[Fresh Ink] Beck, Coulter and Limbaugh: Avatars of Julius Streicher

[Richard Menec]

http://www.truthout.org/beck-coulter-and-limbaugh-avatars-julius-streicher57551

March 10, 2010

Beck, Coulter and Limbaugh: Avatars of Julius Streicher

by: Davidson Loehr

Making fun of demagogues like Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh has 
become a kind of parlor game, an escape valve to let out some of the 
frustration of impotent rage. This was brought home again when I read 
"Defying Hitler" by Sebastian Haffner. Writing between 1933 and 1939, he 
came of age during Hitler's rise to power. His observations are so searing 
it's still hard to believe that someone could see this clearly while the 
spirit of his times was morphing into a broad and deep spirit of evil. Once 
the Zeitgeist had changed, all kinds of murderous and insane actions became 
logical means toward transforming German culture into its Nazi metastasis.

"Avatars of Julius Streicher" doesn't sound quite sober - hardly anyone 
recognizes his name today, but Streicher's spirit is alive and well in Beck, 
Coulter and Limbaugh. Streicher was one of the 11 Nazis sentenced to hang by 
the Nuremberg Trials on October 16, 1946. Only ten were hanged because 
Hermann Goering committed suicide with some cyanide capsules the night 
before. Of the 11, Streicher was the only one who was not in the military, 
not in any significant position to command anything regarding the treatment 
and execution of millions of people who didn't fit the Nazi mold. But 
Streicher may have been the person most responsible for implanting the 
spirit of anti-Semitism that let Germans dehumanize and slaughter millions 
of people. Between 1923 and 1945, Streicher published "Der Stuermer" ("The 
Stormtrooper"), and spoke wherever he could to instill this deadly spirit 
into everyone he could reach. He especially liked to address schoolchildren, 
and would get them so conditioned that when he asked if they knew who the 
enemy of Germany was, they would shout, "The Jew! The Jew!" Streicher was 
hanged with the Nazi leaders for publishing this fact-free newspaper that 
did more than anything else to prepare the way for the Nazi death machines. 
A typical issue of "Der Stuermer" was described as "nothing but an 
incitement to the people of Germany who read it, an incitement to murder. It 
is filled with pictures of murder. It is an encouragement to all who read it 
to avenge themselves in the same way."

At his trial in Nuremberg, the prosecution said that while Streicher was not 
directly involved in the physical commission of these deadly crimes against 
humanity, "his crime is no less worse for that reason.... It was to the task 
of educating and poisoning the people with hate, and of producing murderers, 
that Streicher set himself. For 25 years, he continued unrelentingly the 
perversion of the people and youth of Germany. He went on and on as he saw 
the results of his work bearing fruit. In the early days, he was preaching 
persecution. As persecution took place, he preached extermination and 
annihilation and, as millions of Jews were exterminated and annihilated in 
the Ghettos of the East, he cried out for more and more.

"The crime of Streicher is that he made these crimes possible, which they 
would never have been had it not been for him and for those like him. In its 
extent Streicher's crime is probably greater and more far-reaching than that 
of any of the other defendants. The misery which they caused ceased with 
their capture. The effects of this man's crime, of the poison that he has 
put into the minds of millions of young boys and girls goes on, for he 
concentrated upon the youth and childhood of Germany. He leaves behind him a 
legacy of almost a whole people poisoned with hate, sadism, and murder, and 
perverted by him. That people will remain a problem and perhaps a menace to 
the rest of civilization for generations to come."

Against that historical background, consider just a few of these sound 
bites:


Ann Coulter:

We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to 
Christianity. [Her suggestion for dealing with the Middle East.]

Liberals are always against America. They are either traitors or idiots, and 
on the matter of America's self-preservation, the difference is irrelevant.

"I don't really like to think of [the murder of Dr. Tiller] as a murder. It 
was terminating Tiller in the 203rd trimester.... I am personally opposed to 
shooting abortionists, but I don't want to impose my moral values on 
others." [On the murder of Kansas abortion doctor George Tiller, FOX News 
interview, June 22, 2009.]

"We just want Jews to be perfected, as they say." [Arguing that it would be 
better if we were all Christian.]

"If I'm going to say anything about John Edwards in the future, I'll just 
wish he had been killed in a terrorist assassination plot."

"Liberals love America like O.J. loved Nicole."

"There are a lot of bad republicans; there are no good democrats."

"My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times 
Building."

"God gave us the earth. We have dominion over the plants, the animals, the 
trees. God said, 'Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it. It's yours.'"

"I think the government should be spying on all Arabs, engaging in torture 
as a televised spectator sport, dropping daisy cutters wantonly throughout 
the Middle East and sending liberals to Guantanamo."


Glenn Beck:

"I'm thinking about killing Michael Moore, and I'm wondering if I could kill 
him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it.... No, I think I 
could. I think he could be looking me in the eye, you know, and I could just 
be choking the life out of him." [Responding to the question, "What would 
people do for $50 million?," "The Glenn Beck Program," May 17, 2005.]

"When I see a 9/11 victim family on television, or whatever, I'm just like, 
'Oh shut up' I'm so sick of them because they're always complaining." ["The 
Glenn Beck Program," September 9, 2005.] "The only [Katrina victims] we're 
seeing on television are the scumbags." ["The Glenn Beck Program," September 
9, 2005.]

"This president I think has exposed himself over and over again as a guy who 
has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture.... I'm not 
saying he doesn't like white people, I'm saying he has a problem. This guy 
is, I believe, a racist." [On President Obama, sparking an advertiser exodus 
from his FOX News show.]

"Progressivism is the cancer in America and it is eating our Constitution, 
and it was designed to eat the Constitution, to progress past the 
Constitution."


Rush Limbaugh:

"The difference between Los Angeles and yogurt is that yogurt comes with 
less fruit."

"The feminist movement was created to allow ugly women access to the 
mainstream of society"

"Women were doing quite well in this country before feminism came along"

"When a gay person turns his back on you, it is anything but an insult; it's 
an invitation."

"Take that bone out of your nose and call me back"

"They vote with their vaginas"

"If we are going to start rewarding no skills and stupid people - I'm 
serious, let the unskilled jobs, let the kinds of jobs that take absolutely 
no knowledge whatsoever to do - let stupid and unskilled Mexicans do that 
work."

The spirit of these three Americans is the same spirit that filled 
Streicher. It is a spirit of hateful bigotry, preparing the way for these 
vulgar sentiments to become deadly atrocities. The overwhelming majority of 
Americans, like the overwhelming majority of Germans, are far better than 
this. We need to respond, not by stooping to the same level, but by 
reminding ourselves that the better angels of our nature call us to a higher 
standard. A great nation is at stake.

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