WASHINGTON (JTA) – Newt Gingrich is drawing a rebuke from Jewish groups for labeling political opponents Nazis.
The American Jewish Committee urged the leadership of the Republican Party to condemn the former Speaker of the House for writing in his new book that the Obama administration’s policy agenda is as “great a threat to America as Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.”
In promotional media spots for his book, “To Save America: Stopping Obama’s Secular-Socialist Machine,” Gingrich has talked about the current administration as a “secular socialist machine.” Though he refrained from making a moral comparison between Obama and Nazis, Gingrich warned Sean Hannity on Fox News that “we are going to be in a country which no longer resembles America.”
"Gingrich’s linkage not only diminishes the horror of the Holocuast, it also licenses the use of extremist language in contemporary America,” said AJC Executive Director David Harris. “It is vital that the Republican leadership say clearly that such analogies are unacceptable. Unfortunately, as the recent controversy over the new immigration law in Arizona also demonstrates, demonizing political opponents as Nazis is becoming all too common in American political debate.”
