THE CRACKPOT BEHIND THE KRAZY

Alexander Zaitchik has a nice piece in Salon that makes explicit the connection between W. Cleon Skousen and Glenn Beck. I found one of Skousen's works, The Naked Communist, and it's about a loony as one would expect. For example, Skousen thinks Nietzsche and Hitler's Germany have a real connection, as do many people who can't seem to grasp that Nietzsche's notion of a Superman has nothing in common with Hitler's Aryan fantasy:

Now it was Nietzsche's thinking which inspired Adolf Hitler with his apocalyptic nightmare of total war. (page 286)

Skousen also conflates Nietzsche with Marx:

This new form of materialism came from Nietzsche's comrade-in-arms - Karl Marx - a man out of the same school of philosophy, with the same motivations as Nietzsche. (page 287)

These conceptual errors remind me of Jonah Goldberg and his nonsense about "liberal fascism."