateur legal instincts tell me that it would be a very tough path to tread and win in court, given the leeway such matters are granted. I urge readers, though, to examine the entire text of Limbaugh's additional political analogies. Painful but necessary. Here's two brief samples, just to make clear the nature of what is going on:

From Limbaugh:

"...the party, the Democrat Party and where its taken this country, the radical left leadership of this party bears much more resemblance to Nazis policies than anything we on the right believe in at all, and I'll go through that list in a second... They accuse us of being Nazis and Obama's got a health care logo that's right out of Adolf Hitler's playbook. Now what are the similarities between the Democrat Party of today and the Nazi Party in Germany? They hated big business and, of course, we all know that they were opposed to Jewish capitalism. They were insanely, irrationally against pollution...""

If Mr. Limbaugh would trouble to put his accusations to the very basic field test of who the Nazis first arrested and threw into concentration camps, he would find, behind the barbed wire, no big business leaders, but rather the leaders of the communist, socialist and social democratic parties, trade union leaders, indepedent and left leaning intellectuals, quite a number of whom were Jewish. And they would be the ones that had survived the street battles, assassinations and early torture chambers.

The concentration camps were established early in Germany, in March of 1933, and by the end of the year there were 50. Communists were first to be systematically targeted. Here's the answer to Limbaugh's charge of the Nazis being anti-big business from the Winner of Israel's Shazar Prize for Historical Writing:

"After gaining control of the government, the Nazis focused their energies against the labor unions and the large Labor party. In the spring of 1933 these bodies still appeared to be a solid, organized bloc in which the Nazis had failed to make any inroads as compared with the foothold they had gained with the bourgeoisie. Early in May, however, the National Socialists landed a crushing blow that broke the labor front in short order. For the first time the Nazis made use of deception on a large scale, a technique they were eventually to perfect as a means of psychological warfare against their victims. May Day (May 1), the workers' holiday, was declared a national holiday under the official name National Labor Day. In a nationwide broadcast of a long speech delivered at a mass meeting in Berlin, Hitler announced that the slogan for the day would be "Honor labor and honor the laborer!" He proclaimed an end to the class war that had impaired the national spirit, so that from then on all Germans, "brain workers and fist workers," would be united in their labor under the leadership of National Socialism for the good of the people and the state. The following morning the meaning of these words became clear: units of the SA and the SS seized the offices, homes, clubs and banks owned by the socialist trade unions and most of their leaders and many of their active members were arrested, disappearing into prisons and concentration camps. The unions, with their 4.5 million members, were disbanded...A week later, on May 10, Hitler mounted his assault on the Social Democratic party. Throughout Germany the Nazi rulers seized the party's offices, funds, and more than a hundred of its newspapers....On June 22 the Social Democratic party itself was officially banned. It was not necessary for Hitler to move against the bourgeois parties, which included his Conservative partners; they disintegrated and folded on their own initiative...

Of all the bases of power in the Weimar Republic, only two still retained their independence: industrialists and the army...Employers also had to join a new organization under Nazi leadrship, and their roles and rights were defined by special regulations. But they effectively remained independent in their economic activities and were accorded broader powers vis-a-vis their employees. The same cannot be said of the middle class, however...which had played an important role in bringing Hitler to power, (they) waited for the rewards he had promised. Instead, their organizations were swamped by the Gleichschaltung {Nazi policy of coordination}, losing their independence and being forbidden to engage in any activity outside the framework of the all-embracing labor organization."

From The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jewry, 1932-1945, by Leni Yahil (Oxford University Press, 1990). From Chapter 3: Jews in Germany During the early Days of Nazi Rule (Through the End of 1935), Pages 56-58.

Now one can grasp the obvious - that it wouldn't be very hard - and it would even logically flow from Mr. Limbaugh's charges against Democrats and what he has gotten completely wrong about Germany in the 1930's - to keep the charges flying. But I'll leave it at the complete and utter distortion that Limbaugh has published about the nature of the Nazi regime.

I do have one local request: I think Congressman Van Hollen should have a Montgomery County community meeting on health care, at a big and accommodating location, and give all citizens a chance to be heard, including those who didn't get a chance on universal, single-payer, those who want a strong "public option" kept in the Congressional plans, as well, as yes, those who want to keep the status-quo. It would also give us all the chance to stand up to the Right, face-to-face, and let them know how we feel, should they choose to bring the tactics they have employed at other locations around the country.

This is a time of trial for American democracy, not our first by any means. At no time since the 1850's have portions of the American political spectrum held such apparently irreconcilable positions on the nature and role of government, the powers and policies it can or should wield, and the future shape of the American political economy. If that sounds a bit too far fetched, it comes from my own experiences with the American Right, and exactly the type of extended, and cordial conversations which moderates urge us to have over those proverbial kitchen tables about health care policy. That Health Care conversation, which is very important in its own right, is now, however, illuminating for all to see, the vast chasms between us.

I was already planning to write about those chasms by reviewing Paul Starr's article "Liberalism for Now," from the July 16th, 2009 issue of The New York Review of Books, which in turn is a consideration of the questions raised by Ronald Dworkin's book, Is Democracy Possible Here? Principles for a New Political Debate. I'll save a more detailed review for the coming post, but leave you with the question directly framed from them: "Both Obama and Dworkin pursue liberal aims within a vision of a wider democratic partnership that would include conservatives, even if conservatives refuse their overtures."

Now that certainly seems to be where we are right now, and conservatives are certainly refusing, to put it mildly.

A much less optimistic take on the same question comes from Thomas Frank's The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule.

Just now, in light of events, and what I have written, Thomas Frank is winning this argument. Here's a paragraph from the very last page of his book:

"It would be nice if electing Democrats was all that was required to resuscitate the America that the {Right} wingers flattened, but it will take far more that that: years of hard political work, a direct engagement with and repudiation of laissez-faire, and a reconstruction project of massive proportions. A wholesale renovation of the federal apparatus, for one thing, must come before there can be any return to the middle-class state. More basic still - and infinitely more difficult - is a revival of the social movements of the left that brought liberalism into being in the first place. At its core, liberalism is a philosophy of compromise, and without a force on the left to neutralize the tremendous magnetism exerted by money, liberalism will naturally be drawn ever further to the right."

One would have thought, and hoped, that our nation's near descent into another Great Depression, and the loss of millions of jobs and the health care that goes with them, would have softened hearts and minds, and attitudes, towards the national health care debate, letting citizens realize the precariousness of our protections. Instead, you know far too well where the Right has taken this debate. If our national flirtation with economic disaster hasn't done it, what exactly will soften the hard hearts, and brutal economic policies that the Right stands for, and has stood for 30 years? I'll be writing about that in coming editions.

Until then, stand up for democracy, and stand up to the Right.

Bill Neil
Rockville, MD