The "Obama is a Liberal Fascist Hitler" meme has been floating around since at least February, if not before. And now that the election's over and voters can't punish Republicans for spouting this kind of nonsense, it's getting a fresh life.
F'r instance, there's the Georgia Republican congressman who foresees young Brownshirts emerging from Obama's proposal for a national civilian-service corps:
A Republican congressman from Georgia said Monday he fears that President-elect Obama will establish a Gestapo-like security force to impose a Marxist or fascist dictatorship.
"It may sound a bit crazy and off base, but the thing is, he's the one who proposed this national security force," Rep. Paul Broun said of Obama in an interview Monday with The Associated Press. "I'm just trying to bring attention to the fact that we may — may not, I hope not — but we may have a problem with that type of philosophy of radical socialism or Marxism."
Broun cited a July speech by Obama that has circulated on the Internet in which the then-Democratic presidential candidate called for a civilian force to take some of the national security burden off the military.
"That's exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it's exactly what the Soviet Union did," Broun said. "When he's proposing to have a national security force that's answering to him, that is as strong as the U.S. military, he's showing me signs of being Marxist."
Sounds like someone's been reading too much Jonah Goldberg. Of course, Jonah's adherents at sites like Red State and Gateway Pundit think Rep. Broun is on the right track.
Meanwhile, there's also the Texas state education-board member who fears that Obama is secretly plotting with Muslim terrorists to destroy America:
State Board of Education member Cynthia Dunbar isn't backing down from her claim that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is plotting with terrorists to attack the U.S.
The Texas Freedom Network, a watchdog group that monitors the board, released a public statement on Monday asking Dunbar to retract the statement.
"I don't have anything in there that would be retractable," said Dunbar, R-Richmond. "Those are my personal opinions and I don't think the language is questionable."
In a column posted on the Christian Worldview Network Web site, Dunbar wrote that a terrorist attack on America during the first six months of an Obama administration "will be a planned effort by those with whom Obama truly sympathizes to take down the America that is threat to tyranny."
She also suggests Obama would seek to expand his power by declaring martial law throughout the country.
Though Dunbar is defiant, the article seems to have been removed from the CWN site. You can read the cached version here.
In a similar vein, we're also hearing that Obama is the antichrist from the religious-right wingnuts.
This really is a double case of deja vu. Not only did we hear this crap circulating around the right during the campaign this year, we heard almost exactly the same thing 16 years ago when Bill Clinton won the White House -- the supposed "looming dictatorship" and the nefarious conspiracies with dark forces.
That only produced eight years of "New World Order" conspiracy theories and their accompanying militias and right-wing domestic terrorists. You'll forgive us if we're not very eager to see what this go-round produces.
