Dispelling Myths About George Bush; Thanks in large part to the Internet, the Bush-bashing extremists have launched a global smear campaign that is feeding the masses a steady diet of misinformation

0 Comments | Insight on the News, March 1, 2004

President Bush owes his family inheritance to Adolf Hitler, and his grandfather, Prescott Bush, helped finance the Nazi rise to power in Germany. These stories had circulated for years but resurfaced on May 13, 2003, in the Cuban Communist Party newspaper Granma, headlined, "Bush Family Funded Adolf Hitler." As the Associated Press reports, Prescott had been on the board of Union Banking Corp., whose majority owner, the Thyssen family of Germany, indeed had funded the Nazis against a feared communist takeover of Germany in the 1920s and 1930s. Family leader Fritz Thyssen broke with Hitler over the 1938 Kristallnacht pogrom against the Jews, was stripped of his citizenship and fortune, and was in a Nazi prison at the time the elder Bush sat on that board. There is no evidence that Prescott Bush, who owned just one share of Union Banking, had anything to do with the Thyssen political work in Germany.

Some critics go even further to accuse the president of having inherited ill-gotten profits from a Nazi slave-labor operation near the Auschwitz death camp in Poland. But the Polish company in which Prescott Bush had an interest, Silesian-American Corp., was stolen by the Nazis in 1939, the year before Auschwitz was built. Discussing this controversy, columnist Joe Conason of the New York Observer writes, "Henry Ford was a Nazi collaborator. Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. was a Nazi sympathizer. Unless additional information emerges to indict him, Prescott Bush Sr. was neither. To misuse such terms for political advantage against his grandson is to trivialize very grave offenses."

If Bush isn't tied to the Nazis, at least he acts like one. Soros was the first major figure during this campaign season to accuse President Bush of Nazi-like tendencies. In 2002 and 2003, mulling how he could use his fortune to bring down the president, the superrich currency speculator decided that the administration's post-9/11 counterterrorism methods were reminiscent of Hitler's regime. He told the Washington Post, "When I hear Bush say, 'You're either with us or against us,' it reminds me of the Germans."

That helped give cover to others. Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), the self-styled orator whose floor speeches often quote the philosophers of ancient Rome and Athens, finally snapped on Oct. 17, 2003, when he gave a floor speech recalling Hans Christian Andersen's story in which "the emperor has no clothes." He closed with an open comparison of President Bush to Nazi propaganda minister Hermann Goering. Other stories swirled on the Internet accusing presidential political strategist Karl Rove of having family ties to the Nazis.

Paradox: Bush foreign and defense policy is controlled by the Jews. If Bush isn't controlled by Nazis or big-oil interests, he must be controlled by the Jews. What other reason would motivate the president to overthrow Saddam Hussein? These critics aren't crass or politically suicidal enough to sneer the word "Jews" openly, so they use a code word: neoconservatives.