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Only A Former Nazi Would Know

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I found a rather tasty little exercise in progressive thinking at Kos on this glorious Saturday morning that I have decided -- with the approval of a 12-member working committee -- to share with the Collective for everyone's shared and mutual benefit.
Supposedly this diarist's father was is “Ex-Nazi” who later on in life turns into a Progressive with the uncanny ability to point out that Fox News is no different than former Nazi propaganda and that people who identify as conservative are, well, Nazis. I mean, I think a former Nazi knows what a Nazi looks like and nothing is more identical to Nazism than a conservative. We all know there is nothing more closely related to Nazism than limited government, individual freedom and free-markets.
Enjoy.
Some idiot at Daily Kos wrote:
"This is a joke, isn't it?" My Ex-Nazi Father's Reaction to Fox News

by MaikeH Fri Apr 03, 2009

In response to a request from BrandonM and buckeyekarl, I am going to expand on a comment I made the other day in response to GregMitch's diary "Colbert went where 'NYT' feared to tread on Glenn Beck."

Before you follow me below the fold, I should probably give you a Godwin's Law-related warning: the N-word (the other N-word, that is) will come up.

Well, here it is, the long version:

Whenever Pope Benedict comes up in conversation, someone (at least here in America) will bring up his Hitler Youth past. Actually, though, he was a rather reluctant member (automatically enrolled by being a public school student) who went to meetings only if he absolutely had to. He did not turn into Germany's equivalent of Pat Robertson until the late 1960s.

The same cannot be said for my Dad. He loved Hitler Youth meetings. It was great fun, like being in Boy Scouts. My father's young brain absorbed the ideology like a sponge. He was not the only member of his family who had bought into the party line. His father (my grandfather), even though he had Jewish ancestry (his parents were not married, and his Jewish father had been left off the birth certificate), was a Nazi with all his heart and soul.

During the war, when my father's hometown was bombed and 80% of the infrastructure destroyed, all public schools were evacuated. My father and uncle spent two years in a camp in Austria, with government-approved teachers, where they experienced the end of the war and the so-called Thousand Year Empire. Abandonded by the adults, the boys fended for themselves until one day they decided to take a chance and try to find their way back home, not knowing whether their parents were still alive.

In Germany, my grandparents' house was completely flattened and my grandfather was in a mental hospital, where he would stay for the rest of his life. The rest of the family, though, was reunited, and my grandmother found a job as a cook on the British base. My father, whose education had been seriously disrupted, left school after tenth grade and started a clerical apprenticeship in a publishing house, where he stayed until his retirement in 1996.

My Dad eventually completely abandoned his former political views. In fact, he became a progressive. In their younger days, he and my mother were both active in their union, and my mother is a member of the SPD to this day (when former chancellor Gerhard Schroeder visited San Antonio, I got to have a beer with him). When my father moved up in the company, he would be conflicted during labor disputes since he was now middle management and couldn't participate in strikes anymore.

In spite of his complete 180, my father never forgot the propaganda he was subjected to in his childhood. Whenever he was really drunk, he would start singing Nazi songs, and my mother had to drag him home before he got beaten up.

In 2004, my father visited me in San Antonio for the last time. Due to his strong opposition to the war in Iraq and the death penalty, he was not crazy about coming to Texas, but he was curious to see the new condo that I had bought. So he and my mother came for Christmas.
One day, we had the TV on, and for whatever reason (that I have forgotten), we were watching Fox News. My father watched for about ten minutes, then he said, "What is this?"

"Fox News," I answered.

"This is some kind of joke, right?"

"Uhm, no."

"You mean this is an actual news show? Not satire?" My father obviously thought I was pulling his leg.

"No, it's not satire. Why are you asking?" I said.

"Because all you have to do is change a few adjectives, and it's Nazi talk."

Wow. I had never thought about why "conservatives" had always made me cringe. But he definitely had a point. Now I am not saying that Republicans are Nazis, but they do employ totalitarian rhetoric, and sometimes... well, they do sound like Nazis. Here are some eerie parallels:

- "homeland" and all the imagery connected to it (also prominently featured in patriotic songs)

- Invocation of patriotism, of which there is supposedly never enough

- Glorification of the military while regarding actual soldiers as disposable

- Glorification of motherhood with ulterior motives (the Lebensborn movement got started with homes for unwed mothers to prevent abortions)

- "We" are the good guys, not because of what we do (or don't do) but because we say so

- "We" are superior at anything and everything, again because we say so

- Discrimination against a particular minority is morally justified to preserve national security

- Even though racism and gender discrimation are considered morally right, ideology supercedes racial, ethnic, or gender affiliation. Minority members are tolerated ("We decide who's a Jew") and women can have careers if they are usefull to the party

- A crime or injustice was committed against us, so we must punish somebody, whether they had anything to do with it or not

- If we lose a war, it's the left-wing traitors' fault

- Everybody else is out to get us, and we must get them first

- Messed up grammar and nonsensical sentence structures interrupted by bumper sticker-style slogans. If you ever tried to read Mein Kampf in the original (I don't recommend it), you would be reminded of a Sarah Palin speech.

- speaking of Sarah Palin rallies, need I say more...

The one ingredient that the wingnuts are missing is the personality cult. They simply have not found a charismatic figure to build a movement around. There is Ronald Reagan (a.k.a. St. Ronnie), who is good for mytho-historical legend building, but, being that he's dead, he cannot go out and campaign. What they need is a Barack Obama with a military/war hero background. Alas, the characters they have been trying to sell us have come across as caricatures of what they were supposed to represent.

My father died in 2006, so obviously he missed last year's elections. If he had witnessed the McCain campaign, he would remind us daily what a bullet we dodged.

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Stalin be praised that we are not going down the slippery slope to Nazism, but rather good old fashioned, and perfectly safe for The Children(TM) socialism!

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Thank you, Chairman. I saw that during my daily masturbate-to-DK session but was too overwhelmed by the tingling and too busy making the mast-O hand gesture to operate the Ctrl C.

It's so Progressive it made my head spin to the left!

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Psychological projection at its best. Compulsive lying at its worst. Not convincing enough, especially the part about Obama with a military history. Wasn't that a John Kerry's assigned function, which he failed to perform miserably?

His father turning from growing up as a Nazi into a "progressive" is such a natural move that there had to be no reassessment of values at all, except perhaps, anti-Semitism, and even that has also become very "progressive" these days.

It's like a member of Young Pioneers and then Komsomol in the USSR later becoming a good Democrat voter. Hardly much of a transformation.

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Comrade Red Square, I thought Komsomol was a bathroom cleanser?

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Singing Nazi songs while drunk? On bathroom cleaner, none the less! Ah yes comrades, in wine there is truth. He has taught his son the Nazi Post-Mortem Dialectic(TM). He has made his son a good Nazi. So touching... it is making a tear come to old haggardly Red Roosters eye...

Heil Obama! Heil Obama! Heil Obama!

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Comrades there are but two kinds of Socialist. An International Socialist, one who seeks to unite all Socialist nations under one banner. And the National Socialist, who reserves his brand of Socialism solely for the toiling masses within his own borders, his neighbors be damned.

At the G20 Summit we witnessed several Socialist leaders, all of whom lobbied for relief on a wide range of issues unique to their own homeland, Obama included. Not one was willing to set aside his or her personal needs and wants for the greater good.

I leave it to your judgment, what does that make them?

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Dear Abby,

Several years ago you ran an item in your column titled, "My Ex-Nazi Father's Reaction to Fox News." Could you please run it again, so I can clip it out and send it to my niece? She's recently started watching Fox News, and I'm very concerned about what all that misleading information and propaganda will do to her ignorant mind (she never went to college).

Thanks a bunch.

~Concerned and Horrified Aunt in Seattle

Dear CHAS:

Since 9/11, "My Ex-Nazi Father's Reaction to Fox News" has been one of my most popular columns and the most requested, along with "The Rainbow Bridge", "Please God I'm Only 17", "Bare Feet and Broken Glass in the Sand", and my famous recipe for "No-Grasshoppers Grasshopper Pie." While we've had to change a few names of public figures to keep up with the times, I agree its message remains timeless and important, so I'll run it again, with pleasure.

Love, Abby

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Yes, Heil to The Obamessiah, he canbe all things to us, Messiah, Fearless leader, Chief Bottle washer. Ahhhhh The Glorious world of Next Tuesday.

Commissar Red Star CEO Hemlock Hospitality INC
Director of Kicking Doors at Midnight
Keeper of the sacred Plasma Cutter
Herdsman of Rainbow Farting Unicorns
Keeper of the Faith

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We all know that Nazi does not in any way stand for Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, which does not translate into National Socialist German Workers' Party. It's policies had nothing whatsoever to do with Socialism even though they looked exactly like it. Nothing whatsoever.

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Correct Comrade Joe, If you read there history books 1938 thru 1945 did not exist in Germany Nothing happened, everyone was on vacation. There was no holocaust....

Commissar Red Star CEO Hemlock Hospitality INC
Director of Kicking Doors at Midnight
Keeper of the sacred Plasma Cutter
Herdsman of Rainbow Farting Unicorns
Keeper of the Faith

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Red Star wrote:Correct Comrade Joe, If you read there history books 1938 thru 1945 did not exist in Germany Nothing happened, everyone was on vacation. There was no holocaust....

Really, I had always thought that the kkkapitalist, fascist pig Hitler took over and then murdered the People in droves. I thought he then turned on our beloved Uncle Joe, but Communism showed its superiority by effortlessly smashing the kkkapitalist pig and liberating almost half of Europe. The People there saw how wonderful the Workers' Paradise in Eastern Europe was and came there in droves. In fact, I thought so many People were coming to our side that Amerikkka built the Berlin Wall to keep them in.

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Red Square wrote:
His father turning from growing up as a Nazi into a "progressive" is such a natural move that there had to be no reassessment of values at all, except perhaps, anti-Semitism, and even that has also become very "progressive" these days.

It's like a member of Young Pioneers and then Komsomol in the USSR later becoming a good Democrat voter. Hardly much of a transformation.

The transformation was merely dropping the nationalism from the socialism and becoming a citizen of the world. But hey, didn't Hilter and Nazis want to make everyone a World Citizen(TM)?

Rule Germania!





Ugh, so progressive! Nothing warms my heart more than images of the one world utopia to come!

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We progressives have already found our Hitler cult of personality. Too bad the Nazi-conservatives have not found their "Dear Leader" yet. They need to just give up,already.They will never be as cool as us.

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Red Rooster wrote:Singing Nazi songs while drunk? On bathroom cleaner, none the less! Ah yes comrades, in wine there is truth. He has taught his son the Nazi Post-Mortem Dialectic(TM). He has made his son a good Nazi. So touching... it is making a tear come to old haggardly Red Roosters eye...

Heil Obama! Heil Obama! Heil Obama!

To hear a rooster crow this salutation! What a glorious sound. It should be coupled with an alarm clock that plays "Ode to Joy."


 
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