The Irony of Nazi Comparisons made by the Right

The Indy Star reported this weekend that Indiana Treasurer and failed GOP senate candidate  Richard Mourdock compared the current political state of the country with Nazi Germany, saying

“The people of Germany in a free election selected the Nazi Party because they made great promises that appealed to them because they were desperate and destitute. And why is that? Because Germany was bankrupt.”.  Mourdock went on to say:  "The truth is, 70 years later, we are drifting on the tides toward another beachhead and it is the bankruptcy of the United States of America."

The Indystar reported that “The speech received a standing ovation from the nearly 1,700 delegates from across the state” You may remember Mourdock’s failed  2012 U.S. Senate run when he said during a debate that when a woman becomes pregnant from a  rape "it is something that God intended." Given his history of saying asinine things, this particular inane utterance may seem unsurprising. Yet, I am always struck by the irony by the combination of historical, economic and political ignorance that is required to make such a comparison. More under the fold

Ignoring for a moment the claim that the US in on the verge of an economic situation similar to Germany when the Nazis rose to power, let’s look at how the Nazis took advantage of Germany’s situation to take power. The Nazi party’s exploitation of Germany’s postwar economic failures was less about the government making material promises to the less fortunate as it was about promises of a return to greatness, and a return to a nostalgic time that existed primarily in the imagination.  The Nazis exploited xenophobia, ethnocentrism, religious intolerance, and rigid morality to gain power. They promised to restore the damaged egos of the white male voters who felt defeated and marginalized in a rapidly changing world. The Nazis intimidated their political rivals and minority ethnic groups through both threats of violence and intimidation through statute. The Nazi’s promoted a broken economic theory of prosperity through a constantly expanding military and undercompensated labor of those considered racially impure  and political rivals. The Irony in Mourdock’s ( and most GOPers) Nazi analogies is not only in their complete misreading of economic and political history, but in the fact that to whatever extent contemporary American society is analogous to the rise of German Fascism, GOP rhetoric and policy are the main vehicles driving us in that direction