Is This An Oblique Reference to Kevin Barrett?

[Brainster]

Naomi Wolf attracted some attention yesterday with a hyperventilating column on how America is turning into a fascist state in ten easy steps.

The article itself is obviously more appropriately discussed in the political forums, but I was interested in this one example Wolf used:

Creating a terrifying threat - hydra-like, secretive, evil - is an old trick. It can, like Hitler's invocation of a communist threat to the nation's security, be based on actual events (one Wisconsin academic has faced calls for his dismissal because he noted, among other things, that the alleged communist arson, the Reichstag fire of February 1933, was swiftly followed in Nazi Germany by passage of the Enabling Act, which replaced constitutional law with an open-ended state of emergency). Or the terrifying threat can be based, like the National Socialist evocation of the "global conspiracy of world Jewry", on myth.

Is Kevin Barrett that "Wisconsin academic"? I can't imagine anybody being under fire for what Wolf claims, but certainly the CT crowd often cites the Reichstag fire, as does Barrett:

The assertion that I compare Bush to Hitler is untrue; such a comparison would be an insult to Hitler, who was at least twenty or thirty IQ points up on Bush, and possessed infinitely more charisma. If the WKOW writers knew how to read, they would understand that I was comparing the Reichstag fire, which destroyed German democracy, to 9/11, which has badly damaged American democracy. In both cases, covert operators destroyed an architectural monument, blamed the act on designated enemies, whipped the population into a frenzy of fear and hatred, torched their countries’ Constitutions and installed dictatorships. 9/11 was well and truly the American Reichstag fire, designed to launch Nazi-style wars of aggression and install fascism at home.

 

[JamesB]

Sounds like him. I saw a hilarious thread over at LCF today, which I can't find currently, where some guy wrote this huge comparison between Bush and Hitler, but ended it, there is one difference, Bush hasn't actually seized power.

Yeah, that is a significant difference.

 

[CurtC]

He faced calls for his dismissal because he noted how the Nazis capitalized on the Reichstag fire? That's nuts. Who is Naomi Wolf anyway (and who's afraid of her)?

 

[Brainster]

He faced calls for his dismissal because he noted how the Nazis capitalized on the Reichstag fire? That's nuts. Who is Naomi Wolf anyway (and who's afraid of her)?

Well-known feminist writer (The Beauty Myth) who attracted some attention when it was learned that Al Gore's presidential campaign was paying her as an image consultant:

As Time reported earlier this week, Vice President Al Gore paid Wolf thousands of dollars a month for advice on presentation, from the tones of his speeches to the color tones of his wardrobe. The Washington Post relayed that Wolf "has long contended that earth tones are more 'reassuring' to audiences' " and that she is "the person behind Gore's recent wardrobe change."