Despite his previous comparison of Michael Moore's documentary Sicko to Nazi propaganda, Newsradio 850 KOA host Mike Rosen stated on his August 3 show that “gratuitous comparisons to Hitler and Nazis always annoy me, because they trivialize the seriousness of what Nazism was all about.” As Colorado Media Matters noted, Rosen on his July 17 broadcast said of Sicko, “If you admire propaganda of the Goebbels variety, of the Riefenstahl variety, then this ... is well-done propaganda, as long as we recognize it as that.” Later in that broadcast he asked guest David Horowitz, "[W]ould Leni Riefenstahl be proud of this film?"
Rosen's July 17 comments referenced Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Germany's propaganda minister, and Leni Riefenstahl, director of the 1935 Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will -- and continued a pattern (here, here, and here) whereby right-wing radio hosts have likened progressive documentaries to Nazi propaganda.
Rosen made his August 3 comments about comparisons to “Hitler and Nazis” after stating that “Roman Catholic officials in Mexico on Monday called the U.S. fence along the Mexican border -- listen to this -- 'a triumph of the ideals of Hitler.' ” Later in the broadcast, after calling the comparison between a border fence and “the ideals of Hitler” an “idiotic analogy,” Rosen said that “when people throw that term 'Nazi' around loosely, sometimes they make fools of themselves.”
From the August 3 broadcast of Newsradio 850 KOA's The Mike Rosen Show:
ROSEN: Roman Catholic officials in Mexico on Monday called the U.S. fence along the Mexican border -- listen to this -- “a triumph of the ideals of Hitler.” Now, these gratuitous comparisons to Hitler and Nazis always annoy me, because they trivialize the seriousness of what Nazism was all about. As a matter of fact, in my column in the Rocky Mountain News today I reprint this email sent to each of the nine University of Colorado regents by this woman who's a sociology doctoral candidate in Ohio at Case Western Reserve University. I read that on the air earlier this week and decided to put it in print in a column. And she throws around the word “Nazi” casually, calling the CU regents Nazis because they voted eight to one to fire Ward Churchill, to take the recommendations of the president of the University of Colorado and some faculty members who had fully investigated Churchill and these panels that were convened. Nazis. Let's see, what countries did the CU regents invade? Where are the concentration camps that the CU regents created? Who did they exterminate? So now Roman Catholic officials in Mexico are comparing the U.S. to Hitler because there are those who want to put up a security fence or otherwise safeguard the integrity of our borders. To see how absurd this analogy is, did Hitler build a wall so that the Nazis couldn't invade Poland and kill the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto? No. He didn't want a wall because he wanted to invade these countries. The invaders in this case are the people coming into this country illegally. This wall would keep people out -- people who want to come into our country. How many Jews were leaving nations in Eastern Europe in order to enter Germany so they could be exterminated in Germany? It's an absolutely idiotic analogy. But when people throw that term “Nazi” around loosely, sometimes they make fools of themselves.
