Back to the 30’s: National Socialist and Republican Discourse part 3

By Hrafnkell Haraldsson

Part 3: Anti-Immigrant Xenophobia. This is the third installment of a detailed examination of the parallels between the Nazi movement in Germany and the new Republican methodology since the election of Obama. Also see parts 1, 2, 4, and 5.

“The Other” in National Socialist and Republican Discourse – Immigrants

National Socialist and Republican discourse are both xenophobic in character. Fear does not function as a tactic without it having a target. While lauding “the folk” (i.e. “real” Americans), everyone else (the constructed “Other”) are untrustworthy, dangerous, suspicious characters, a bacillus in the body politic.

Let us call our witnesses to the stand:

Hitler February 15, 1933 Stuttgart: “We are convinced that the restoration to health of our people must start from the restoration to health of the body politic itself, and we are persuaded of the truth that the future of our people, as in the past so now, lies first of all in the German peasant. If he perishes, our end has come; if he survives, then Germany will never go under. There lie the strength and the source of our people’s life, the source of our renewal. The towns would not exist at all, if the peasant did not fill them with his blood. The dweller in our countryside may be primitive, but he is healthy.”

Sarah Palin, October 16, 2008: “We believe that the best of America is in the small towns that we get to visit, and in the wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard-working, very patriotic, very pro-America areas of this great nation,” she said. “This is where we find the kindness and the goodness and the courage of everyday Americans,” Palin added.

All these groups work against the health of the Nation by undermining its values. And like National Socialism, Republicanism preaches the dangers of a “world government” – a New World Order run either by Jews (for the Nazis) or socialists (for Republicans). Rush Limbaugh is obsessed with this idea, and recently actor Chuck Norris has jumped onboard: “Obama trying “to create one world order … our country as we know it now will no longer exist”¹

The February 1920 NSDAP program, or platform provides several examples of this fear of foreigners: Point 5 of the NSADP program states that “whoever has no citizenship is to be able to live in Germany only as a guest, and must be under the authority of legislation for foreigners” while Point 8 states that “Any further immigration of non-Germans is to be prevented. We demand that all non-Germans who entered Germany after August 2, 1914, be forced to leave the Reich without delay.”

Contrast with this Rush Limbaugh:

So invasive species like mollusks and spermatozoa are not good, and we’ve got a federal judge say, “You can’t bring it in here,” but invasive species in the form of illegal immigration is fine and dandy — bring ’em on, as many as possible, legalize them wherever we can, wherever they go, no matter what they clog up. So we’re going to break the bank; we’re going to bend over backwards. The federal judiciary is going to do everything it can to stop spermatozoa and mollusks from coming in, but other invasive species? We’re supposed to bend over and grab the ankles and say, “Deal with it.” Well, the mollusks may be brought in against their will. My point is they don’t know where they are, and they, frankly, don’t care. So if you ship them out — but we can’t ship ’em out. It’s not that we can’t ship ’em out. We’re not going to be able to bring ’em in now, but invasive species that, say, on their own power and of their own desire and volition cross the border and come here, we can’t say diddly-squat about it.²

Glenn Beck is no better, saying that there are only three reasons that an illegal immigrant “comes across the border in the middle of the night: “One, they’re terrorists; two, they’re escaping the law; or three, they’re hungry. They can’t make a living in their own dirtbag country.” He added that a big fence should be built to “stop the people who are coming here because they’re criminals or they want to do us harm.”³

It is left to Bill O’Reilly to channel Hitler most fully: “On the other side, you have people who hate America, and they hate it because it’s run primarily by white, Christian men. Let me repeat that. America is run primarily by white, Christian men, and there is a segment of our population who hates that, despises that power structure. So they, under the guise of being compassionate, want to flood the country with foreign nationals, unlimited, unlimited, to change the complexion — pardon the pun — of America. Now, that’s hatred, too.”⁴

Hitler hated diversity too. In a table talk of 28 September 1941 Hitler launched an attack on diversity: “everyone receives on a different antenna and everyone transmits on his own wave-length.”⁵ It’s better, isn’t it, if everybody is the same? So let’s keep all those dirty, criminal foreigners out of the Reich…er, I mean, America.

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