Friday, August 7, 2009

Jewish Groups Assail Nazi Comparisons Made by Conservatives in Health Care Debate


From ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper -

“Regardless of the political differences and the substantive differences in the debate over health care, the use of Nazi symbolism is outrageous, offensive and inappropriate,” said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director and a Holocaust survivor. “Americans should be able to disagree on the issues without coloring it with Nazi imagery and comparisons to Hitler. This is not where the debate should be at all.”

In this week’s protests at town hall forums, some conservatives have used Nazi imagery to compare President Obama to Adolf Hitler and congressional Democrats to Nazis.

In an interview this week House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said of the town hall protestors loudly assailing President Obama’s health care reform push, “I think they are AstroTurf -- you be the judge, carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on health care. This initiative is funded by the high end. We call it ‘Astroturf,’ it's not really a grass roots movement. It's AstroTurf by some of the wealthiest people of America.”

That some of the protestors are comparing President Obama and congressional Democrats to Adolph Hitler and Nazis is unquestionably true.

That they’re “carrying swastikas and symbols like that” because the protestors themselves are supportive of Hitler and the Nazis, does not seem to be true at all.

Pelosi’s office says she meant the former, not the latter.

Conservatives seized upon the latter.

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