CNS News reports that Harry Belafonte once again sang a bit off-key while venturing into politics this past weekend, calling African-American conservatives "tyrants" and comparing the Bush administration to Hitler and the Nazis. Marc Morano interviewed the entertainer who has long championed civil-rights causes, but lately has used less civil language to do so:

Belafonte used a Hitler analogy when asked about what impact prominent blacks such as former Secretary of State Powell and current Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had on the Bush administration's relations with minorities.

"Hitler had a lot of Jews high up in the hierarchy of the Third Reich. Color does not necessarily denote quality, content or value," Belafonte said in an exclusive interview with Cybercast News Service.

"[If] a black is a tyrant, he is first and foremost a tyrant, then he incidentally is black. Bush is a tyrant and if he gathers around him black tyrants, they all have to be treated as they are being treated," he added.

If this accurately represents what Belafonte said, it gives another demonstration of the foolishness of allowing him to speak on behalf of those pressing for the extension of the Voting Rights Act. Historically, he has no idea of what he speaks. Exactly which Nazis in the Third Reich were Jews, let alone the large amounts of them Belafonte has conjured up? It is an idiotic assertion, one that points to an anti-Semitic paranoia that has raised its head often enough on the far fringes of the African-American community, despite the generous support given by the Jewish community overall to civil-rights goals.

The rest of Belafonte's rant goes directly back to his smearing of Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell as "house slaves" last year during the presidential elections. Belafonte and others like him do not allow for dissent within their populations. Anyone who disagrees with the mindset offered by Belafonte, Dick Gregory (who also has a neurotic episode reported by CNS), and the rest of the political leadership of their electorate have to be branded as traitors and sellouts instead of attempting to outreason their objections.

Here's what Gregory said to CNS:

Civil rights activist Dick Gregory mocked the existence of African-American conservatives in America.

"They (black conservatives) have a right to exist, but why would I want to walk around with a swastika on my shirt after the way Hitler done messed it (the swastika symbol) up?" Gregory said in an interview with Cybercast News Service. (The swastika was an ancient symbol generally regarded an emblem of strength and luck before the Nazi Party adopted it in 1920.)

"So why would I want to call myself a conservative after the way them white racists thugs have used that word to hide behind? They call themselves new Republicans," Gregory said.

Belafonte and Gregory amount to nothing more than loathsome windbags who profess a love for democracy as long as it results in a homogenous philosophy. Any dissent from the Accepted Wisdom must be attacked as evil and monstrous, and the dissenters themselves outcast from the hive. Belafonte and his kind descend directly from the most virulent of the Puritans, who traveled to the New World for their religious and political freedom -- and only theirs.

UPDATE: La Shawn Barber channels Douglas Adams and finds Belafonte mostly harmless.

UPDATE II: Joe Gandelman has a nice roundup, but also includes a few choice words of his own for Belafonte:

I had a lot my relatives in the Gandelman family wiped out by Hitler during World War II and I never KNEW there were so many Jews in his government.

Perhaps the Jews I never knew were in Hitler's government helped wipe out the Gandelmans because they went to a rival temple. Or they didn't like Chinese food.

Democrats that aspire to the mainstream, like Jesse Jackson, really should ask Belafonte to avoid talking to the press in the future -- and maybe should rethink inviting him to public events at all.

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