Cassandra Williamson, Transgender and Diverse Veterans of America Action Group’s Executive Director believes that the Heritage Foundation’s President Kevin Roberts is “a really genuinely good person.”

I’d hate to see what he (Cassandra is a biological male) says about people he thinks are not “genuinely good.”

Scoop: An LGBT advocacy group is trying to walk back its move to fundraise off equating Heritage Foundation head @KevinRobertsTX to Adolf Hitler, @dcexaminer learnshttps://t.co/CQyzEzqbTx

— Gabe Kaminsky (@gekaminsky) September 18, 2023

TDVA sent out a fundraising email that compared Roberts to Hitler. In fact, the email includes a cartoon with Hitler apparently bowing to Roberts as the master, not the student, since Hitler tells Roberts “You’re doing better than I ever could.”

Pretty sure that the implication was not that Roberts was a better dog fancier than Hitler, especially since the email ends with a definition of fascism ripped from Wikipedia.

Williamson, though, wants everybody to know that the comparison was meant in the nicest way possible and wasn’t meant to disparage or offend anybody. Sure, the implication may have been misunderstood, but honestly, who could really believe that a simple cartoon of Hitler praising one could be misinterpreted to imply disparagement?

Transgender and Diverse Veterans of America Action Group, which aims “to provide comprehensive care and support for transgender and gender minority veterans, their families, and allies,” sent emails Friday soliciting donations with a graphic of Roberts next to a drawing of Hitler, with the caption, “Sieg Heil! You’re doing better than I ever could.” However, TDVA’s executive director, Cassandra Williamson, now says the “call to action” was “not meant to offend,” with the leader noting, “I know that one could be offended by the parallels drawn.”

Sure, somebody might think that describing the Heritage Foundation as “horrifying, deeply inhumane, and unAmerican Fascist-like,” but Williamson says he has “great respect” for the Heritage Foundation. So there is that.

So…let’s see. Hitler thinks you are a better version of himself, and you are horrifying, deeply inhumane, and Fascist-like, but otherwise, you are a really great guy and I respect you.

Yeah, let’s go with that. We don’t want to be divisive.

You do have to admit, at least, that promoting marriage, family, work, church, and education reminds you a bit of fascism and needs to be criticized. After all, each of these is an enemy of alphabet ideology and must be destroyed, Williamson’s email makes clear.

In the fundraising email, TDVA said, “Join with us to STOP The Heritage Foundation and its cronies from carrying through on their horrifying, deeply inhumane, and unAmerican [sic] Fascist-like agenda.” TDVA included quotes from Roberts’s foreword in the call to action, including him saying that the “purpose” of “centralizing political power” is “to replace people’s natural loves and loyalties with unnatural ones.”

TDVA also highlighted how Roberts wrote in the foreword that a “healthy society” consists of “Marriage. Family. Work. Church. School. [and] Volunteering.”

“The foundation has lost its way from its once lofty perch,” Williamson also told the Washington Examiner. “When its leaders started letting the extreme right control and dictate the Republican message destroying the distinctions between conservatism and republicanism, they fell into an abyss.”

Having written more than a few fundraising emails in my time, the first thing that struck me was how pro-forma this one was, and likely ineffective at doing its job. It is a mess, regardless of the offensive content. No real message, no call to action, no obvious ask, and the quotes pulled from Roberts seem anodyne except to a very small, targeted audience. Even for them, it might not be clear that Roberts said those things.

In other words, only two things are notable about the fundraising pitch: the message is ineffective, but simultaneously so grotesque that when called out the organization had to disown it.

Pretty pathetic.

Conservatives get tagged with the “divisive” label, just as we get tagged with the “violent extremist” label. By people who give Antifa a pass or even approval, and by people who seem perfectly fine with labeling The Heritage Foundation with the label fascist and its leader as Hitler+.

Of course, they meant he was more fascist than Hitler in the nicest way possible, so there is that.