Actually, Nazism was also a slickly packaged politician with a, for-the-most-part benign-sounding name (national socialism) and program, lead by a charismatic spokesman. Its following didn’t grow by making old men dance around burning Torah scrolls, but by colorful rallies and stirring speeches, by peaceful boycotts of Jewish stores and by the passage of laws. To claim that Nazism hit the ground running as a blatantly brutal and mendacious campaign of mass murder and all out war is a distortion of the historical record. It is entirely legitimate for Rush Limbaugh to compare Obama’s administration to that of the Nazis, so long as that comparison is factual and uses logic instead of sensationalism. Nazism, after all, started within the framework of a democracy, so it must be identified early while it can still be dealt with by democratic means. Thus, it may be imperative to call the Obamaniacs Nazis, if the facts and reasoning supports the charge.
The cheap Gore Vidal tactic, however, used neither logic nor facts. He was smearing an important intellectual and his ideas, while simultaneously exempting himself from any need to substantiate his charges solely by virtue of having committed that smear. Goebbels would have been proud.
Gore Vidal was repeating the big lie that the Left has been pushing since 1939; that Nazis are conservatives rather than leftists and socialists.
The terms right-wing and Nazi are mutually exclusive. But the leftists have successfully promoted an Orwellian “New Speak” “War is Peace” “Nazis are right-wingers” myth that we haven’t done enough to expose as the lie it is.