Rob Reiner likens 'tea party' movement to Hitler

The actor formerly known as Meathead blasted the "tea party" movement Friday night on HBO, comparing its followers to the Nazis.

"My fear is that the tea party gets a charismatic leader," actor/director Rob Reiner said to applause in front of a live audience on Bill Maher's "Real Time." "Because all they're selling is fear and anger. And that's all Hitler sold. 'I'm angry and I'm frightened and you should hate that guy over there.' And that's what they're doing."

Ranting between the senior advisor for the 2008 McCain/Palin campaign, Nicolle Wallace, and ABC's Jake Tapper, Reiner began his assault on the tea party by talking about the likes of Christine O'Donnell, the GOP nominee for U.S. senator in Delaware. “They're selling stupidity," the director of "Spinal Tap" said. "They’re selling stupidity and ignorance and I've never seen a group of people, I’ve never seen an election cycle, with more ignorance than this one.”

And then Reiner began his comparison of the splinter group and the Nazi party's Adolf Hitler. "He wasn’t a majority guy, but he was charismatic and they were having bad economic times –- just like we are now –- people were out of work, they needed jobs and a guy came along and rallied the troops," Reiner said with an energy that America lapped up when he was a tie-dye-sporting hippie lashing out at his television father-in-law, Archie Bunker, in the hugely successful "All in the Family."

Reiner has been an outspoken political activist over the last few decades, tackling issues such as the environment, alternative energy and preschool education. One of his biggest political victories was 1998's Proposition 10, for which he was the campaign chairman. Proposition 10 added a 50-cent tax on each pack of cigarettes to fund First 5 early childhood development and smoking-prevention programs. About $480 million in funds benefits California families each year.

That victory didn't go without the notice of Trey Parker and Matt Stone, who lampooned the overweight director for his seemingly contradictory crusade for health. The pair parodied Reiner in the 2003 South Park episode "Butt Out," in which a cartoon version of Reiner goes to the Colorado town on an anti-cigarette campaign. The pair explained that Reiner was an easy target to make fun of.

"Obviously, South Park has a lot of politics in it, but ultimately we want to make a funny show and a good show. We try not to be, 'All right, here’s the point we want to make,'" Stone told Reason Magazine in 2006. "But things like California’s smoking ban and Rob Reiner animate both of us. When we did that Rob Reiner episode, to us it was just common sense. Rob Reiner was just a great target."

[Correction: An earlier version of this post misspelled Hilter's first name Adolph. That has been corrected.]

-- Tony Pierce

Photo: Rob Reiner. Credit: Associated Press

 

 

Comments

[marty]

Reiner behaves as if he is living the bit he played on Archy Bunker; that liberal know-it-all loser supported by Archy. ...Pathetic!

[Joachim Schoder]

You missed to mention the important context in the article. Glady you see it in the video (0:59):
"You never get into a political discussion unless you bring the word Hitler in. [...] So lets put Hitler out there."

He just shows how easy and to some degree stupid it is to use the Hitler-comparisson. Just use a charasmatic guy who says what the people want to hear. (Which fits quite a number of politicians - Democrats, Republicans, Tee-Party, Independent, etc.)

[don]

people were out of work, they needed jobs and a guy came along and rallied the troops," Reiner said

really rob? and what was the guys name? oh yea. barak obama.

and when he turned on everyone except the rich and union workers and the situation got worse. he refused to take any responsibilty.

you rob, are a fraud, just like your hero obama.

[Sorry, Tea Baggers]

Way to go, completely missing Reiner's point.

And therefore, falling into the Tea Bagger's classic tactic of misdirection and willfully glossing over the topic, calling the other side names (Meathead, fat schmuck) instead of engaging in actual discourse, and overall selling the same old stupidity without any actual substance that Tea Baggers so like to brew.

Nice job, proving Reiner absolutely right.

[Typo]

I believe it's Adolf Hitler, not Adolph.

[Jewpoint.blogspot.com]

"And therefore, falling into the Alinsky Left's classic tactic of misdirection and willfully glossing over the topic, calling the other side foul names that reveal their own sexual perversion ("TeaBaggers") instead of engaging in actual discourse, and overall selling the same old stupidity without any actual substance that the Alinsky Left so likes to brew."

/ fixed it.

Reiner and his followers here obviously don't know or simply ignore that the Nazis stood for National Socialists, which is what the Democrat Party now blatantly promotes.

For example, confiscating businesses, creating massive statist bureaucracies to control every aspect of our lives including our health care, promoting gun control (Himmler LOVED gun control), controlling the schools so they can promote perversion and "tolerance" of jihad, this is the modern Democratic Party.

If you love Obamunism, vote Dem.

If you want your country back, vote Republican / Tea Party / Conservative.

[don]

sorry said:
'calling the other side names (Meathead, fat schmuck) instead of engaging in actual discourse'

of course, your idea of actual discourse is to call them tea baggers and nazis.

sadly, your side has already one. you can gloat all you want. and laugh with millionaires like bill m. and rob r. as the tea party ppl, mostly white mostly old slolwy die off. and are replaced by willfull slaves.

[Greg Henderson]

Ya Rob nothing like the dems hawking more war with Iran or keeping up 2 wars to bankrupt the country, or blow up the economy. Ya Rob Nothing like the Feds selling fear about pot legalization in California, hey nothing like Looking up Obama, CCX and the Joyce foundation and the Global Warming scam on Google. Nothing hitleresque about that.

[Jane Sane]

Left wing, liberal, class warfare, Bad corporations, bad rich people, poor workers. Make everyone dependent on the Government,discourage free enterprise, discourage self sufficiency and encourage helplessness. Ignore the Constitution, change the rules to accomodate the lazy. God what a mess!!
I worked for what I have I want to keep it. I didn't go to clubs: I was very frugal. I plan for my retirement making sacrafices. Now the left want me to share with those who did drugs, partied, overspent and were careless. NO WAY. LIBERALS WAKE UP. TEA PARTY people are just you and me wanting to stop the spending and insanity.

[Brian]

Rob fears a charismatic leader? Don't look now, Mr. Reiner, but we have one in the WH.

[GodofHellfire]

Splinter group? 70% of the people identify as supporters of the Tea Party. The Republican was slapped around this summer and the Democrats will be handed an historic defeat in November.. Then, we'll be after the other Democratic and Republican officeholders.
Boehner seems to hear the people but McConnell is dead meat.

[Barry Hussein]

Reiner is just demonstrating that as a political scientist, he is really better off just being an entertainer. No one cares what he thinks and his opinions are not any more important than any other self inflated, pretentious, spoiled Hollywood windbag. He is free to donate all of his income to the government for confiscation and redistribution. Just don't go after my guns, money and freedom. I am not offering any of mine to the thieves in Washington DC. Taxed Enough Already, unless you think you deserve to pay more. ....

[Joan Miller]

Rob Reiner is so right on, the SAD fact is that so many Americans belive in this party, whereas Canadians are much more informed politically-why do you think the Conservatives have yet to achieve a MAJORITY Government since Mulroney, and hwy Mulroney lost it all in 1993..People wake up, the Tea Party has so many patterns of the Nazi Reich..how they trained the SS and the Youth..also the Leadership Institute.org has been training Conservatives (their mission) however, the Alliance here in Canada was trained there, and they took over the PC Party to become the CONSERVATIVES under Steve Harper..it was all done so sleezy, I was there and the TEA PARTY/Republican far right are all the same..a smart political move, that the left will not do-they are just too moral..

[harleyrider1978]

Hitler was a Leftist
Hitler's Anti-Tobacco Campaign

In Nazi Germany, for instance, abstinence from tobacco was a "national socialist duty" (Hitler gave a gold watch to associates who quit the habit, though this didn't stop them lighting up in the Berlin bunker once they heard the Fuhrer had committed suicide). Armed with such senior sanction -- loyally, Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler banned SS men from smoking, though not shooting, on duty, and Propaganda Minister Joseph Gobbels was obliged to hide his ciggie whenever he was filmed -- anti-tobacco activists succeeded in banning smoking from government offices, civic transport, university campuses, rest homes, post offices, many restaurants and bars, hospital grounds and workplaces. Tobacco taxes were raised, unsupervised cigarette vending machines were banned, and there were calls for a ban on smoking while driving.

Thanks to the Ministry of Science and Education, and the Reich Health Office, posters were produced depicting smoking as the typically despicable habit of Jews, jazz musicians, Gypsies, Indians, homosexuals, blacks, communists, capitalists, cripples, intellectuals and harlots. Zealous lobbyists descended into the schools, terrifying children with tales of impotence and racial impurity.

One particularly vile individual, Karl Astel -- upstanding president of Jena University, poisonous anti-Semite, euthanasia fanatic, SS officer, war criminal and tobacco-free Germany enthusiast -- liked to walk up to smokers and tear cigarettes from their unsuspecting mouths. (He committed suicide when the war ended, more through disappointment than fear of hanging.) It comes as little surprise to discover that the phrase "passive smoking" (Passivrauchen) was coined not by contemporary American admen, but by Fritz Lickint, the author of the magisterial 1100-page Tabak und Organismus ("Tobacco and the Organism"), which was produced in collaboration with the German AntiTobacco League.

http://constitutionalistnc.tripod.com/hitler-leftist/id1.html

[Scott Webster Wood]

Let's examine a bit just what Hitler was.
Yes, he was a minority guy with charisma. He encouraged people into a divisive m...indset that involved hating other groups. He convinced those people to hate those groups based on half-truths and outright lies that the people in those groups were exploiting them and holding them back. As he obtained power, he quickly increased government power, scope and authority and created a party representing socialist policies but in actuality enacting oligarchical fascistic controls.
Does this sound to you like a 'tea party' philosophy? Or Obamanomics?

[67mustang]

We should fear any and all charismatic leaders? How long is that list
gonna be? Several NFL quarterbacks are very charismatic leaders
for their teams. Fear Dan Marino?

[K Schindler]

As a liberal, the only problem I have with Rob Riener is he has to use a only a woman as an example of "stupidity."

[Tom Martin]

All the tea party people are selling is fear and Anger?

How about the 13.6 trillion debt is tooo big - Government is too big and too expensive.

Oh yea about that Hitler dude did Hitler push for larger or smaller government?

Is Obama pushing for Bigger or Smaller government? I'm just asking...

[tea sack moovement]

re:
Way to go, completely missing Reiner's point.

And therefore, falling into the Tea Bagger's classic tactic of misdirection and willfully glossing over the topic, calling the other side names (Meathead, fat schmuck) instead of engaging in actual discourse, and overall selling the same old stupidity without any actual substance that Tea Baggers so like to brew.

Nice job, proving Reiner absolutely right.

in this jungle of ignorant comments a bit of logic and reason

[stacyv]

I always get a huge laugh when celebrities attempt to persuade the public with classic early 20th century progressive tactics. Comparing the Tea Party to Nazism is absolutely hysterical.

According to Reiner, the Tea Partiers are "selling stupidity and ignorance and I've never seen a group of people, I’ve never seen an election cycle, with more ignorance than this one.” "...all they're selling is fear and anger."

Um...Rob...the economy is in bad shape, unemployment is near 10% nationally, and the country's immediate future is very uncertain. Guess what? All Americans are angry, and all Americans are afraid - not just the Tea Party.

Does Tea Party = Nazism? Nothing could be further from the truth. The Tea Party is the antithesis of Nazism.

If Mr. Reiner was either honest or educated, he would know and acknowledge that the NAZI party stood for the National Socialist Movement. That's right...socialist. As in extreme leftists. You know, big governemnt, expanded control over the people, redistribution of wealth.

The Tea Party wants a smaller, more fiscally responsible government, that does not impose its will on the people. Just look at how Obamacare was passed. Totally partisan, non-transparent to the public, and against the will of the people. More than 70% of the citizens of this nation oppose Obamacare.

Perhaps Mr. Reiner takes a similar view as Bill Maher. Bill thinks the American people are too stupid to think for themselves and thinks the government should think for them instead. Now that sounds a lot more like Nazism to me.

[tm]

I only see 1 group in America that is like hitler and thats people like him and the democratic party.

But democrats always have for years lied about who the Nazis were claiming they were far right when any ione who knows history will tell you they were far left socialist matching very close to todays democrat socialist party.

And as the democrats make more and more hatefull claims like this they get closer and closer to the Nazis.

[Javier Jimenez]

I think that Rob suffers from his lack of historical context perhaps due to his public education. Hitler was indeed charismatic, but he rose to power by providing more government to people he frightened using his charisma to hate the jews, communists, bankers, western democracies etc. The tea party people are not promoting hatred of jews, bankers, democracy; we are only calling for the return of the federal government to the framework of the constitution.

In fact, once upon a time, a group of angry charismatic men raised an army, defeated tyrannical rule and created the greatest experiment in self government ever tried. Of course, these men, Jefferson, Madison, Washington, Franklin et. al. for those educated in the public system, called for a federal government subservient to the people and the states that formed it and attempted to limit its power with the various constraints coded in the constitution. It was not until FDR that the federal government began taking more and more power and growing to the point that now with obamacare government controls all aspects of our lives from craddle to grave. That was not the intent as clearly explained by those angry men in all of their writings.

It is more these latter men that the tea party supporters ressemble than the former. Unlike the founding patriots, tea party patriots have a constitutional framework to bring about the revolutionary results the founding fathers could only achieve by taking up arms.

Sincerely,
A literate educated professional hispanic tea-bagger!

[D.B.]

The author of this article is tea party supporter and is using the LA. Times to advance his agenda What kind of real journalist uses this kind of sensationalizing language in an L.A. times article? He accuses Reiner of "ranting" and "attacking." This is false. He calmly presented an analysis. Even if you disagree with the analysis a decent honorable journalist would at least report this accurately.

Reiner is clearly more informed about the historical period he's discussing than the people who are attacking him and the people who keep calling Obama Hitler.

[jack wilson]

Reiner must have gone to the same Liberal Re-education camp as Joy Behar.

[SmithyPA]

"Reiner and his followers here obviously don't know or simply ignore that the Nazis stood for National Socialists," posted by Jewpoint. You prove Reiner's point on how dang ignorant teanuts are. The Nazi's weren't socialists dummy, that was the party's name, and like everything else about the Nazis, intended to deceive the German public. Kind of like teanuts calling themselves "patriots".

[Jeff]

Wow, could this article be any more biased? He's "ranting", began his "assault", "when he was a tie-die sporting hippie lashing out", and then they talk about South Park's episode? I thought the media was supposed to report the news, not sprinkle it with enough anti-liberal wording in an attempt to decredit the person who they're reporting on. Plus, he makes more of a comparison to this leaderless tea party to the Nazi's, not necessarily Hitler. He's mentioned, but only as a theoretical what-could-be to a Tea Party leader.

And yet all the people on here refuse to acknowledge the point, that the Tea Party DOES do these things. They do sell fear, and they're making a killing.

[Patrick McGean]

Laughter is God speaking through us. I am twice Irish, Cherokee, Jew and the Tea Party reference reminds me of the cowardly custards who dressed up like Indians to shift the blame. The King knew who drank the Tea, and we know that the same inability to take the blame is why we are laughing so little.
The Agents of the Matrix are afoot and will reinstate laughter for health, know any good writers?
Carl and Sid are my favoites for visula comedy, "dad" for concepts. I am the illegitamate son of an illegal alien, Mel Brooks, concieved over France 1945 never declared upon entering the US.

the Director