In article <bnaa6r$22en$1@pencil.math.missouri.edu>, Michael Givel says...

October 22, 2003

Columbus (OH) Free Press

Senator Byrd, Major Media Spread Coverage of Bush-Nazi Nexus

by Harvey Wasserman and Bob Fitrakis

US Senator Robert Byrd, on the floor of Congress, on October 17,
has explicitly compared the Bush media operation to that run by
Herman Goering, mastermind of the Nazi putsch against the German
people.

On the same day, the Associated Press ran a national story
linking Prescott Bush to Adolf Hitler. The lead read: "President
Bush's grandfather was a director of a bank seized by the federal
government because of its ties to a German industrialist who
helped bankroll Adolf Hitler's rise to power, government
documents show."

That night, CNN ran a "streamer" on the bottom of its all-news
programming confirming that "declassified documents show Prescott
Bush connections to Nazi finance."

Stories reminding the public that the grandfather of George W.
Bush and his United Trust Bank were cited by the US government in
1942 for helping Hitler under the Trading With the Enemies Act,
have now spread widely through the major meda.

What's going on here? Are these stories linking Team Bush to the
Nazis irrelevant? Mere partisan politics? Or do they indicate a
growing public concern with what is actually happening in
Washington?

Coming on the floor of the US Senate, Byrd's searing critique
indicates that the equation of Team Bush with the Nazi elite has
gained a certain mainstream credibility. A conservative Democrat
who has represented West Virginia in the Senate for decades, Byrd
is one of America's leading Constitutional scholars. He is known
as the master of Senate procedures. A passionate student of the
English language, his epic orations for peace and the
preservation of historic American freedoms are likely to grace
school texts for decades to come.

That the cautious, thoughtful Byrd has conjured explicit
comparisons between the infamous mass murderer Hermann Goering
and the administration of George W. Bush is a stunning commentary
on how far to the right the Republicans have really gone. Goering
was convicted of crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg Nazi
war crimes tribunal after World War II. He killed himself just
before he was to be executed.

That the mainstream media has again found newsworthy the
long-established connections between the Bush family and the Nazi
Party is also instructive.

For sixty years it has been a matter of public record that
Prescott Bush helped finance Hitler's rise to power and world
war. Later a US Senator from Connecticut, Prescott was father to
President George H.W. Bush and grandfather to George W. Bush.
Because legal action was taken, Bush's deeds have been a matter
of public record since 1942. They were widely covered in
newspapers and electronic media at the time. The history is
readily accessible.

But right-wing Bush fanatics continue to deny those ties existed.
In a nationally syndicated radio show, conservative talk host
Michael Medved recently claimed that Prescott Bush's bank's ties
to the Nazis had not been established.

Similar denials have surrounded Arnold Schwarzenegger. It is a
matter of public record that his father volunteered for the
Austrian Nazi Party and the infamous SA, which engaged in brutal
mass murder. Arnold himself has attempted to distance himself

>from his family's Nazi past. He has made large donations to the

Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, which has tracked Nazi
fugitives. His backers now claim he attended an anti-Nazi rally
at an early age.

On the other hand, he has been linked to statements admiring
Hitler for his speaking ability and his ability to gain a huge
following. A past indicating a strong authoritarian nature has
also been cause for alarm. In 1975, Schwarzenegger yearned for
his own Nazi-style rally, "like Hitler in the Nuremberg stadium.
And have all those people scream at you and just being [in] total
agreement whatever you say."

Widespread allegations linking Karl Rove to family ties of
explicit Nazi origin have been withdrawn by Al Marten, who
originally publicized them through his web site. But Rove is
quoted in Bob Woodward's best-selling BUSH AT WAR as comparing
the reaction of a New York Yankee crowd to an appearance by Bush
as being "like a nazi rally."

Known as "Bush's Brain," Rove is the GOP's political mastermind.
Widely feared for his harsh, vindictive actions, Rove is at the
center of allegations that the CIA's Valerie Plame was "outed" in
retaliation for a report filed by her husband, Ambassador Joseph
Wilson, that contradicted the Bush-Rove line on Saddam Hussein's
nuclear program. The disclosure could involve a breach of
national security and a ten-year felony.

The ultimate GOP operative, Rove helped engineer the recent
redistricting of Texas for expanded Republican control of the
Congressional delegation. He may also have helped choreograph the
Schwarzenegger campaign, where control of the California state
house could vastly enhance the likelihood that Bush will hold the
White House in 2004. Along with the Executive, Congress,
Judiciary and major media, the GOP now controls governorships of
the four largest states, the largest one-party concentration of
power in US history.

Bush supporters deny his Nazi family ties have anything to do
with Republican policies. Visiting the "sins of the father" (or
grandfather) on an offspring has not been considered fair game in
US politics.

But after eight years of total assault on Bill Clinton and his
family, one can only imagine the media frenzy had Clinton's
grandparents been linked to the Soviet Union. Would Rush Limbaugh
or Karl Rove have found such ties "irrelevant"?

Does Rush's apparent narcotic addiction resemble that of Hermann
Goering? Is he the Right's real minister of propaganda? Do his
"dittoheads" resemble the unthinking brownshirts that terrorized
millions?

Such things can be hard to hear. In polite society, they can
strain "credibility." But blood ties and shallow images were not
what Sen. Byrd's comparisons between Bush and Goering were about:
they were about Bush's actual behavior.

Like Senator Byrd, tens of millions of Americans are deeply
worried that this administration has waged an unprecedented
assault on American civil rights and liberties. It has shredded
the Constitution and the natural environment as none other in US
history. Its unprovoked attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq have
prompted thoughtful comparisons to the unprovoked Nazi invasion
of Poland in 1939. Its illegal detainment center at Guantanamo
and its cavalier use of the drug war, the prison system and the
powers arrogated through the Patriot Act and the Homeland
Security apparatus have brought the US to the brink of
dictatorship.

Given the horrific reality of what the GOP is now doing to
America and the world, we should be profoundly thankful that the
public is uneasy. If Team Bush objects to being compared with the
Nazi elite, perhaps it should act less like it.

Too much sad history has been told over the centuries by those
who failed to speak plainly and forcefully when the times
demanded it.

What the Republicans are doing to America and the world has been
seen before. And, it's been stopped before, but only by facing
reality.

Speaking Truth to illegitimate power makes dictatorships
temporary. That's the only way the SuperPower of Peace can
ultimately prevail...which it will.

Harvey Wasserman and Bob Fitrakis are co-authors of 'GEORGE W.
BUSH VERSUS THE SUPERPOWER OF PEACE', available November 1 from
www.freepress.org.

All content ) 1970-2003 The Columbus Free Press