Good question, Enoch, and a fair one. I can also see that I've touched a nerve, which is to be expected. It's not easy for many of us to understand that the sanitized, homogenized, sterilized, prepackaged, and venerated men who founded this country had some REALLY, REALLY dark sides.
The answer to your question is, yes, no, maybe, maybe not, probably, and who knows.
All of the above answers apply to both the Brown Shirts AND the Sons of Liberty. As ugly as it is, it is the truth.
The Nazi party originally began recruiting people based on ideological values: the reconstruction of German pride, renovation of the economy, putting Germany back into its rightful place as a power on the European mainland, scapegoating the Jews, etc.
This is not unlike how the early calls for independence went out. Increased freedom from Britain, greater representation and respect within the Empire, etc.
Scapegoating Jews, and even the leaders of the Wiemar Republic, for the loss of World War I, was an integral part of Nazi ideology from the onset. So was targeted, semi-controlled violence.
The economic unrest and upheaval of the 1920s, combined with the aftermath of WW I and the effects of the Treaty of Versailles, have very tangible comparisons to the situation that existed in New England in the 1760s and 1770s.
Resistance to the Navigation Acts, the Stamp Acts, the Tea Act, the Sugar Act, protests against garrisoning troops in New England, etc., began to break out in sporatic violence.
Burning the homes of tax collectors, tarring and feathering the tax collectors, attacks on British soldiers (as Gary notes, a mob throwing rocks instigated the Boston Massacre), and the Boston Tea Party were all events largely propagated by the Sons of Liberty, with Samual Adams in the lead.
Another point that is often glossed over, or even buried, in history is that there WAS a significant racial element in the formation of the Sons of Liberty. Most of these men were workers on the Boston docks, day laborers, who had reason to fear for their jobs. Adams used, to some degree, the spectre of freed blacks taking their jobs to motivate some of these men into action.
Samuel Adams had failed at quite a few pursuits prior to becoming a professional organizer: grocer, brewer, tax collector, among others.
Adams found his true calling as an organizer of the working class, the disaffected, the oppressed, and the disenfranchised.
Sound something like a certain Austrian born dictator?
The BIG difference, though, is the direction in which these events unfolded.
Unlike Hitler, Adams and the Sons of Liberty faded deeper and deeper into the mist as the movement toward revolution gained speed.
Why is that?
The answer to that is also extremely complex, but it has a lot to do with the fact that Adams was elected to represent Massachusetts in the Continental Congress, which got him away from his power base in New England. Once in Congress, he was also overshadowed by men of truly great character like Jefferson, Washington, Franklin, and his cousin, John Adams.
It also has to do with the fact that Adams simply didn't have the kind of rapport with people of all levels that Adolph Hitler had. Whereas Hitler could charm, mesmerize, whatever, people from the very low to the very high in society, people above the working class saw Sam Adams as a rabblerouser of the lower classes, and viewed him with great suspicion.
I agree, it's really tough to accept this sort of view of one of our venerated founding fathers. And, honestly, I didn't even want to give it much creedence when I first started realizing it when I was working on a paper in college. I also fully recognize that there are critical differences between the two groups and situations, but there are startling parallels none the less.
The day I raised this discussion in my Colonial American History class in college I thought I was going to be lynched. What startled me even more, though, was the realization that the professor not only knew what I was driving at, but she also, in large part, agreed with me.
