American Family Association’s (AFA) homophobic Director of Issue Analysis for Government and Public Policy, Bryan Fischer, is constantly pushing an extreme anti-gay agenda, even going after people he just thinks might be gay. This week on AFA Radio, he claimed that not only was Adolf Hitler gay, but all his “Brownshirts” were too:

FISCHER: So Hitler himself was an active homosexual. And some people wonder, didn’t the Germans, didn’t the Nazis, persecute homosexuals? And it is true they did; they persecuted effeminate homosexuals. But Hitler recruited around him homosexuals to make up his Stormtroopers, they were his enforcers, they were his thugs. And Hitler discovered that he could not get straight soldiers to be savage and brutal and vicious enough to carry out his orders, but that homosexual solders basically had no limits and the savagery and brutality they were willing to inflict on whomever Hitler sent them after. So he surrounded himself, virtually all of the Stormtroopers, the Browshirts, were male homosexuals.

As Right Wing Watch points out, Fischer has received the right-wing stamp of approval by being confirmed as a speaker to the Family Research Council’s Values Voter Summit. Watch it:

By Ali Frick

I want to build off of Ryan’s post below a bit. Ryan pointed out that the existing atmosphere is irrevocably partisan, and that Obama seems — finally — to be noticing:

Noting that sometimes conservative activists portray him with a Hitler moustache, Obama seemed to put to rest any notion that there could be broad-based bipartisan cooperation – something he promised to try to bring to Washington during his 2008 campaign.

“There are members of their base who think if somebody even smiles at me, they think, ‘You’re a traitor. You smiled at Obama,’ ” the president said at fundraiser for Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.). “The day has passed when I expected this to be a full partnership.”

There is hardly any “room for cooperation” in the Republican Party, Obama said.

That was a quote from last night. But just hours before, the Obama administration announced it would agree to right-wing demands and send troops to the Mexican border — even though a) the move comes without a full compromise on comprehensive reform and b) troops at the border won’t stop illegal immigration, and c) Obama knows it’s a bad idea (from March: “We’ve got a very big border with Mexico,” the president said. “I’m not interested in militarizing the border.”).

But the larger point is that, if Obama believes what he said last night, then he knows that the move won’t do a thing to bring conservatives to the table on comprehensive immigration reform. (And, as Ryan points out, there seems to be little that could bring conservatives and progressive together right now.)

I guess the strategy is for Obama to constantly reach out to conservatives with compromise, only to have his hand slapped away. Over and over and over again. And then he can go out and say things like he said last night.

The problem with this strategy is two-fold: First, conservatives just make stuff up. They say he is a partisan hack who refuses to compromise — even when this is patently and obviously untrue — and hope enough people are ignorant for them to win. Too often, that strategy works.

Second, when Obama does go to fire up the base as he did last night, those of us there start to wonder whether he actually believes what he’s saying. If he does, we wonder why he keeps reaching out, repeatedly demonstrating his good faith by acceding to central conservative demands (supporting offshore oil drilling, scrapping a public option, ditching an independent CFPA) before negotiations on the larger reform have begun.

On the other hand, it is effective for Obama to point out every time Republicans refuse to work with him — and even more effective when he looks at what conservatives really want to do and points out why it’s so dangerous to America. “You can’t drive!” not only fires up the base, but drives home (excuse the pun) the fundamental point: Conservatives and progressives aren’t working together because these people are maniacs.

In communities across the country, Muslim Americans are under attack as radical conservatives are denying them the right to build their own places of worship. Here are a few examples:

– In Brentwood, Tennessee, Muslims planned to build the first mosque ever in Williamson County. After agreeing to numerous restrictions on how they would build their mosque so as to not offend the surrounding community — like not having outdoor speakers to broadcast the Islamic call to prayer — the Muslim community was finally able to get the Brentwood city commission to approve land to be used to build a mosque. Radical conservatives responded, and “through e-mails, blogs and word of mouth, opponents told friends and neighbors they were suspicious of the mosque and feared its leaders had ties to terrorist organizations.” After intense community pressure, the mosque’s builders decided last week to simply withdraw their plans. “There comes a time when you have to say, ‘We can’t do this anymore,” said Jaweed Ansari, a Brentwood physician involved in the mosque project.

– Two nights ago, the city council of Alpharetta, Georgia, voted unanimously to deny “an application by the Islamic Center of North Fulton to expand” their mosque. Alpharetta Muslim Parwaiz Iqbal protested the decision, saying, “If we are denied a decent place of worship, you might as well hang a banner here in downtown Alpharetta that Muslims are not welcome in this city.”

– In New York City, radical conservatives are attacking plans to build a mosque in a 13-story community center located two blocks from Ground Zero. Rep. Peter King (R-NY) joined the crusade against the mosque by saying it’s “very offensive and wrong” to build it, while regretfully admitting that it can’t legally “be stopped, however, because of the first amendment.” All of the right-wing outrage ignores the fact that innocent Muslim Americans, too, died on 9/11 — like Salman Hamdani, a police cadet and part-time ambulance driver who died “doing everything he could to help those in need” at Ground Zero. Last night, a Manhattan community board backed the proposal to build the Muslim community center there by a 29-1 vote.

In addition to being denied their places of worship, Muslim communities have been the victims of dangerous hate crimes. Last week, the Islamic Center of North Florida was rocked by an explosion, and police suspect that a pipe bomb was responsible. The Islamic Center is located in Jacksonville, Florida, and is attended by Muslim Human Rights Commission member Parvez Ahmed, who recently faced hateful remarks from a city councilman and area residents over his faith. Noting the lack of media coverage of the attack relative to the failed car bombing in Times Square, Matthew Yglesias observed, “Somehow this attack, despite its greater technical sophistication, hasn’t obtained nearly the same level of media attention. And I just can’t figure out why.”

The Washington Post noted Monday that the rise in anti-Muslim tensions has “prompted many Pakistanis who once had deep ties to the United States to look elsewhere for work, education and travel. It has also left some Pakistani Americans feeling uneasy in their adopted homeland.” “My uncle has been living in the United States for years,” said Akmal Abassi, an English language instructor and in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. “He still admires the American values of freedom and equality, but now it is much harder for him to convince people here at home.”