Those Liberals

On his radio show this morning Thom Hartmann read this excerpt from a recent conservative column he was discussing:

It must be admitted that all this was partly the result of extraordinary crafty tactics on the part of Liberals on the one hand, and obvious official stupidity or naïveté on the other hand. The Liberals were too clever to allow a simultaneous attack to be made on the whole of their Press. No one section functioned as cover for the other.…the national papers, also in Liberal hands, knew how to camouflage themselves as model examples of objectivity. They studiously avoided harsh language, knowing well that blockheads are capable of judging only by external appearances and never able to penetrate to the real depth and meaning of anything.… This form of human frailty was carefully studied and understood by the Liberal Press.

Certainly in days to come the Liberals will raise a tremendous cry throughout their newspapers once a hand is laid on their favorite nest, once a move is made to put an end to this scandalous Liberal Press and once this instrument which shapes public opinion is brought under Conservative control and no longer left in the hands of Liberals and enemies of the people. I am certain that this will be easier for us than it was for our fathers. The scream of the twelve-inch shrapnel is more penetrating than the hiss from a thousand Liberal newspaper vipers. Therefore let them go on with their hissing.

By means of the Liberal Press, the Liberals spread the colossal falsehood about ‘American Militarism’ throughout the world and tried to inculpate America by every possible means, while at the same time the Democratic Party refused to assent to the measures that were necessary for the adequate training of our national defense forces.

What soon gave me cause for very serious consideration were the activities of the Liberals in certain branches of life, into the mystery of which I penetrated little by little. Was there any shady undertaking, any form of foulness, especially in cultural life, in which at least one Liberal did not participate? On putting the probing knife carefully to that kind of abscess one immediately discovered, like a maggot in a putrescent body, a little Liberal who was often blinded by the sudden light.

In my eyes the charge against Liberalism became a grave one the moment I discovered the Liberal activities in the Press, in art, in literature and the theatre. All unctuous protests were now more or less futile. … Here was a pestilence, a moral pestilence, with which the public was being infected.

I was happy at last to know for certain that a Liberal is not an American.

After he was done reading Hartmann admitted that the word "America" was a replacement for "Germany" and "Liberal" for "Jew." It's an excerpt from Mein Kampf.

This goes back to a 2004 column Hartmann wrote for CommonDreams.org (though he makes a few unwarranted generalizations of his own). Anyway I think his point is mostly valid, as you hear and read this kind of rhetoric all the time now from extremists in the U.S. You could even do the same thing with some of these sentences with the replacement word "climate scientists."

Someone had some fun with this Mein Kampf excerpt here.