MAYBE BECAUSE HE KEEPS TELLING US THAT A SMALL, INSULAR MINORITY CONTROLS EVERYTHING AND MUST BE PUNISHED? Why Do the Super-Rich Keep Comparing Obama to Hitler?
Anyway, I don’t recall so much concern back when all the lefties were calling Bush Hitler, despite a distinct lack of persecution aimed at his critics.
UPDATE: See, for example, Andrew Sullivan’s declaration in 2007 that Bush was the Weimar President. (If so, who does that make Obama?)
Related: Ed Driscoll: Two Atlantics In One! “Incidentally, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers quickly distanced themselves from its co-founder’s original remarks, presumably in the hopes that should Occupy Wall Street rise up again, it will devour them last. It’s vaguely reminiscent of the Occupy-friendly appeasement tactics of the Oakland Mens Warehouse in November 0f 2011, before their own storefront windows were shattered, during what might be described as an evening of wanton socialist violence and destruction characterized by million of crystalline shards of broken glass. For lack of a better term, of course.”
Also: Perkinsnacht: Liberal vituperation makes our letter writer’s point.
While claiming to be outraged at the Nazi reference, the critics seem more incensed that Mr. Perkins dared to question the politics of economic class warfare. The boys at Bloomberg View—we read them since no one else does—devoted an entire editorial to inequality and Mr. Perkins’s “unhinged Nazi rant.” Others denounced him for defending his former wife Danielle Steel, and even for owning too many Rolex watches.
Maybe the critics are afraid that Mr. Perkins is onto something about the left’s political method. Consider the recent record of liberals in power. They’re the ones obsessed with the Koch brothers and other billionaires contributing to conservative causes, siccing journalists to trash them and federal agencies to shut them down.
President Obama’s IRS targeted conservative political groups for scrutiny in an election year and has now formalized that scrutiny in new regulatory “guidance” for this election year. Democratic prosecutors in Wisconsin unleashed a special prosecutor to target conservative groups allied with Governor Scott Walker. A judge threw out the subpoenas as baseless but only after months of legal harassment and dawn police raids.
Or take New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who said in a recent radio interview that, “If they are extreme conservatives, they have no place in the state of New York.” He said he meant people who oppose gay marriage or abortion, or favor legal assault weapons. He didn’t say they were wrong. He said get out of the state.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio then chimed in to say Mr. Cuomo was “absolutely right,” throwing in a riff about “crippling inequality” for no extra charge. Like Mr. de Blasio, Mr. Obama doesn’t merely want to raise taxes on the rich to finance the government. He says “millionaires and billionaires” simply make too much money and deserve to be punished. Or as they say at the New York Times, NYT -1.78% they are “the undeserving rich.” By the way, does that include the third-generation rentiers in the Sulzberger family?
The liberals aren’t encouraging violence, but they are promoting personal vilification and the abuse of government power to punish political opponents.
Meh. They’re encouraging violence, too. All of this “othering,” to use a lefty term, serves that purpose: To dehumanize the political opposition, and to make nasty tactics seem less nasty.