Ellison Compared Sept. 11 to Burning of the Reichstag

A video posted online this week shows the front-runner for the Democratic National Committee chairmanship compared the 9/11 attacks to an inside job that Nazis used to consolidate power in Germany in 1933.

Rep. Keith Ellison, a left-wing Democrat from Minnesota, implied the U.S. government itself could be to blame for the terrorist acts of Sept. 11, 2001, in a video posted on the left-wing blog Daily Kos and conservative research organization America Rising’s websites.

“It’s almost like the Reichstag fire. After the Reichstag was burned, they blamed the Communists for it.”

At the very least, Ellison suggested the U.S. government took advantage of Sept. 11 as a pretense to go after Muslims and other minorities.

“It’s almost like the Reichstag fire,” said Ellison. “After the Reichstag was burned, they blamed the Communists for it. And it put the leader of that country [Adolf Hitler] in a position where he could basically have the authority to do whatever he wanted.”

Ellison made the remarks in 2007, to a group of atheists meeting in his Minnesota district.

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Ellison was clearly speaking about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and President George W. Bush.

It’s a loaded comment, as the 1933 fire at the German government building led Hitler to consolidate power by purging Communists from government.

The Nazi chancellor executed a Dutch immigrant and Communist for the fire. But many historians today suggest the fire was a “false flag” incident, set by Nazis to incite panic about Communists, according to a 2001 article in the London Telegraph. Regardless of who started the fire, Hitler and the Nazi Party used the incident to establish dictatorial powers and crush civil liberties.

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It’s not the first time Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, has been in hot water for controversial remarks.

Before being elected to Congress in 2006, Ellison frequently penned defenses of Louis Farrakhan, the anti-Semitic leader of the Nation of Islam.

Ellison later apologized, saying he did not understand the Nation of Islam’s anti-Semitic stances.

What has many on the right riled, though, is not the Reichstag remark but the way Ellison did not object to a suggestion that Jews also benefited from Sept. 11.

After Ellison mentioned the Reichstag, someone in the audience says: “The Jews benefited from 9/11.”

Ellison said, “Well, I mean, you know, you and I both know.”