One Christopher Knight, blogging over at the LA Times has his panties in a wad because Rush Limbaugh pointed out that Obama’s Healthcare logo:
looks a lot like the official Nazi logo, of which here are a couple variants :
Now these logos have the same basic shape, especially when you take into account the number of shape variations used by the Nazis over time. Weirdly, Knight decides that Limbaugh has “flunked graphic design” because the bird-ish part on th Obama logo is meant to reference a caduceus. As you’ll recall, the caduceus was that stick thingie that the Greek god Apollo would tote around on some old statuary:
Typically, it is much taller than wide… the Obama logo vastly shortened the “caduceus” to make the wings much more prominent, apparently with intent to reference an eagle. Hopefully, an American eagle. I’d bet that it’s meant to suggest the old New Deal NRA “blue eagle” :
The idea that there was no intent to reference an eagle at all strikes me a bizarre.
Night comes really close to the biggest similarity between the Obama “eagle” and the Hitler eagle logos:
[The] swastika, the bent-arm cross designed by Hitler himself as the emblem of National Socialism
The government of Germany, under Nazi control, used Hitler’s personal symbol. The White House is using Obama’s personal symbol. It is traditional for the White House to make use of the Presidential Seal (or similar). In the United States, governing is not supposed to be about propagating a cult of personality. It’s par for the course in fascist governments, but here it should be a no go.
Knight also seems to skip over another common theme in fascist imagery – the depiction of masses beneath the symbol of power and following it. That isn’t just “above the American landscape” it’s above the faceless masses. Heck, if you got the source page Knight references, the “landscape” isn’t even in the version on the top of the page. Just the faceless silhouettes of the nameless masses follow the Great O-bird.
Does any of this make Obama a Nazi? Obviously not. He and his administration, however, seem keen on making use of some of the items in the fascist toolbox. This is not a healthy thing.
Hydar Blog, v2.0 