If there’s room for debate about whether the Tea Party is a populist movement worth taking seriously or a reactionary debasing of U.S. political discourse, on one matter there can be little argument: the obnoxious German history references have to stop. A conservative columnist compares Barack Obama’s Gulf oil spill reaction to Hitler’s approach—and Sarah Pallin applauds. A placard at a Tea Party rally shows Obama with Hitler—and also Lenin, just for good measure. TV rabble-rouser Glenn Beck makes the Hitler-Obama comparison routinely. And a Tea Party candidate in Alaska at least mixes up the German theme by citing the Berlin Wall, apparently favourably, as a model for a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico. All this and more distasteful stuff is pulled into context by the English-language website of Der Spiegel, where they know about the pitfalls of these grotesque misuses of vague historical notions.
General
Enough with the Hitler analogies, Tea Partiers
Oh, and cut out the East Germany parallels, too