G. Gordon Liddy, a popular and nationally syndicated right-wing talk show host, was inspired in his youth by Adolf Hitler. He explained as much in a recent interview with The Independent, a British newspaper.
The Fuhrer was G Gordon Liddy’s first political hero. Liddy was a sickly, asthmatic child when he grew up in Hoboken, New Jersey, in the 1930s. The town was full of ethnic Germans who idolized Hitler. Liddy was made to salute the Stars and Stripes Nazi-style by the nuns at his school; even now, he admits, “at assemblies where the national anthem is played, I must suppress the urge to snap out my right arm.” His beloved German nanny taught him that Hitler had – through sheer will-power – “dragged Germany from weakness to strength.”
This gave Liddy hope “for the first time in my life” that he too could overcome weakness. When he listened to Hitler on the radio, it “made me feel a strength inside I had never known before,” he explains. “Hitler’s sheer animal confidence and power of will [entranced me]. He sent an electric current through my body.” He describes seeing the Nazis’ doomed technological marvel the Hindenberg flying over New Jersey as an almost religious experience. “Ecstatic, I drank in its colossal power and felt myself grow. Fear evaporated and in its place came a sense of personal might and power.”
I’m not familiar with the reporter who did this interview and I don’t know the context in which the comments were offered. But unless Liddy prefaced his remarks by saying, “I completely disagree with everything I’m about to say…” these are the kind of comments that should ruin Liddy’s career and drive him from American public life.
Ten years ago, when Cincinnati Reds owner Marge Schott said Hitler was “good in the beginning,” there was a national outrage. Schott was not only disgraced, she was suspended by the league. But here we have a talk-show host who reportedly still has the urge to “snap out [his] right arm”? Why is this man still allowed to keep his job?
I’m obviously not suggesting censorship. If Liddy finds Nazis inspirational, I’m disgusted but I realize he’s free to embrace hate. If he wants to stand in the public square from a soapbox and tell anyone who’ll listen about his twisted views, he’s within his rights and I wouldn’t try to stop him.
That said, there’s no reason to give this lunatic a megaphone. Nearly 140 radio stations broadcast Liddy every day, with support of advertisers who make him a wealthy man. This should not stand.
Moreover, Paul Waldman raised an excellent point about Liddy’s remarks in the context of a “liberal” media.
[T]he reach of people like Liddy demonstrates how skewed political debate is in this country. Can you think of a public figure who is one tenth as far to the left as Liddy is to the right? And don’t say Michael Moore – once Moore starts delivering praise of the Cultural Revolution you might have a case, but he’s a million miles from there. To paraphrase something I once heard Mark Crispin Miller say, to find somebody as far to the left as Liddy is to the right you’d have to get a Shining Path guerilla – and nobody’s giving one of them a nationally syndicated radio show.
Liddy’s pro-Nazi comments also fit nicely into my friend Eugene Oregon’s TPLGOP project (These People Love the GOP), which seeks to remind people as often as possible that far too much of the Republican base is stark raving mad.