Enough with the Ignorant Nazi Comparisons

In the Bush-43 administration, some left-wingers compared the president to a Nazi. In the Obama administration, some on the right made Obama out as a Hitler-like figure. Now as the pendulum of ignorance continues to swing from right back to left, the left is doing similarly with Trump (of whom I’m no fan, but he is not anything close to a Nazi!).

Nazi comparisons to U.S. politicians, regardless of how much one disagrees with their policies or behaviors, are all not only wrong, but hideously ignorant and misguided, insulting to those with friends or loved ones who were killed (or survived) the Holocaust. Those propagating such asinine comparisons need to learn basic Holocaust history. In addition to reputable websites, there are any number of Holocaust- and Nazi Germany-related books one can read, or take a personal visit to one of the larger Holocaust museums around the nation.

A longtime friend, who is Jewish, recently visited Yad Vashem in Israel for the first time — a place I have right in my top-handful, high-priority list if I ever journey to Israel.

My friend wrote:

“Had an unforgettable VIP private guided tour of Yad Vashem. It was an intensely emotional experience… While I went into this already knowing a great deal about The Shoah, the perspective gained through interacting with an expert whose entire life’s work is focused on this subject left an indelible mark on me. This was industrialized mass murder on an unprecedented scale. The world does not appear to have learned the lessons of The Holocaust. The next time someone compares an American or Israeli politician or policy to something or someone from Nazi Germany, you can safely and instantly conclude that said person doesn’t know what the hell they are talking about and has zero credibility on the matter.”

Yad Vashem first and foremost is a memorial to the incomprehensibly vast number of those lost to a regime so evil as to commit industrial-scale killing, but also, a reminder that is apparently much-needed in today’s world about the ultimate result of state-run collectivism carried to its fullest. My friend’s last sentence is absolutely spot-on!

My friend’s first-hand imploring from Yad Vashem imply reinforces the notion that far too many are abjectly ignorant in their comparisons of anything in America to Nazism. The term Nazi itself is short for “National Socialist” (emphasis mine) — and the Third Reich was a secular (not Christian!), collectivist, authoritarian, megalomaniacal, and decidedly anti-religious. They persecuted and killed Christians, Muslims, and Jews, but especially and most horrifically, Jews.

If the point of such ridiculous comparisons to Nazism is that we always need to be vigilant for the seeds of that sort of industrialized horror, then that’s good and true. We do, here and anywhere in the world, from far right or far left (collectivism, in the form of both the Communists and the Nazis, has a virtual monopoly on non-Islamic genocide worldwide the last 100 years).

Germany in the 1920s didn’t have a Constitutional republic with a balance of powers specifically and (to the time of founding) uniquely designed against collective authoritarianism of the sort ultimately and contemporaneously consolidated by both Hitler and Stalin. We are fortunate to have systematic structural guards in place against such a devolution, and should be sure to use them where and when necessary. Neither fascism nor its kin communism ever should be allowed to take root here!

Regardless, I’m with my friend here — for all the troubles that are real, I don’t think a lot of folks realize how good we have it in the bigger historic picture. There is no comparing any of our problems since WW2 with Nazism. A whole different level altogether…equating any U.S. politician or policy with the Nazis is so far over the top, such a crazy stretch of reasoning, that (as my friend stated powerfully) anyone doing so loses all credibility in the argument.