No, it's not that vile racial slur I'm connecting to Fox News. Mr. Murdoch is far too clever to allow that to creep into his constant attacks upon our first black President, liberals, Democrats, and democracy. Its the other "N" word -- Nazi -- which has grabbed hold of the reactionary right's mind in much the way that a few angry liberals tossed it around during the Viet Nam war, but never before has it been used with such horrendous promiscuity, or so wide a distribution as Fox News demonstrates today. We have Murdoch's avuncular minister of propaganda, Roger Ailes, use the word Nazi constantly to describe Obama and the Democrats, particularly on the subject of health care or monetary policy We hear Fox's primary predators Limbaugh and Beck aim their arsenal of vitriol and tears in concert with that word -- mainly at Obama, but using it so that it even includes a Holocaust survivor such as the progressive billionaire George Soros -- the perfect target for a new kind of totalitarian abuse.
Sherman's law: The word Nazi can only be used in connection to the Holocaust. To trivialize that word as Fox News has done is to degrade the deaths of millions of innocents. It is quite simply pissing on their graves to promote a radical right wing political message. The National Socialists were peculiar to their own time, and their horrendous murders were unique to their fascist philosophy. The Nazis began with small murders; then graduated to larger killings by demonizing the Socialists, the Jews, the homosexuals, and the Gypsies, and when the SS forced an elderly Jew to clean the streets of Berlin with his tongue, they did so to lower him to the level of an animal that could be easily disposed of once so degraded, and end by mass murder in the camps. The Nazis did not invent evil but they perfected it to a level and on a scale that the world had never before seen. Yes, there have been mass murderers like Pol Pot in the years thereafter, but they were creators of their own brand of evil, equally horrendous, but not Nazis. The use of the word Nazi by Fox news is not to protect the Jews but to threaten them -- to demonize those progressive leaders whom most Jews (sorry Eric Cantor) have voted for, and to degrade the progressives so that they are busy defending themselves against imaginary demons and subliminal swastikas. As a sometimes critic of President Obama, I feel that those of us who see his flaws, and his virtues, with some perspective, must defend him against this calumny.
I for one cannot comprehend the stupidity of those Jewish organizations that go along with Murdoch and his minions because of their alleged support of all Israeli policies. This shows a narrowness of vision that will harm the very country they wish to preserve. Imagine giving an award to Murdoch for his support of Israel. Israel needs realists, not cheerleaders to see it through difficult times. All this alleged philo-Semitism of Fox News seems to me a clever cover for a deep rooted dislike for the very people they claim to support. Yes, black is white and red is green and trash smells sweet as money in the world of Rupert Murdoch. And most of all, lies are truths.
What Fox news does is to degrade the word Nazi much as they use the word 'Democrat' -- emphasis on the 'rat' -- instead of 'Democratic'. They're abusing language as the great George Orwell warned us- to empty it of all meaning and fill it with propaganda for its special cause -- the gaining and retention of power by the oligarchy.
The Nazi name-callers at Fox news have found a way to create an evil in the name of defending us from it. We need, more than ever, a vigorous response from those who can read the cruelty, the hate, the colossal disrespect for the dead, and the viciousness between the lines.