<p>Civil rights activist and NAACP Chairman Julian Bond delivered a blistering partisan speech at Fayetteville State University in North Carolina last night, equating the Republican Party with the Nazi Party and characterizing Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her predecessor, Colin Powell, as “tokens.” </p>
<p>“The Republican Party would have the American flag and the swastika flying side by side,” he charged. </p>
<p>Calling President Bush a liar, Bond told the audience at the historically black institution that this White House’s lies are more serious than the lies of his predecessor’s because Clinton’s lies didn’t kill people. </p>
<p>Bond has been over the top with vitriol for years now, and the “normal” (i.e. left-leaning) press outlets often sanitize his most intemperate remarks. I believe it’s called “protecting your own.” When he assumed the leadership of the NAACP, he referred to the Bush administration as “Taliban” and “wedded to the Confederacy.” Nazis, tokens, all part of the same radical schtick.</p>
<p>Unless you are oppressed or discrimintated against, you don’t get it. </p>
<p>Read your Nazi history. How they started. I am not saying that is the direction we are going, but when one group is society is oppressed,we all are.</p>
<p>I’m having a hard time picturing G W B, the Marlboro Man of Crawford Tx, with a Charlie Chaplin Moustache shaved on on the other hand; CGM has, Ive come to believe, an inner sense in these matters: as an immigrant, Im staying out of the beer-halls for a while…just in case;)</p>
<p>This definitely falls under the definition of “irony.”</p>
<p>On Jan 20 the NYtimes ran a story about Hillary using the term “plantation” and other politicians using words like “lynching” in overdramatic and inappropriate context. </p>
<ol>
<li>Torture as national policy.</li>
<li>Lying as national policy.</li>
<li>Spying on citizens as national policiy</li>
<li>Supporting religious biogtry</li>
<li>Demonizing internal and external opponents as national policy.</li>
</ol>
<p>What I find interesting is that–as horrible as Bush is–these characters never compare him to Mao, Lenin, Castro, Guevera, et al. Always Hitler, the Confederacy, Darth Vader etc. Curious.</p>
<p>Oh good grief! How are you supposed to take people seriously when they resort to incendiary rhetoric? Did Julian Bond REALLY say those exact words? The Bush presidency is a disappointment on many fronts, to be sure, but to equate it with Hitler’s Nazi Germany, and to dismiss Rice and Powell as administration “tokens” is just plain shameful!<br>
Those words are intellectually dishonest and baldly manipulative. Hyperbole is a legitimate rhetorical tool, but only when used in measured doses, and only when paired with clear reasoning and specific examples. Did Bond offer specific facts to prove that the Bush Administration and the Republican Party routinely conduct politics in the Nazi tradition—other than the widely held AfAm assumption that The Rebublican Party, and Republicans in general are “racist”? </p>
<p>I’m an African American woman whose first years were spent in the strictly segregated south (it wasn’t that long ago!). I went to inferior, segregated schools and witnessed Klan activity with my own eyes. I know racism, both when it slaps me full in the face, and when it attempts to cloak itself in a veil of liberal “well-meaning”. But I also have a switch in my brain that’s well able to control knee-jerk assumptions, and at least one other that largely enables me to analyze facts from more than one angle. I’ve not read Mr. Bond’s speech, so I’m not altogether convinced that this quote is accurate I suspect that some important contextual detail may have been “lost in translation”. I can only say that I’m disappointed in the above report. Why is it that the only time the media reports the words of prominent African Americans is when they are incendiary and/or controversial? Such reports do nothing to bridge political divides or right injustices. </p>
<p>IF the OP’s quote from the Bond speech is accurate, I can only shake my head, and offer up this strong suspicion: If the current Presidential administration were a Democratic one, none of the policies and decisions made thus far would have resulted in a comparison to Nazi Germany, and the appointments of African Americans to the offices of Secretary of State, and National Security Advisor would be applauded as “ground-breaking” and “forward-thinking” by liberals, both black and white. Republicans would be foaming at the mouth, of course, over just about everything this president has done, but Democrats would be defending their man to the hilt. </p>
<p>I HATE POLITICS…! NO—I HATE POLITIC’S STOCK-IN-TRADE: HYPOCRACY!</p>
<p>Thirty or forty years ago, Americans discussed the “bad German”, who went along with the NASI regime out of conviction or complacency or whyever, vs. the “good German”, who did or at least tried to resist but didn’t suceed in changing much. I wonder how many “bad Americans” we now have, including those who voted for Bush in 2004, who will go down in history as unrepenatant bad guys. On the other hand, are the "“good Americans” really doing anything? Perhaps many of us are complacent “bad Americans” too. The world sure seems to think so, to our great detriment. With any luck, Realmacht will keep most of us from standing trial as war criminals.</p>