Tea Party hero and Senator-elect Rand Paul (R-KY) last year compared President Barack Obama’s election to the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany and warned that health care reform could lead to “martial law.”
Speaking to well-known conspiracy theorist and 9/11 Truther Alex Jones of Infowars, Paul expressed his odd views during the Republican primary, during which he was considered a longshot candidate with little or no chance to win high elective office.
Tanya Somanader of the liberal blog Think Progress documented his remarks.
“You know, Rahm Emanuel, who’s chief adviser to President Obama, said ‘let no good crisis go past without allowing government to grow,’” Paul said.
“And it’s happened before,” he continued. “When you have severe crisis, that’s when sometimes strong leaders arise. You had the money destroyed in Germany in 1923 and out of that chaos came Hitler who promised that these awful people were the ones doing this to you and we need to round them up and put them in camps.”
Paul said he “worr[ies] about that again in our country,” casually asking if supporters of Obama wear “brown shirts.”
The comparison of Obama to one of history’s most despised monsters is gratuitous and lacking in substance, but this view and similarly controversial rhetoric has been an often-expressed view on placards and posters at Tea Party rallies.
The soon-to-be senator also told Jones that the sweeping health care reform law that was enacted in March of the year after his interview, specifically its individual mandate, could lead to “martial law.”
“Well I mean, the first sort of thing you see with martial law is mandates, and they’re talking about making it mandatory,” Paul said.
Paul saw his Senate candidacy surge upon hammering the Republican establishment, which opposed him. Upon winning the primary softened some of his purist conservative views — such as his opposition to the Civil Rights Act — and embraced various mainstream GOP views.
He rode conservative anger to a comfortable victory over Democrat Jack Conway on Nov. 2.
The following video is from Paul’s interview, uploaded Nov. 16 by TheAlexJonesChannel.