Latest Nazi Analogy Update

If I posted every time a conservative made another ass-backwards Nazi analogy, it would be about once a month, if not weekly. Their reflex is simultaneously outrageous and ordinary now. Your jaw only drops as part of a yawn. But two examples stand out this past summer.

The first is National Review writer Kevin Williamson calling Jewish U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders a Nazi because he is an unapologetic socialist which conservatives routinely conflate with the Nazis' oxymoronic "national socialist" - a label that was just as absurd in the 1930s as it is today.

The second is the Holocaust comparison made by Kim Davis' lawyers and supporters. Check out the rally photo in that last link and roll around in the irony. In it, one supporter is holding up a sign predicting an anti-Christian Holocaust, while another is flying the confederate battle flag. No doubt both would hotly deny the "Stars and Bars" has anything to do with white supremacy and thereby deny any mixed message.

But recently a new wrinkle has emerged. It is not a Nazi analogy per se, but it is definitely Nazi-related. Heretofore, I had thought that the staff of Reason magazine had distanced itself from the racist crackpots of the Ron Paul crowd. After all, they investigated who wrote the infamously racist articles that appeared in Paul's newsletters in the late 80s and early 90s. Well, it turns out that they once flirted with that element as well by defending South African Apartheid in the 1970s and giving a platform to Holocaust deniers.

Now, their prickly reaction to this revelation does not necessarily mean they have not made a clean break since. But it is interesting to see that they share similarities beyond calling themselves "libertarians."