For Fox News, only when Republicans are the target

January 16, 2004

The controversy over comparisons between George W. Bush and Adolf Hitler in two ads submitted to the anti-Bush ad contest run by the online activist group MoveOn.org says less about the state of left discourse than it does about the double standards at Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation.

News Corp's Fox News Channel started the controversy on January 4, airing Republican National Committee chair Ed Gillespie's complaint about the Bush/Hitler comparison. "That's the kind of tactics we're seeing on the left today in support of these Democratic presidential candidates," Gillespie charged, calling such tactics "despicable."

The whole next day (1/5/04), this was a major story on Fox News Channel. John Gibson asked, "What about the hating Bush movement, the MoveOn.org and George Soros sponsoring these ads that compare Bush to Hitler?"--before being corrected that the ads were not sponsored by MoveOn (or Soros, a funder of the group), and were taken down in response to complaints.

Sean Hannity accused a guest: "You guys on the left are going so far over the cliff. You're making comparisons to the president and Adolf Hitler." Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway said on Hannity's show, "This is the hateful, vitriolic rhetoric that has become the Howard Dean Democratic Party." Bill O'Reilly cited the ads as evidence that "right now in America the Democratic party is being held captive by the far, far left."

It should be noted that however hyperbolic, comparisons to Hitler and fascism are not unknown in the American political debate. Rush Limbaugh has routinely called women's rights advocates "femi-Nazis," and references to "Hitlery Clinton" are a staple of right-wing talk radio. Republican power-broker Grover Norquist on NPR (10/2/03) compared inheritance taxes to the Holocaust.

Closer to home for Fox News, on the very same day that Gibson, Hannity and O'Reilly were talking about the Hitler/Bush comparison as evidence of the left's extremism, a column ran in the New York Post that described Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean as a follower of Josef Goebbels, referred to him as "Herr Howie," accused him of "looking for his Leni Riefenstahl," called his supporters "the Internet Gestapo" and compared them to "Hitler's brownshirts."

The New York Post, like Fox News Channel, is part of News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch's conservative media empire. And this piece wasn't just put up on the Post's website as part of a contest--it was written by a right-wing commentator who frequently appears in the Post's pages, Ralph Peters, and selected for the op-ed page by the Post's own editors. So it's more than a little embarrassing that these blatant Nazi comparisons were being made in the Post while the paper's corporate sibling was denouncing such comparisons as a sign of derangement.

So what did the Murdoch organization do? Fox appears to have completely ignored the Post's own Nazi analogies--there's no reference to the column whatsoever in the cable channel's transcripts. And the New York Post seems to have sent the column down the memory hole--clicking on a link that used to go to Peters' story gives you a "page not found" message, and the text isn't found in the Nexis media database. (Ironically, in light of this Orwellian disappearing act, the column also compared Dean to Big Brother.)

In the interview that started the brouhaha, the RNC's Gillespie was asked if he would oppose similar attacks on Democrats. He replied: "If they stoop to the kind of despicable tactic like morphing a candidate into Adolf Hitler, yes, absolutely, I will tell you right here on the air. Have me back if any organization does that, I would repudiate it."

The same organization that interviewed him did that, through another of its branches, the very next day. So far, Fox News hasn't had him back on to condemn the New York Post.

ACTION: Please ask the New York Post whether it stands by the column it published describing Howard Dean as a Nazi, or if it owes Dean an apology. And ask Fox News Channel why they didn't criticize that column, even though its hosts repeatedly condemned such analogies that same day--when they involved George W. Bush.

CONTACT:
Fox News Channel
1211 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10036
Phone: 1-888-369-4762
comments@foxnews.com

New York Post
1211 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 100036
Phone: 1-212-930-8000
letters@nypost.com

As always, please remember that your comments are taken more seriously if you maintain a polite tone. Please cc fair@fair.org with your correspondence.

See the ads submitted to MoveOn.org comparing Bush to Hitler at The Memory Hole:
http://www.thememoryhole.org/pol/bush-hitler-ads.htm

See the New York Post column describing Dean as a Nazi in a Google cache:
http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache:J_H4rB-m2bcJ:www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/4965.htm+Ralph+Peters+Dean+&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

When right-wingers representing the interests of a tiny minority of billionaires attempt, successfully or unsuccessfully, to gain mass support by appealing to prejudice against racial, ethnic, religious, cultural, sexual, or national groups the parallel with the Nazis is striking. And it is perfectly legitimate to point it out.

The term "Nazi" is accurately applied to socialists, such as the feminist extremists and Hillary Clinton.

This is because the Nazi party was the National Socialist Party.

Whatever critique one may make of Bush, he's not a socialist, like Hitler, Hillary and Ireland all are!

This article is an attempt to do good, however I have major problems with it. While comparing feminists to Nazis is hyperbolic, I do not believe that comparing Bush to Hitler is hyperbolic. For example, when the Zionists compared Saddam to Hitler there was no outcry exactly because the comparison is not without merit. While Hitler murdered far more people than Saddam did, the policies of each led to murder, both were dictators, and both had little or no respect for challenges to their authority. The same can be said of Bush.

Furthermore, one does not need to compare Bush to the Holocaust Hitler. One can easily compare him to the pre-Holocaust Hitler. Just as the Holocaust was not inevitable (it could have been avoided), so too can the potential crimes of Bush be avoided. Those that say, "never again," while simultaneously demanding the comparisons to Hitler have no place are either engaging in self contradiction or are intentionally hoping to silence that that would realize the dictum "never again."

On a final note, this website gladly takes credit for pushing the "Bush = Hitler" meme into the world.

P.S. "National Socialism" is not a form of socialism and more than the "Moral Majority" is moral or is the majority.

As accurately mentioned above, the term "nazi" is used with a double-standard by the right wing and
the zionist lobby. Last year there was a controversy on the web over the powers that be at Google
and their decision to regulate the use of the term "zionazi" on their search engine. Certain parties
were upset that such a term as nazi could be associated with zionism given the history of Jewish
people in Europe. And yet, arguably the term could be apt when considering the ethnic-cleansing
techniques of the state of Israel, which, now with the wall being constructed in the West Bank, is
even more applicable. So much so that there has been a rise in the number of IDF soldiers who are
refusing to support the further occupation and persecution of Palestinian peoples. God bless them
for knowing their own history and recognizing its problematic resonance with the current situation
in Israel.

The nazi's use of national socialism was a misnomer to say the least. Whereas the term could
apply to how the nazis immortalized the working class and tried to uplift them through white supremacist
ideologies and a classist populism that pushed them toward a middle class way of life and thinking
(similar to reagan's brand of populism which bush is emulating), their interests really were invested
in the borgeoisie and elite industrialists. Capitalist American industrialists such as Henry Ford
and Prescott Bush supported them in their rise, since this authoritarian form of fascism also
celebrated the dovetailing of business interests with the state, something that always gets obscured
in histories of the third reich and steven spielburg's fantasies (i.e. the benevolent german industrialist
as the figurehead of humanity). Much of the support in the central SS came from borgeois doctors.
45% of Germany's medical establishment joined the party. Thus, it should be no surprise that
the emergence of eugenics in Germany as a means of perpetuating white supremacy also found
favor with U.S. elites and some medical practicioners. There is a good book on this by the same
author who did research on IBM's support of the nazis (the author's name escapes me at the moment
but a good amazon search can find it and the book is currently a popular tome on display at
Borders).

So needless to say, to look at nazism as representative of socialism is ridiculous, since it was
in the end, anything but. But the misconception works to the advantage of those who wish
to continue leading people in the dark about capitalism, fascism and their role in perpetuating
imperialism.

bush is too stupid and too much of a spoiled borgeois turd to be a hitler per se (although not too stupid to exploit his stupidity as a means of endearing himself to the working class). But his policies, both domestic and foreign, certainly reek of those perpetuated by hitler's gang in the past. The real problem is that
the corporate elite at large, whether in the oil industry or the mass media, have cuddled up to
his neo-fascism and have given free reign to white supremacy and bigotry, which now has a home
on FUXNEWS.

The bogus terror alerts and pseudo-police state establish over the holiday season (of all times)
is just the shape of things to come.

The simple truth is Americans can't handle the truth.

For more insights on what is happening in neo-fascist America, try to watch
"The Architecture of Doom," a fine documentary on nazi Germany, and
Terry Gilliam's "Brazil," a satire from 1985 that was nothing short of prohecy.

Peace.

Never before have I seen in one post ALL the Liberal Looney Left buzzwords!

Congratulations! That was masterful!

Massive EV. Thanks.

nonanarchist

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error

He is worse than hitler. At least the world knew hitler was bad. Bush just hides it better. The world outside of america knows bush is hitler.

"the only reason we went to war with nazi germany was because the germans were cutting into our action" - george carlin.

error

You really believe that nonsense, don't you?

Poor fellah.

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the world believes it.

your the dipshit. jerry.

defending your liars again, your so dumb it hurts.

quit posting as several people just to make it SEEM like your the majority. the majority knows bush is worse than hitler.

you republican dipshits refuse to admit it. thats the problem. troll.

...so afraid of disagreement that he has to think all us trolls are only one person, so he's less afraid.

Oh, and might I suggest a second-grade English textbook? Or perhaps you can find a small child to tutor you. You really need some help.

In more ways than one.

nonanarchist

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