According to a report on the Fayetteville (NC) Observer web site:

“NAACP leader Julian Bond has denied comparing Republicans to Nazis, allegations that have circulated on the Internet since his speech last week in Fayetteville. Bond, the national chairman of the civil rights organization, blames ‘right-wing blogs’ for mischaracterizing comments he made Wednesday at Fayetteville State University.

Hours after his speech, the Web site for World Net Daily published an article in which it quoted Bond as saying, ‘The Republican Party would have the American flag and the swastika flying side by side.’”

A tape of the speech confirms that Bond actually said “their (Republicans) idea of equal rights is the American flag and the Confederate swastika flying side-by-side.” (The Observer offers a link to the audio for the speech.)

Conservative commentators and bloggers were quick to attack Bond for (in their estimation) comparing the Republican Party to the Nazi Party, though Bond says he did not use the word “Nazi” in his speech. I find Bond’s analogy of the Confederate Flag to that of the Third Reich quite apt, and while many conservatives misquoted Bond, and others jumped on the bandwagon not bothering to verify the (mis)quotes, it is also a fine point to say that he did not compare Republicans to Nazis. In a very clever bit of rhetoric, that is exactly what Bond was doing.

My wife once told me, “stop acting like an a******.” I asked her not to call me that. She said, “I didn’t say you were one, I said you were acting like one.” She is also quite the rhetorician.