THE WEEKLY STANDARD‘S ONGOING CONFUSION…. As has been widely documented, far-right activists have been appearing in public with signs featuring swastikas, Nazi “SS” lettering, and images comparing the president to Hitler. Sensible people might see these tactics as evidence of right-wing extremism.
On the other hand, we have the Weekly Standard. Yesterday, the magazine’s John McCormack had an item with a headline that read, “Video: Democrats Bring Obama-As-Hitler Signs to Town Halls.” That’s not a typo.
Dave Weigel points out that the Obama-as-Hitler posters are produced by the group of many-times Democratic presidential candidate (and absolute nutter) Lyndon LaRouche.
About 35 seconds into this video, you can see one of the LaRouche cultists carrying a poster.
This is strikingly dishonest, even for the Weekly Standard. Weigel’s post doesn’t argue that Democrats brought insane signs, it argues the opposite — that crazed LaRouche fans have found common cause with the crazed Tea Bagging crowd. Weigel is debunking the claim that John McCormack is trying to make.
Eric Boehlert had a great item on this earlier.
[E]ven if you buy the comical idea that LaRouche’s deluded followers are true Blue Staters (LaRouche has about as much cache among Democrats as Tony Zirkle does among Republicans; look it up), the YouTube video actually raises more troubling questions for the TWS crew. Because even though it purports to show LaRouche followers with a Hitler-Obama sign at a town hall gathering, the video also makes perfectly clear that none of the other mini-mob members objected. The Hitler-Obama sign fit right in among the mini-mob members.
If TWS‘s larger point were accurate, if conservatives would never (ever!) bring Nazi propaganda to an anti-Obama rally, than why weren’t the LaRouche followers asked to leave or asked to destroy their signs? Indeed, have we seen a single report during all this mini-mob nonsense in which a one conservative confronted a Nazi-waving protesters and complained that the Hitler stuff was grotesque and out of bounds? Have any of the Nazi-waving protesters been shouted down or told to get lost by the mini-mob?
Indeed, has anyone at TWS denounced Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck for using Nazi rhetoric in recent days?
Yeah, I didn’t think so.
McCormack’s post was not only cheap, it was premised on the notion that Weekly Standard readers are easily fooled. Tom Schaller argued yesterday that McCormack “ought to take down that post, and then apologize to his readers publicly.” I doubt that will happen, but it would be the responsible thing to do.
