Before I start this diary, I'd like to thank the makers of Lexis-Nexis for making examples of right-wing hypocracy and double-standards much easier to find.
I wonder what all the wingnuts threatening Columbia University with funding cuts would have to say about this.
Washington Post, 5 December 1984:
More than a dozen conservative organizations last night honored Roberto D'Aubuisson, the leader of El Salvador's extreme right wing, with a plaque and a closed-door dinner for 120 people at the Capitol Hill Club.
The plaque expresses appreciation for D'Aubuisson's "continuing efforts for freedom in the face of communist aggression which is an inspiration to freedom-loving people everywhere."
The CIAs Greatest Hits by Mark Zepezauer:
A big admirer of Adolf Hitler, D'Aubuisson once said, "You Germans were very intelligent. You realized that the Jews were responsible for the spread of Communism and you began to kill them."
More from the WaPo article:
A former Salvadoran army major who was cashiered for plotting coups, D'Aubuisson has been linked to death-squad murders in El Salvador by former U.S. ambassador Robert E. White and congressional testimony. But D'Aubuisson and the conservatives insist that the charges are false and spread by Marxists opposed to his democratic, free-enterprise views and to the conservative ARENA party whose unsuccessful presidential candidate he was.
Richard Mathias, a Georgetown student and official of the Young Americans for Freedom, said the YAF had arranged D'Aubuisson's campus appearance because D'Aubuisson "hasn't had a fair shake" in the U.S. media.
"Death squads have a very negative connotation. He's not been able to get across his message of free enterprise, anticommunism, freedom of exports and imports," Mathias said. "We can't think coherently about El Salvador if we think of the primary antithesis to the government as being a death-squad leader."
[...]
Groups that joined in presenting the plaque to D'Aubuisson included the Viguerie Co., Gun Owners of America, the Western Goals Endowment Fund, the Washington Legal Foundation, the United States Defense Committee, the American Foreign Policy Council, the Public Service Research Council, the Moral Majority, The Washington Times, the National Right-to-Work Committee, the National Pro-Life Political Action Committee, Intercessors for America, the Young Americans Foundation and the Young Americans for Freedom. Presidential assistant and former U.S. ambassador Faith Ryan Whittlesey also joined in the presentation, but reportedly did not attend the dinner.
Other hosts for the dinner included the Free Congress Foundation, the Conservative Caucus and the Conservative Alliance, according to Lynn Stoner of the National Council for Better Education, who helped organize the event.
More info about Mr. D'Aubuisson and his activities can be found here.
What's that thing they say about glass houses?