During a panel discussion on his May 6 broadcast of Hardball, MSNBC talking head Chris Matthews called Glenn Beck and the NRA “Hitlerian” for their arguments against Obama’s gun-ban plans–but only minutes later scolded those same people for likening others to Nazis.
In a discussion of Glenn Beck’s address given on May 4 to members of the National Rifle Association at their convention in Houston, Texas, Matthews said the rhetoric employed there against the gun grabbers on the left was “Hitlerian.”
“This whole idea of righteous indignation, first of all, it’s Hitlerian, generally speaking, demagoguery,” Matthews blurted out. “It’s always about righteous indignation. All great demagogic speakers talk about how they’re coming to get us. That’s how you get people excited.”
Shortly thereafter, Matthews played a few minutes of Glenn Beck’s speech to the attendees of the NRA convention.
Beck said that the “freedom of all mankind is at stake.” He went on to lament that many of his New York friends were all too quick to acquiesce to Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s nanny state-like bans on soda, salt, transfats and other things. Beck then showed on the wall screen a satirical new tourism slogan for Bloomberg’s city. In a take off on the old New York slogan “I Love New York,” Beck put an image on the screen that showed Michael Bloomberg in a communist-like pose, then satirically intoned that the new slogan should be “You WILL love New York.”
Remembering that only minutes before, Matthews decried Beck’s and the NRA’s rhetoric as “Hitlerian,” Matthews then went on to attack Beck for calling Bloomberg a Nazi.
Newsbusters has the video:
You know, I can’t overplay how far right this country’s gotten. And anybody who’s watching, progressives or middle-of-the-roaders, if you don’t see what’s happening with these people, you don’t have to cartoonize them. You have got a Nazi salute there, the mayor of New York, because he wants to have 16-ounce limits on soda. Let’s put it in practical terms. He also wants–He did a pretty good job, I’ll have to say this, on cigarettes in New York. They didn’t bring that up because they knew he was right on that one. But this idea of making moderate politicians like Mike Bloomberg, who’s really a centrist, into some sort of left, what? A Nazi?
So to recap: Matthews said conservative are Nazis for their rhetoric in the gun debate then immediately scolded conservatives for calling Michael Bloomberg a Nazi. “Demagoguery,” Matthews said. Exactly.
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