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http://www.slate.com/id/2251669/

This piece from Ron Rosenbaum of Slate blasts the Tea Party movement (not just the so-called "fringe" that has been marginalized to give legitimacy to the main body) for their deliberate historical distortions. Rosenbaum takes the Tea Party's use of words like "socialist," "fascist," and "tyranny" to task, evoking the rise of the Nazis and Khrushchev's destalinization policies as moments where political language likewise underwent crisis and transformation.

Rosenbuam points out that the Tea Partier's fallacously use the name "National Socialist German Workers Party" as evidence that fascism and socialism are identical. Left unstated is the irony that the Nazis appropriated the term "Socialist" in a cynical attempt to rewrite the past and secure their own political power.