The Web video, e-mailed to 6 million Bush supporters Thursday evening, splices together clips of Al Gore, Howard Dean, Rep. Dick Gephardt, film director Michael Moore and Kerry. On two occasions in the 87-second-long “Webmercial,” Hitler is shown, speaking loudly in German. The fuhrer footage is overlaid with the words “sponsored by MoveOn.org” while the ad’s opening screen says “The Faces of John Kerry’s Democratic Party.”
MoveOn.org, a left-wing political fundraising group, immediately objected. “We never sponsored those [Hitler] ads, we didn’t condone them,” says Eli Pariser, executive director of MoveOn PAC. He says the Hitler clips originally appeared on the group’s Web site in January as part of the “Bush in 30 Seconds” contest as part of two of the 1,100 entries the organization received After learning that the offensive Hitler spots were on the site–and facing criticism for them–MoveOn.org removed the entries. The Hitler submissions were up for 10 days “during which they were seen by a couple hundred people, including apparently, a [Republican National Committee] researcher, who posted them on the RNC site,” says Pariser. The new Bush ad “is worse than the pot calling the kettle black. They’re certainly going to regret it–it looks like a vicious partisan attack.”
The Bush camp argues the Hitler ads are fair game. After all, says Bush-Cheney ‘04 spokesman Scott Stanzel, the video did first appear on the MoveOn site. “It’s indicative of the type of vitriol that we have seen from John Kerry and his surrogates,” he says.
Stanzel says Democratics have repeatedly used Hitler imagery in criticism of Bush. On Thursday, Gore delivered a speech in which he said that the “administration works closely with a network of rapid responders, a group of digital brownshirts who work to pressure reporters and their editors and publishers and advertisers, and are quick to accuse them of undermining support for our troops.” George Soros, the Hungarian-born financier who has given millions to MoveOn.org, says his “experiences under Nazi and Soviet rule have sensitized” him and that he believes a “supremacist ideology” guides the Bush White House. Michael Moore–not a Democrat, although on Wednesday he was the toast of liberal D.C. at the premiere of “Fahrenheit 9/11”–said last October that America under Bush was moving in a Third Reich-like direction. This Web video, says Stanzel, is representative of these kinds of “wild-eyed” anger. (The video’s title is “The Coalition of the Wild Eyed.”) “The president’s opponents should answer for the negative attacks,” he says.
In fact, the Kerry campaign did have an answer on Friday. “The fact that George Bush thinks it’s appropriate to use images of Adolf Hitler in his campaign raises serious questions about his fitness to spend another four years in the White House,” campaign spokesperson Phil Singer said in a statement. “Adolf Hitler slaughtered millions of innocent people and has no place in a campaign that is supposed to be about the future and hope of this nation.” The Kerry campaign called on the president to remove the video from his Web site.
Which might not be a bad idea for the Bush team. NEWSWEEK asked an interactive content developer for a large New York City advertising firm to view the video and offer his professional opinion. After laughing out loud at the video, he said the picture of Hitler overwhelms any other message and that the entire advertisement seemed poorly conceived. “If you’re not aware of the MoveOn.org campaign, it seems like a ridiculous point. It’s picking up a spitball, polishing it, and throwing it back at them. It’s like saying: ‘I’m like Hitler? No you’re like Hitler’.”
