The War on Christmas and anti-Semitism

It seems to me that there is a broad streak of anti-Semitism running through the efforts of Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh to promote their phony "war on Christmas." O'Reilly and Limbaugh are still preaching their made-up message that liberals have somehow managed to oppress the Christian majority in the United States. In fact, the quest for the almighty dollar is the real reason for the transformation of "Christmas" into the "holiday season." Retailers don't want to miss out on a single sales opportunity, so they have morphed their advertising to use generic language that might appeal to more customers.

One only needs to look back to the 1920's and 1930's and the rise of fascism in Italy and Nazism in Germany to see the same sort of nonsense that O'Reilly and Limbaugh are spouting now. Nazi Germany was an extremely religious society where lack of Christian faith was simply not acceptable, and atheists and Jews were put into concentration camps. In Fascist Italy, Catholicism was the official state religion and Catholicism was taught in the public schools. A common thread in fascism and Nazism was the imaginary threat to "Christian purity" posed by liberals, who insisted upon religious tolerance, free thought, and respect for other cultures. And just who were these liberals? They were Jews.

Think Progress has an excellent recap of the latest rhetoric here. Of course, now that O'Reilly has named George Soros as the financier of this imaginary war, things can only go downhill from here.