Sarah Palin's hired hand, Steven K. Bannon, laid out a million of his own dollars to make a two hour dirge about the airhead from Alaska. He calls his propaganda piece "The Undefeated." Many suggest it should instead be called, "The Quitter" or, in consideration of the flaming disaster Sarah made of the McCain campaign, "The Loser."
Steven's puff piece drones on for two hours portraying Sarah as something like the second coming of Joan of Arc -- so charming, so sure, so capable of running Alaska and yet having the courage to answer God's call to restore America to real Americans when John McCain invited her to take to the national stage.
Feh. The real title of this film is, "Triumph of the Shill."
Leni Riefenstahl, in 1935, made a film for Adolf Hitler to show him answering God's call to restore Germany to real Germans. In her masterpiece of propaganda, "Triumph of the Will" she used a variety of brand new cinematic techniques to paint Adolf as the centerpiece of larger than life scenarios, as more capable than any ten men at restoring the unity and power of the German volk. There would be no liberals, no communists, no socialists in his pure Germany. Only people who agreed with him and obeyed him and worked for the common goal of making Germany great again -- as Adolf defined greatness.
Adolf was always financed by extreme right wing industrialists just like Sarah Palin's current bus tour is. There is very little genuine folks behind her rallies, but there is millions of far right wing money. The thousands of smartly dressed brownshirts who stood cheering Hitler's speeches at Nuremburg did not pay for their uniforms or boots or flags or banners. They were all paid for by right wing industrialists, and the men wearing the uniforms were paid to be members of the SA, the brownshirts. Similarly, the rallies Sarah attends have people bussed in from distant places to get a crowd together. The signs and banners, the buttons and pins, the organizations, the media press releases, the think tanks, the rallies are all paid for by lobbying firms backed by wealthy right wing donors pushing a radical right agenda.
As with Hitler, everything about Sarah Palin's tours and rallies is the work of secret money, hired shills, paid propaganda, phony media coverage, and out in front the biggest shill of all, Sarah -- the woman who cannot name a single newspaper she reads regularly because she doesn't read or study or learn. Many experienced political consultants have tried to get her up to speed on the basics of domestic and international affairs. They all report that she simply goes semi-catatonic and refuses to hear a word. She cannot be taught. She cannot learn. She is mentally challenged in that way, a woman who had to bounce between a half dozen community colleges to get a bachelor's degree in Communications.
Beyond her profound learning disabilities, Sarah is a narcissist who suffers from megalomania. This has only been strengthened by her background in Assembly of God church, the Joel's Army and Seven Mountains movement, and her baptism as a "Covenant Person" or "Little God" put on Earth to bring about the rule of Christianity worldwide. This is a Christian Dominionist background she has taken great pains to keep private, but she was raised in this tradition and is following it in her search for national recognition and influence.
See the excellent diaries of Troutfishing here on DailyKos for full information on her sociopathic religious beliefs.
But what nails the comparison is the stench of raw fascism in both films.
Anyone not already familiar with the "Fourteen Defining Characteristics Of Fascism" by Professor Lawrence Britt may want to run through that list here.
Sarah's bus tour, speeches, book, media snippets, movie all revolve around most of Professor Britt's list:
#1. Her ultra patriotism and nationalism.
#2. Her praise for "real Americans" and "real America" and disdain and contempt for anyone who doesn't fit her definition of what those broad phrases mean.
#3. Her constant scapegoating of liberals, the "lamestream media" and Democrats, talking about reloading, drawing bullseye targets on Democratic districts, constant code words for racism, and identifying herself with the Tea Party movement, which has proven itself to be a party of frightened, white racists.
#8. The intertwining of government and religion, her religious views in particular. This is exactly opposite to what the American nation was founded on.
#11. Sarah's open and constant expressions of disdain for intellectuals, science, learning, erudite people.
#13. The mountain of ethics violations Sarah committed while Governor of Alaska, and her complete lack of ethics while ripping off the McCain campaign for well over $150,000 of clothes for herself, Todd, and her children when the original amount allotted was about $7500. No honesty, no ethics, no self control, no regrets, no contrition. All marks of a sociopath.
Whether Sarah seriously thinks her bus tour, movie and whatever media buzz she can stir up will get enough people to take her seriously that she gets near the 2012 GOP ticket again, as VP or as President is a matter of how delusional she actually is.
Adolf only gained a shot at electoral success with the backing of the German Army as well as wealty industrialists, both groups to whom communism was out of the question.
In both cases, Adolf and Sarah, a propaganda film was created to sell them as something other than what they actually are, sell them to whomever in the public will swallow the lies long enough to produce electoral gains. Everything about both campaigns, both films, is pure shilling. The pushing of fascist memes, the careful editing of history and the promises of a wonderful future for the nation -- all empty shilling for the rubes.
In both cases, nothing but disaster awaits those who follow either of these sociopaths down any road they describe.