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Holocaust Gaffes Are A Bipartisan Habit

A busy week in Holocaust misappropriation

by
Adam Chandler
September 07, 2012
Rep. Roscoe Bartlett(Epoch Times)
Rep. Roscoe Bartlett(Epoch Times)

In his inaugural column, our Righteous Gentile Michael C. Monyihan wrote about the surge of Hitler-themed debate points on the campaign trail and in the media.

If comparing something to the Holocaust that isn’t anything at all like the Holocaust were an impeachable offense, the United States might run out of politicians.

An update on one of the stories: Roscoe Bartlett–a Republican representative from Maryland–has apologized for a comment he made earlier this week comparing federal student loans–which Bartlett deems unconstitutional–to the “slippery slope” in Germany that ultimately led to the Holocaust.

“Not that it’s not a good idea to give students loans; it certainly is a good idea to give them loans,” Bartlett said. “But if you can ignore the Constitution to do something good today, tomorrow you will be ignoring the Constitution to do something bad. You could. There are more people in our, in America today of German ancestry than any other [inaudible]. The Holocaust that occurred in Germany — how in the heck could that happen? And when you start down the wrong road, it can be a very slippery slope.”

Another example from earlier this week was John Burton, Chair of the California Democratic Party, compared the speeches given at the Republican National Convention (with special emphasis on VP-hopeful Paul Ryan) to the work of Joseph Goebbels, the infamous Nazi propagandist.

“They lie and they don’t care if people think they lie… [Nazi Germany’s Propaganda Minister] Joseph Goebbels – it’s the big lie, you keep repeating it.”

Burton eventually apologized. As Monyihan points out, this is “yet another example of the triumph of crudity in American political discourse.”

Adam Chandler was previously a staff writer at Tablet. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, Slate, Esquire, New York, and elsewhere. He tweets @allmychandler.