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Meathead.

There is a lot of fanaticism and fear going around the country. Even Noam Chomsky compared it to 1930s Germany, and he made a lot of good points. People can say "He's comparing us to Hitler that's insane" and yeah it is insane given that we know the full scope of what Hitler did. If you take it apart and accept the analogy under the very strict framework it's given though, it makes more sense and that should worry people.

I mean this sort of fanaticism that we're seeing is simply not healthy.

He's speaking a half truth, but I don't think he's calling the Tea Party people who believe in the extermination of people based on race or anything like that. He's trying to point out that the Tea Party, similar to the Nazi party, is an anti-establishment movement that has been born out of a troubled economy. That he's right about. He's also correct in observing that there doesn't seem to be any charismatic leader within the Tea Party. He's also correct in stating that there's a higher risk of radical parties coming to power during times of socio-economic upheavals.

He loses me in stating that the Tea Party is only about fear and hate, and have no proposed solutions. They are proposing a radical change in the federal budget, including massive cuts that adhere to radical conservative political philosophies, including massive cuts typically in social programs instead of defense. I vehemently disagree with that, but that's still a stated solution. I just wish politics were more about discussing rationally the pros and cons of an idea instead of loose associations with clearly horrible groups from history. You could make the case that the American progressive movement was a reaction to poor political and social environments, but that doesn't make the Progressive Movement bad.

He also is oversimplifying the Nazi rise to power. When you think about it, he contradicts himself. If Hitler simply rose to power because of exploiting popular discontent with the economy, then why did he never get the support of the majority of Germans in a free and fair election? Hitler did in fact exploit fear and malcontent in the German population caused by the Great Depression, but he never would have come to power had the conservative parties not attempted to co-op the Nazis to fight off the political left Social Democratic party and the Communist Party in Germany.

The rise of an extreme party in the US in the same way Nazis took control of Germany is very highly unlikely. While there are obvious negatives to the US two party political system, one strength is it does a very good job of preventing extremists from taking over. In Germany, the Nazi party exploited the fact there were numerous parties - the Conservative party, the Catholic Party, the Social Democratic party, the Communist party, and of course the Nazis to name some. Sure the US has other parties than the Democratic and Republican parties, but they're virtually insignificant in numbers and support. That simply wasn't the case in Weimar Germany, and in order to get a coalition government to get anything done, parties had to compromise and work together. Unfortunately, the conservative parties decided to work with the Nazis, making Hitler Chancellor, even though the Nazis were clearly anti-democratic, because they politically disagreed with the Social Democratic party. You can call the Tea Party whatever you want, but they certainly are in favor of Democracy.

http://www.livescience.com/13608-brain-political-ideology-liberal-conservative.html

Pinch of salt, and check your assumptions, but yeah, it's not as if we don't know this already; conservatives are motivated by fear. What did I just say about assumptions? Confound my mammalian brain!