Right-Wing Journalist Claims That Jewish Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders Is A Nazi

Right-Wing Journalist Claims That Jewish Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders Is A Nazi

Apparently, avowed Socialist and surging Democratic Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has ruffled enough feathers in his campaign for the White House that prominent conservative publications are already deciding to go the gutter route against him. In a piece was published this month in the print edition of National Review and was posted online Monday evening, renowned asshole and conservative provocateur Kevin D. Williamson claimed that Sanders is “leading a national-socialist movement” while acknowledging that Sanders is Jewish and much of his family was killed in the Holocaust.

The article was obviously meant to portray Sanders and his growing band of followers as crackpots and simplistic ideologues who want to turn the United States into a ghetto-like socialistic nightmare. Besides painting many of the voters who turn up at Sanders events in an unflattering color, Williamson also stated that since Sanders is utilizing a nationalistic approach to the economy and trade he is essentially the equivalent of a Nazi in that he is pushing a national-socialist agenda.

Below is from the article:

 

In the Bernieverse, there’s a whole lot of nationalism mixed up in the socialism. He 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. 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, especially the wicked Chinese, “stealing our jobs” and victimizing his class allies is nothing more than an updated version of Kaiser Wilhelm II’s “yellow peril” rhetoric, and though the kaiser had a more poetical imagination — he said he had a vision of the Buddha riding a dragon across Europe, laying waste to all — Bernie’s take is substantially similar. He describes the normalization of trade relations with China as “catastrophic” — Sanders and Jesse Helms both voted against the Clinton-backed China-trade legislation — and heaps scorn on every other trade-liberalization pact. That economic interactions with foreigners are inherently hurtful and exploitative is central to his view of how the world works.

 

He used the term national-socialist a few more times in the piece, obviously trying to hammer home his blatant equation of the independent Senator’s politics to Nazism. Later on in the article, he made a more direct comparison to former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, perhaps as a way to soft-peddle the Nazi angle. (Also, to conservatives, Chavez is prime example #1 of the evils of socialism.)

 

There are many kinds of Us-and-Them politics, and Bernie Sanders, to be sure, is not a national socialist in the mode of Alfred Rosenberg or Julius Streicher. He is a national socialist in the mode of Hugo Chávez. He isn’t driven by racial hatred; he’s driven by political hatred. And that’s bad enough.

 

Other reporters and journalists took Williamson to task for the article, rightfully calling him out for essentially calling Sanders a Nazi.

 

Of course, Williamson being Williamson, he responded to the criticism, specifically to Vox’s Matt Iglesias.  

 

Which led to the following replies from Iglesias:

 

 

Yep, the “intellectually dishonest” one here is Williamson. He knows he specifically wanted to call Sanders a Nazi but didn’t want to actually use the word. So he went the national-socialist route as an end around. When called out on it, he hedges and claims he was making a much larger point that dumber people just aren’t getting. But, he wasn’t. And he knows it.

 

Image via CNN

Justin Baragona

Justin Baragona is the founder/publisher of Contemptor and a contributor to The Daily Beast. He was previously the Cable News Correspondent for Mediaite and prior to starting Contemptor, he worked on the editorial staff of PoliticusUSA. During that time, he had his work quoted by USA Today and BBC News, among others. Justin began his published career as a political writer for 411Mania. He resides in St. Louis, MO with his wife and pets.

One thought on “Right-Wing Journalist Claims That Jewish Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders Is A Nazi

  1. That a conservative made a moronic comparison is not surprising, nor is that conservative lacking the intgegrity to won what they said.
    Actually, sadly, with today’s GOP, there is absolutely NOTHING surprising about Williamson’s idiocy and vile slander. That whole party needs to just stop. Shut their mouths, close their offices, don’t run in any elections, because they are everything America is NOT.

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