America’s Political Rhetoric About Nazis and Hitler Prove How Stupid We’ve Become

My least favorite segment on many prime time news programs is when they quiz the general population on various aspects of history.

This segment normally takes place around what should be a famous holiday or historical event and often the most depressing answers come from our best and brightest who attended over-priced places of higher learning across our great nation.

It’s not uncommon for Americans on these segments to not know basic milestones of world history, but I bet they all know who Hitler was and that he was a very bad man. I’m pretty confident we’ve all been called Nazis or told how our positions on various issues put us in the same camp as Adolf Hitler.

This year I’ve had to cover a relatively large swathe of instances in which talking heads compare Republicans to Nazis. It had me wondering why that is the singular go-to comparison we make, particularly when the 20th Century was rife with genocidal, totalitarian murder-regimes.

You Are Such A Nazi

Comparing those on the right side of the political aisle to Nazis is nothing new. But it really seems to have had an uptake since Donald Trump entered the political stage. Even federal judges get in on that action.

Upon sentencing a January 6 rioter to three years in prison, Judge Reggie Walton said:

“It makes for a very difficult situation because I’m not unsympathetic to people being radicalized to engage in abhorrent behavior. We saw it happen in Nazi Germany – a very educated, intelligent population was able to be swayed to engage in the atrocities that took place in Germany based upon a demagogue.”

So many inaccurate nuggets in that two sentence mess. First off, Judge Walton is giving a rather too convenient out for the Germans who stayed silent and, worse yet, participated in the atrocities of the Holocaust.

Easily one of my least favorite aspect of the justice system these days is this idea that there is no clear right or wrong. Attempting to exterminate an entire race of people is wrong, and no amount of smooth talking from a fantastically facial-hair-coifed politician makes it anything less than wrong.

Second, and comparing what happened on January 6th to Germany’s culpability in the mass murder of six million Jews seems a bit extreme. One event culminated in the death of five individuals depending on your source for news and was extinguished within 24 hours.

The other event significantly changed the world footprint of an entire race and required a World War that lasted six years. But it doesn’t end there. 

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An MSNBC guest compared Americans concerned about inflation to Germans who were wooed into the Nazi Party over inflation in Germany. My irritation with the rising price of eggs is not causing me to think about rounding up yuppy well-to-do left wingers and making them work in internment camps., so let’s just pump the brakes on the hysterics, MSNBC.

And we can’t forget Never Trumper Alexander Vindman comparing the once poster boy for the progressive left Elon Musk to Joseph Goebbels. Interesting comparison given the revelations that various government agencies to include the FBI were dictating who had a voice and who didn’t on Twitter for years. 

That smells pretty fascist to me, but I still wouldn’t compare even that to the Nazi Chief Propagandist Joseph Goebbels. Because I don’t live in a state of constant hyperbole.

Not Just Wrong, Evil

It’s been my experience that when someone opts to invoke the Nazi or Hitler card, it’s because they don’t have a great argument to hold up their thesis.

Amanda Moorghen of the English Speaking Union explains why this tactic is flawed:

“Wielding accusations of fascism as an insult doesn’t help to get your audience on side – instead you raise the stakes of the debate, forcing a polarization between ‘good’ and ‘evil’ into a discussion that may have reasonable positions on both sides.”

What I think Ms. Moorghen misses is that the left doesn’t want to get their opponent on their side; they want the masses to view their opponent as evil and thus require removal from society. Hmmmm…what political ideology from history does that sound like? 

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Perhaps the biggest injustice with overusing the Nazi argument is that it diminishes the actual evil that the Nazi regime put out into the world.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) national director Jonathan Greenblatt explains:

“…misplaced comparisons trivialize this unique tragedy in human history, particularly when public figures invoke the Holocaust in an effort to score political points.”

With the prevalence of this rhetorical strategy, we risk numbing our minds and hearts to what happened during the Holocaust. Which, while absolutely horrific, was still not the most horrific thing to ever happen on this planet.

Lost History

Suppose you believe the political rhetoric in our world today. In that case, you’d think Adolf Hitler was the worst political figure in history. The reality is while he would make a top 10 list, he isn’t the only member of the historical bastards club.

Cambodia’s Pol Pot comes to mind. Leader of the Khmer Rouge, this piece of work is responsible for the death of one to three million Cambodians. 

While that number pales in comparison to the amount of Jews murdered in the Holocaust, it does account for a whopping 25% of the Cambodian population, which is absolutely awful.

More on par with the numbers of Hitler is Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, who killed six million of his fellow citizens, making up a third of that nation’s population.

Let’s not forget good old Joseph Stalin, who is responsible for the deaths of some 30 million people in his borders. Perhaps the most notable of his dastardly deeds was the Holodomor, the forced famine imposed on Ukraine that killed two to eight million. 

And one can’t recount masters of political horror without mentioning Chairman Mao Zedong, who is responsible for the deaths of a staggering 45 million, not counting roughly 100 million infant girls, thanks to his disgusting One Child law.

So this is my larger point. Why is it that, when it comes to history or debate, people only seem to know one singular instance – Nazi Germany – and not regimes that were, incredibly, even multiple times more murderous?

According to the ADL, it is because Nazi Germany is the “most available historical event illustrating right versus wrong.” And thus, we come to the answer to my question.

That’s quite interesting. There is a “pro” argument for the mass extermination of starving peasants in Ukraine? Mao’s slaughter of at least even times more human beings than Hitler is a “gray area”? These things aren’t perfect examples of right and wrong?

Cold hard truth

When it comes to mainstream media and left wing politicians their reliance on comparing us to Hitler is, in my opinion, two fold. The first reason points to what our government officials and journalists care about, or to put more accurately, don’t care about.

You won’t hear Elon Musk compared to Chairman Mao because we wouldn’t want to be seen as too critical of our frenemy China’s history, now would we? Wouldn’t want to jeopardize any of these economic deals we have with our near peer competitor.

You won’t hear anyone in the Progressive Caucus compare DeSantis to Stalin because we wouldn’t want to be too critical of our on again off again side piece, Russia. Besides, the progressive left likes to protect their fellow Marxist bros.

And good luck hearing anyone at MSNBC paint a comparison of Trump to Pol Pot or Mugabe, because the truth is they care little for the horrors both past and present in southeast Asia, Africa, or South America for that matter. If they did they’d at a minimum cover the crisis at our border, the rampant modern day slavery in Africa, and massive government corruption in southeast Asia. 

Finally, the reason we are obsessed with comparing those who disagree with us to Nazis is because we, just like those witless nimrods on college campuses being asked by Jesse Watters who George Washington is, are becoming dumber by the day. As a result, we have lost the ability to debate intelligently and the art of historical study.

If you haven’t seen the comedy Idiocracy I highly recommend that you do, it’s less comedy now and more historical futurism. The movie takes us to our future where we are all very very dimwitted and are facing a drought because we believe it best to water our crops with a Gatorade-like substance called Brawndo.

In it the main character tries to convince the U.S. government to switch to water, to which he is met with the argument, “But Brawndo’s got what plants crave. It’s got electrolytes.”

The left and in general our future generations have become like those dimwits in the movie. When met with an alternate position the counter argument is “But your position is different from mine, so you are evil, so you are a Nazi.”

And why is that? Because that’s what the media tells us to think.