While the candle anecdote is certainly memorable, it’s Liddy’s decision to casually replay Hitler’s speeches at a dinner party with his new coworker that made the biggest overall impression. We understand the logic behind burning yourself, questionable as it is, but what is the reason for this?
Liddy explains in the pilot that although he is not a Nazi, he is comforted by the bravado coming out of Hitler’s voice, because that is what he heard on the radio as a malnourished and abused child. “Hitler’s sheer animal confidence and will power [entranced me]the real Liddy once said, a sentiment perfectly in keeping with the private conversation Theroux’s Liddy has with Hunt in the first episode of the miniseries. suppress the urge to break my right arm.”
Although Liddy has always insisted that she rejects everything Hitler stands for, “White House Plumbers” wonder if, if she had been an adult living in Nazi Germany at the time, she wouldn’t have lined up? On his talk show that he hosted after his release from prison (which ran from 1992 to 2012), Liddy was not only unapologetic about his crimes, but was constantly and unflinchingly reactionary. He compared environmentalists to al Qaeda and was very comfortable with the idea of the government murdering journalists. When it comes to the war on drugs and the war in Vietnam, his main criticism of the US government was that it was not brutal. enough.
But the Liddy introduced in the pilot isn’t a complete villain; much of his strange behavior seems to stem from his obsession with force and his questionable idea of what force is.