Think Progress’s Lee Fang offers a disturbing cautionary tale: a distillation of the frayed edges of the ridiculous rhetoric that is the Obama-is-a-socialist-and-also-a-Nazi school. Here is Kitty Werthman, who led, during this weekend’s “How To Take Back America Conference,” a workshop entitled—no joke—“How to recognize living under Nazis & Communists.”
Per Werthman:
If we had our guns, we would have fought a bloody battle. So, keep your guns, and buy more guns, and buy ammunition. […] Take back America. Don’t let them take the country into Socialism. And I refer again, Hitler’s party was National Socialism. […] And that’s what we are having here right now, which is bordering on Marxism.
Yeah. It’d be kind of funny, if it weren’t so chilling.
Megan,
Serious question:
We live in a two party system. Do you have any sources who are Conservative or republican activists?
Because if you chose to write this story, it proves you don't. If the editors asked you to write it, then they are ignorant of the two party system.
Which is it?
#1 Posted by JSF, CJR on Mon 28 Sep 2009 at 07:50 PM
I keep waiting for this "Marxism" I hear so much about. If only!
#2 Posted by JN, CJR on Mon 28 Sep 2009 at 09:45 PM
Funny, CJR takes it's little digs at the video because CJR only gets its info from the left. But the speaker here was an eyewitness to Hitler's rise and is giving a cautionary tale because she sees the same things here.
When the left hyped that kind of story during the Bush years, the media were supportive. Dare question the status quo under Obama and CJR is on the other side.
#3 Posted by Dan Gainor, CJR on Tue 29 Sep 2009 at 09:35 AM
Kitty W. speaks of Hitler's rise to power in AUSTRIA. Which is rather odd, because if you recall, Hitler was actually elected in Germany. I realize it looks similar from here, but Hitler NEVER rose to power in Austria. He was invited in, surely, but that was after he was the chancellor of Germany.
#4 Posted by Thalia, CJR on Tue 29 Sep 2009 at 02:35 PM
Some of these angry-paranoid-freak comments are nearly as disturbing as this video. Making a wildly inarticulate statement and then acting as if a hypothetical reply "proves" anything one way or the other is delusional. Likewise, complaining that reporting on the existence of these remarks is taking "a little dig" at them . . . huh? I guess there is a lesson from Homeschool Philosophy 101 in there somewhere but the rest of us just can't grasp it, Cletus!
#5 Posted by Anonnie Muss, CJR on Tue 29 Sep 2009 at 05:37 PM
It would be nice to see an unedited video of her speech. I'm not convinced this hasn't been heavily edited.
#6 Posted by Angela, CJR on Wed 30 Sep 2009 at 08:44 AM
Thalia, her whole point is that Hitler didn't conquer by force. He conquered by popularity and coercion.
#7 Posted by Angela, CJR on Wed 30 Sep 2009 at 08:50 AM
The question you have not addressed is this-- is any of what she says true? I don't see any effort on your part (and you call yourselves journalists) to find out if its true. You seem to assume that it is a lie. Yet you know that Austria did volunteer to come under Hitler's leadership. So that much is true. Calling people nut cases is not journalism. I haven't read anything yet which tells me whether or not this woman is really from Austria, how she arrived in the United States and so on. Is she, for example, the right age to have seen these events? The anschluss was in 1939 or thereabouts. She would have to be in her middle 70's to be old enough to remember these events, I think. How about practicing a little journalism at the Columbia Journalism Review.
#8 Posted by Susan Salisbury, CJR on Mon 5 Apr 2010 at 02:47 PM
"Funny, CJR takes it's little digs at the video because CJR only gets its info from the left. But the speaker here was an eyewitness to Hitler's rise and is giving a cautionary tale because she sees the same things here."
She's an idiot. Hitler seized power by assassinating his political opponents in the early 1930s. Google 'Sturmabteilung' and get a clue, Dan and Angela.
The notion that Hitler "conquered by popularity and coercion" is the sort of revisionist history that only flies with people who watch Glenn Beck instead of reading books.
If Change for America was dragging Tea Partiers out of their homes and shooting them in the streets, then you'd have a point. But you don't. Both of you are just windbags polluting the air with noise.
#9 Posted by Hardrada, CJR on Mon 5 Apr 2010 at 08:00 PM