Obama, Hitler and Lenin Share New Tea Party Billboard

(July 13) -- Look, up in the sky: It's Hitler, it's that guy who came before Stalin, it's Obama the socialist!

At least that's the scene set by a controversial new roadside billboard in rural Iowa that puts the president literally right in the middle of two of history's most infamous totalitarian leaders, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Have a look:

Deb Nicklay, Globe Gazette / AP

The North Iowa Tea Party's latest billboard features, from left, Adolf Hitler, Barack Obama and Vladimir Lenin.

Put up last week, the display has already drawn numerous complaints, including from other national tea party leaders, who say it does not adequately convey their goals or message, notes The Associated Press. Even some of its backers have conceded that it might be overkill, but have made no plans to take it down anytime soon.

"The purpose of the billboard was to draw attention to the socialism. It seems to have been lost in the visuals," said Bob Johnson, a co-founder of the North Iowa Tea Party, which rented the space for the sign. "The pictures overwhelmed the message. The message is socialism."

While billboards attacking the Obama administration and signs depicting him as Hitler are in themselves nothing new (both having materialized occasionally around the country since last year's tense health care reform debate), the latest display is perhaps the most prominent instance to date where the two anti-Obama memes have met in such an explicit, spectacular and an unavoidable fashion.

It is located in Mason City, "at the southern junction of U.S. Highway 65 and State Highway 122," reports Radio Iowa. Here's a map of the approximate location, via Google:


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In case you couldn't see in the image, the billboard features three head shots of the leaders side by side and their various "brands" of socialism: First up, Nazi German Chancellor Adolf Hitler, who of course ruled Germany from 1933 to 1945. He appears under the banner "National Socialism." Second, U.S. President Barack Obama, under "Democrat Socialism." Finally Soviet Russian Chairman Vladimir Illyich Lenin, who led the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Russian S.F.S.R. (what would become the Soviet Union) from its founding until his death in 1924. He appears under the label "Marxist Socialism."

All three leaders are flanked by their respective party logos, and the words "Change." Beneath them reads a warning: "Radical leaders prey on the fearful & naive."

The sign marks an escalation of the local tea party chapter's rhetoric: Just last year, the Globe Gazette reported that a group of "concerned citizens," including some North Iowa Tea Party members, paid Waitt Outdoor Signs to rent the same exact space to display a somewhat subtler message: "Socialism -- A system of social organization that advocates the ownership and control of industry, capital, land etc. Obama-Nation Live Free or Die." It was accompanied by a hammer and sickle, the international symbol of communism.

However, as Ron Rosenbaum pointed out in Slate earlier this year in a piercing denouncement of some tea partiers' takes on history, conflating fascism (Nazis) and socialism (Soviets) betrays a fundamental ignorance of the political ideologies at stake and the subsequent systems they spawned. As Rosenbaum put it:

The Nazis were not Socialists. The Socialists were not Nazis. They were blood enemies. In fact, the Socialists fought the Nazis, while conservatives and nationalists stood by and thought Hitler would be their pawn. Hitler, need it be said, was not a Socialist. He hated the Socialists. Had thousands of them murdered as soon as he came to power.

Interestingly, all of this follows a recent widely reported poll that finds a majority of Americans (55 percent) think that Obama is a socialist.

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