Craven New GOP Talking Points: Higher Taxation is Just Like the Holocaust

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
by Meg White

Last time I checked, I was not living in Nazi Germany.

But according to anti-tax activists, we're all standing in line for the gas chambers.

Yesterday, Glenn Beck pronounced capitalism dead and himself dead wrong. Raving in front of a huge screen showing old films of Nazi rallies, Beck said it's not communism or socialism we're heading toward, it's "fascism with a happy face."

Watch Think Progress' compilation:

In the video, Beck references the Tea Party movement. This is a group of people who plan to show their opposition to high taxation and big government by getting together on April 15 to protest.

On one online Tea Party forum, a poster who goes by "Doc" expressed disgust with the idea that Tax Day protesters were actually applying for permits from the government to protest.

(You can see the whole discussion here. It's worth a read if only to illustrate how these people see outside perception as an important tool to gather more support. For instance, one poster tells Doc violence will make it harder to recruit moderates commenting that "if there's too much of an uprising at this point (arrests, physical attacks, etc.) it could desuade [sic] a lot of people that might otherwise get involved" but that "if there still doesn't appear to be much affect [sic] in stalling the Communist agenda, I'd have to say other options may be necessary.")

In his advocacy for a proper protest, which he equates with those at the G20 conference this week, Doc evoked images of slavery:

Maybe I'm confused.

I thought we wanted to remind the federal government that WE are the boss and they are the servants. I thought we were angry at being abused by them and upset that they seem to view us as their niggers. They treat us as if we owe them our very survival and are dependent upon them, and that they can do as they will with our lives, our freedoms, our fortunes because they believe they own us.

...as well as Nazism:

Or maybe you'd have been amongst the Jews in Warsaw who didn't want to take up arms against their captors? There were literally hundreds of thousands of people in Europe during WWII who felt it was improper to use force to meet the force used to herd them into boxcars and to their eventual deaths...

I am old and fat. I own a small business and have been married for almost 23 years. I certainly don't relish the idea of rioting in the street. I will get trampled, I will get tear-gassed, I will be beaten, and I don't want to be!

But I'll be damned if I'll go placidly to the box-cars!

...all in the name of advocating violence to make a political point.

This is almost as bad as comparing Obama's expansion of Americorps to the establishment of the Hitler Youth, which was downright disgusting.

Not only is this hyperventilating embarrassing and counterproductive, it's also terribly offensive. I imagine anyone who went through the terrible experience of the Holocaust or slavery would have difficulty seeing exactly how their torturous experience is in any way comparable to having one's taxes increased.

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS