Commentators cannot seem to leave the memory of Nazi Germany alone. Nazi comparisons became especially heinous after the 2008 presidential election, when haters compared President Barack Obama to Hitler. After all, the narrative ran, both were “collectivist,” “charismatic” leaders who preyed on people’s fears to bring about impossible utopia. Climate change skeptic William Happer even compared calls to reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as the equivalent of Hitler’s demonization of Jews. Last but not least, however, is Mike Huckabee’s recent assertion that by accepting the international community’s nuclear accord with Iran, President Obama has led to the “door of the oven.”

Which brings us to a recent piece in National Review, a magazine once described by The New Republic as the bible of American conservatism. Liberal Markos Moulitsas, who runs DailyKos, even went so far as to say, “I do like the blogs at the National Review — I do think their writers are the best in the [conservative] blogosphere.” National Review is therefore seen as a responsible institution, albeit Occasional Planet readers, myself included, would probably disagree with more often than not. This would in theory prevent NR from running an offensive, factually inaccurate, and altogether tasteless article about the “national-socialism” of Bernie Sanders. They ran it anyway.

Here is the central passage:

[Bernie Sanders] is, in fact, leading a national-socialist movement, which is a queasy and uncomfortable thing to write about a man who is the son of Jewish immigrants from Poland and whose family was murdered in the Holocaust. But there is no other way to characterize his views and his politics.

National Socialism was the state ideology of Nazi Germany. It was not socialist but fascist. Therefore, even though it supposedly made author Kevin D. Williamson “queasy” and “uncomfortable”, he called Bernie Sanders the equivalent of a Nazi. If it made Williamson queasy, one would think he would reconsider writing it, but he did not. I cannot overstate how offensive this is to me as a Jewish person. But more important than my personal feelings, obviously, is that the comparison between Sanders and the Nazis is inaccurate and harmful to our political discourse.

The argument that National Review forwards is, in short: Bernie Sanders is a socialist and also concerned about international trade deals. He is therefore a racist nationalist:

The incessant reliance on xenophobic (and largely untrue) tropes holding that the current economic woes of the United States are the result of scheming foreigners.

The NR author even compares Sanders to Pat Buchanan and his (actually racist) isolationism. I will trust in my readership not to believe this logical leap. However you feel about international trade deals, opposition to them does not make one a nationalist, let alone a fascist.

Williamson wrote that there was “no other way” to describe Sanders. But one comes to me by thinking about his argument for just a few minutes: “Socialist-protectionist.” That’s his issue with Sanders, is it not? But using “national-socialist” would undoubtedly bring more visitors to National Review’s website.

Williamson thus used the genocide of my fellow Jews, as well as the other 50-million-plus victims of National Socialism, as his rhetorical prop. The rhetorical point he made wasn’t even useful or poignant: His article is mostly mocking Sanders’ supporters as washed-up radicals and young fools.

Let me say this for anyone reading–liberal, conservative and elsewise: Democratic socialism is the polar opposite of fascism. Fascism is corporatist, where democratic socialism values economic democracy. Fascism is centralization. Democratic socialism is local decision-making. Fascism is militarist. Democratic socialism preaches peace and solidarity. Socialism was the driving force behind the anti-fascist coalition in the 1930s and 1940s, whereas many respectable conservatives (like Williamson purports to be) joined up with Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco.

The 2016 presidential race is already shaping up to be a national embarrassment: Donald Trump leads the Republican polls, and Hilary Clinton promotes herself as a progressive despite her donor list looking like the Fortune 500, according to OpenSecrets.org. It is a further embarrassment that Williamson and other conservatives use the memory of genocide to make petty, unfounded accusations of Bernie Sanders. His Nazi-baiting will not sway my vote. It should not sway yours.

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He was considered anathema to progressives; the most conservative member of the Republican Party. The time was the 1960s, and his name was William F. Buckley. He was from New York State and was publisher of the National Review, the voice of the conservative movement.

As conservative as he was, he stayed within shouting distance of the mainstream of the Republican Party. In 1960, he helped his brother, Jim, win a U.S. Senate seat. Jim Buckley ran in the combined parties of the Republicans and the Conservatives (a unique characteristic of New York State where there are actually four parties). As conservative as he was, William Buckley took a firm stance against the extreme John Birch Society, an organization that in many ways was the forerunner of today’s Tea Party. As op-ed contributor David Welch wrote in the December 3, 2012 New York Times, “the Birch Society was an influential anti-Communist group whose members saw conspiracies everywhere they looked.” The biggest challenge that Buckley had with the Birch Society was in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when he took on the founder of the Birch Society, Robert Welch. “Birchers demanded that the government rid itself of supposed Communists — including, according its founder, Robert Welch (no relation, thank heaven, to the op-ed column in the Times), Dwight D. Eisenhower.” Sound familiar? Keep in mind that the Birch Society was founded shortly after the Joseph McCarthy Army hearings in the U.S. Senate, an exercise that was generally considered to be a false purging of supposed Communists in and out of the U.S. governmen,t including its military.

As David Welch further states,

Fast forward half a century. The modern-day Birchers are the Tea Party. By loudly espousing extreme rhetoric, yet holding untenable beliefs, they have run virtually unchallenged by the Republican leadership, aided by irresponsible radio talk-show hosts and right-wing pundits. While the Tea Party grew, respected moderate voices in the party were further pushed toward extinction. Republicans need a Buckley to bring us back.

While  in 2010, the Tea Party did support candidates  who captured offices at both the federal and state levels, their clout waned quite a bit in 2012. All too often, Tea Party candidates won primary elections and eliminated moderate Republicans who would have had far better chances of defeating the Democratic opponents in the general elections. Perhaps the best example was in Indiana, where Tea Party candidate Richard Mourdock (a member of the so-called “rape caucus”) defeated moderate Richard Lugar in the primary race. Lugar had been the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a true scholar of international issues. He was one of the few Republicans to comfortably work with Democrats and promote bi-partisanship. Tea Partier Mourdock was soundly defeated in the general election by Democrat Joe Donnelly.

As David Welch says in the op-ed,

The absence of a Buckley-esque gatekeeper today has allowed extreme, untested candidates to take center stage and then commit predictable gaffes and issue moon-bat pronouncements. Democrats have used those statements to tarnish the Republican Party as anti-woman, anti-poor, anti-gay, anti-immigrant extremists. Buckley’s conservative pragmatism has been lost, along with the presidency and seats in Congress.

He calls for so-called moderates in the Republican Party to clean up the GOP:

Mr. Christie and Mr. [Jeb] Bush are ideally suited to drive extremists from the party. While some say Mr. Christie’s praise of President Obama after Hurricane Sandy hurt him politically, in fact it cemented his role as party truth-teller. In conjunction with his spirited defense of Sohail Mohammed, a State Superior Court judge who was absurdly attacked for allegedly wanting to impose Shariah law, Mr. Christie should be celebrated by sane people everywhere.

Mr. Bush and Mr. Christie best represent realistic, levelheaded conservatism. Both have crossed the aisle numerous times to the betterment of their states. Yet they enjoy sterling reputations in the party. This occurs when common sense trumps partisanship.

William F. Buckley, who died in 2008, demonstrated that true conservatives could define how far to the right their party could go without making their candidates unelectable or too distant from the mainstream so that it was difficult to take their ideas seriously. It may be coincidence, or it may be cause and effect, that upon his death,  the Tea Party was established and seized control of the right wing. Buckley was successful in silencing the John Birch Society; perhaps he could have done the same with the Tea Party.

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