Tea party leader compares Wisconsin liberals to Nazi stormtroopers

Wisconsin's political turmoil continues, and with the August 9 recall elections of six Republican state senators just days away, the rhetoric is hotter than ever.

At a recent state fair, many progressive activists showed up wearing red shirts to protest Gov. Scott Walker (R). Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips, in town to support the conservatives on the electoral chopping block, compared their presence to revolutionaries of a different era: Nazis.

"The Wisconsin Red shirts, the left's modern version of Brown shirts, were there to shout Walker down and generally ruin the fair for as many people as they could," he wrote on his blog on Tea Party Nation, according to Mother Jones. (Tea Party Nation is a membership-only site.)

"Brownshirts" is another name for the Nazi stormtroopers who were instrumental in Adolf Hitler's rise to power in the 1920s and 30s, so named for their brown uniforms.