Nazi salute

The Nazi salute or Hitler salute (German: Hitlergruß – literally Hitler Greeting) is a gesture that was used as a greeting in Nazi Germany. The salute is performed by extending the right arm in the air with a straightened hand. Usually, the person offering the salute would say "Heil Hitler!" (Hail Hitler!), "Heil, mein Führer!" (Hail, my leader!), or "Sieg Heil!" (Hail victory!). It was adopted in the 1930s by the Nazi Party to signal obedience to the party's leader – Adolf Hitler – and to glorify the German nation (and later the German war effort). The salute was mandatory for civilians, but was mostly optional for military personnel who retained the traditional military salute until shortly after the failed assassination attempt on Hitler in 1944.

Use of this salute is currently a criminal offense in Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Austria. In Switzerland and Sweden, the salute is illegal hate speech if used for propagating Nazi ideology.

Description

The salute was performed by extending the right arm to at least eye level, and straightening the hand so that it is parallel to the arm. Usually, an utterance of "Heil Hitler!", or "Heil!" accompanied the gesture.

Laura Ingraham

Laura Anne Ingraham (born June 19, 1963) is an American radio talk show host, best-selling author, and conservative political commentator. Her nationally syndicated talk show, The Laura Ingraham Show, airs throughout the United States on Courtside Entertainment. Ingraham is also the official guest host for Fox News Channel's The O'Reilly Factor and a contributor for This Week on ABC News.

Early life and career

Ingraham grew up in a middle-class family in Glastonbury, Connecticut, where she was born to Anne Caroline (née Kozak) and James Frederick Ingraham III. Her maternal grandparents were Polish immigrants. She graduated from Glastonbury High School in 1981.

Ingraham earned a Bachelor of Arts at Dartmouth College in 1985 and a Juris Doctor at the University of Virginia School of Law in 1991. As a Dartmouth undergraduate, she was a staff member of the independent conservative newspaper, The Dartmouth Review. In her senior year, she was the newspaper's editor-in-chief, its first female editor. She wrote several controversial articles during her tenure, notably an article alleging racist and unprofessional behavior by Dartmouth music professor Bill Cole, who later sued Ingraham for $2.4 million. The college paid his legal costs. The suit was settled in 1985.Jeffrey Hart, the faculty adviser for The Dartmouth Review described Ingraham as having "the most extreme anti-homosexual views imaginable", claiming "she went so far as to avoid a local eatery where she feared the waiters were homosexual." In 1997, she wrote an essay in the Washington Post in which she stated that she changed her views on homosexuality after witnessing "the dignity, fidelity and courage" with which her gay brother Curtis and his companion coped with AIDS. Ingraham has stated that she supports civil unions, but still believes that marriage "is between a man and a woman".

Nazism

National Socialism (German: Nationalsozialismus), more commonly known as Nazism (/ˈnɑːtsɪzəm, ˈnæ-/) or Naziism (/ˈnɑːtsi.ɪzəm/), is the ideology and practice associated with the 20th-century German Nazi Party and Nazi state as well as other far-right groups. Usually characterized as a form of fascism that incorporates scientific racism and antisemitism, Nazism developed out of the influences of Pan-Germanism, the Völkisch German nationalist movement, and the anti-communist Freikorps paramilitary groups that emerged during the Weimar Republic after German defeat in World War I.

Nazism subscribed to theories of racial hierarchy and Social Darwinism. Germanic peoples (called the Nordic race) were depicted as the purest of the Aryan race, and were therefore the master race. Opposed to both capitalism and communism, it aimed to overcome social divisions, with all parts of a homogeneous society seeking national unity and traditionalism. Nazism also vigorously pursued what it viewed as historically German territory under the doctrine of Pan-Germanism (or Heim ins Reich), as well as additional lands for German expansion under the doctrine of Lebensraum.