One thing that JFK had in common with Hitler is that both managed to create mythical cults of personality. Hitler was seen as a demi-god by his followers, which wasn’t all too different from the “Camelot” myth cultivated by JFK’s sycophants in government and media.
Some context here.
The American progressive left craved traditional socialism almost from the start, and by this I mean (at the turn of the Century), the Greenback Party (aka the Independent Party, the National Independent Party, the Greenback Party, and the Greenback Labor Party), the Labor Reform Party, the Populist Party, the Democratic Party, and the Socialist Labor Party.
They were thrilled to death when the Russian Czar was overthrown, and first replaced by the squishiest and most incompetent liberals imaginable (even by modern San Francisco standards), and then by the far more determinately socialist communists under Lenin.
As a dictator, Lenin went by the book and implemented every single socialist scheme, and all at once. The result was an amazing failure of every scheme, across the board, and all at once.
Progressive education in the schools, for example, proclaimed by the American philosopher John Dewey, was an utter disaster, producing children that were almost feral. So Lenin ditched that idea and implemented strict, European (German) style schooling.
Lenin tried to collectivize farming. Result, a huge famine. So he went back to private farming.
Lenin ordered the Czarist bureaucracy (many of whom were German or of German descent) abolished, and Russia stopped functioning at all for a week or two, until he restored it in its entirety.
He even tried out the socialist idea of “free love”. Yeah, that failed after about five minutes.
Etc., etc., etc. Every socialist idea was a disaster. Not a single success. But Lenin was at least pragmatic enough to realize it and change back. And then he died.
And Stalin took over, reinstalled every socialist idea that Lenin had discarded, turned Russia into a huge disaster area, and instituted the communist terror in earnest.
Well, despite not wanting to see this happening, American socialists became rather discouraged, except for the few real nutbags, who said that Stalin was right. Communism in the US was pretty limited to just New York City, among immigrants.
But then, along came *National Socialism*. Now *here* was a form of socialism that American socialists could appreciate. They thought it fixed all the mistakes made by traditional socialism, and was the wave of the future.
And all too soon, with the Great Depression and the ascension to power of “Ol’ Frank” Roosevelt:
“What we were doing in this country were some of
the things that were being done in Russia and even
some of the things that were being done under
Hitler in Germany. But we were doing them in an
orderly way.”
— President Franklin D. Roosevelt
In any event, prior to the war, this was the opinion of much of the left in the US, that the fascists had some good ideas, that could do much to lift America out of the Depression. Plus they had such snazzy uniforms and liked to do calisthenics as a group! Such equality! It has to be good.
Even the communists, who at first hated Hitler as a competitor to Stalin, did a 180 degree turn and embraced Hitler, when the Germans and Soviets signed their non-aggression pact. They did another 180 degree turn when Hitler invaded Russia, and hated him again. But not enough to join the military and risk their own precious rear ends.
Well, with the war, Hitler and Mussolini and fascism fell out of fashion again.
This is not to say that their fascist economic policies and principles were discarded by the left. They weren’t, and several are still around today.
And the real nutbags are still around too, hoping to somehow bring back traditional socialism to add to the mix with National socialism. Zero pattern recognition.
people like hitler and stalin and mao don’t one day get up and say “Hey I am going to seize power and kill millions of people.
They surround themselves with like-minded individuals and grow a power base, bit by bit, until it is too late.
And one of the ways is by getting people into positions of power in education and military and government, who then only hire more like-minded, who suppress opposition (like with the IRS), and who eventually think its OK to ‘eliminate’ millions to achieve their agenda.
Like Bill Ayers. Like the duhmmies at Democrat Underground Like those with the homo-promoting agenda in the military. Like professors in universities.
ALL libtards with no moral compass, except the belief in their own mind that they can kill you, or others like you, for your own good.
And they do it with a clean conscience (such that it is) because they think they are so much more enlightened and better than you. If the Obamanuts were spying on FOX news instead of AP they would have been cheering.
It's not as if the JFK diaries from that trip have just been released recently. They have been available to researchers for decades, as seen by the extensive quoting from them in Nigel Hamilton's "JFK: Restless Youth," published in paperback edition in 1992. The 1937 trip to Nazi Germany is covered in the book and there is no quotation of any kind to indicate that JFK was impressed with the Nazi regime.
The author, by contrast, does not soft-peddle Joe Kennedy's (JFK's father's) admiration for the Nazis during the same time frame. (Joseph Kennedy was US Ambassador to the UK at the time.)
How do we know this isn’t just another tactic to smear conservatives?