Comparisons with Nazism come cheap these days, used against anything right wingers hate. I have frequently found these comparisons outrageous – as the daughter of East European Jews, I do not take Hitler/Nazi/Fascist comparisons lightly and believe they should be reserved for actions and individuals who really warrant them. Yet I find that I myself am motivated to make such a comparison – between Rick Santorum and the Nazis.
How so? After all, Rick Santorum has not, to my knowledge, killed anyone. However, after seeing a clip, on the Rachel Maddow Show on December 16, 2013 (http://www.msnbc.com/...) of Rick Santorum explaining the “real” goal of the Affordable Care Act (which, among other things, involves murdering a segment of the population) - the comparison hit me. Santorum is using the same propaganda technique that was used against Jews throughout the Middle Ages – historically dubbed the “blood libel” accusing them of killing Christian children as part of their rituals – that fit so easily into Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda. Here is an excerpt from the video of the speech delivered before Young Americans for Freedom on December 13 of this year:
“It’s actually a pretty clever system. Take care of the people who can vote and people who can’t vote, get rid of them as quickly as possible by not giving them care so they can’t vote against you. That’s how it works.” (For the full video online see http://www.buzzfeed.com/...)
In saying that
the health care plan’s intention is to win the votes of the healthy and kill off all the rest, hence explicitly claiming that the government has intentions of exterminating some of its citizens, he is using Nazi propaganda techniques.
No doubt we all have an eccentric relative who’s had too much to drink spouting off nonsense at a holiday gathering – and if that had been the setting I would have shrugged and let it pass. But Santorum is a national figure who is third out of nine on the list of candidates among Iowa Republicans, according to an article in this esteemed publication (see http://www.dailykos.com/...). How sad it is that we’ve gotten to the point where claims that the government is planning to kill you have moved from survivalist bunkers to apparent acceptance by a much wider public.