Ellison remarks condemned

http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/breaking/103092.html

Published: 07/18/2007

Comments by a Democratic congressman comparing post-Sept. 11 Bush administration policies to Nazi manipulations in the early 1930s drew condemnation.

"It's almost like the Reichstag fire, kind of reminds me of that," Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) said July 8, addressing a group of Minnesota atheists. "After the Reichstag was burned, they blamed the Communists for it, and it put the leader of that country in a position where he could basically have authority to do whatever he wanted."

Adolf Hitler, then the German chancellor who was unable to obtain a Nazi majority through democratic means, used the Feb. 23, 1933 burning of the Reichstag as a pretext to impose police powers. It is still unclear who was responsible for the fire.

Defending his comments to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Ellison said, "In the aftermath of a tragedy, space is opened up for governments to take action that they could not have achieved before that." He cited the Iraq war and parts of the Patriot Act, which granted the government greater arrest and surveillance powers after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

The Anti-Defamation League called Ellison's comments "outrageous and offensive." "Whatever his views may be on the administration’s response to 9/11 and the conduct of the war on terrorism, likening it to Hitler’s rise to power and Nazism is odious and demeans the victims of 9/11 and the brave American men and women engaged in the war on terror. Furthermore, it demonstrates a profound lack of understanding about the horrors that Hitler and his Nazi regime perpetrated," an ADL statement said.

Reps. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Zach Wamp (R-Tenn.) called on Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, to reprimand Ellison. "These comments inflame hatred and division at a time when we should be promoting our unity and reconciliation," the letter said.

Ellison, the first Muslim ever to serve in Congress, earned the endorsement of top Jewish figures in Minnesota after he repudiated a brief mid-1990s association with the Nation of Islam, a militant black anti-Semitic group.