Since the end of World War II, even though the world since then has seen massacres by Stalin, Pol Pot, Pinochet, Idi Amin, and others, there is still no worse judgment to be made than comparing a leader anywhere to Hitler and his party to Nazis. Name-calling in general has been on the rise in the past decade in the United States, and Hitler name-calling is increasing at an alarming rate, notes Edna Friedberg of the William Levine Family Institute for Holocaust Education at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, who finds the trend “disturbing.” She writes,
This oversimplified approach to complex history is dangerous. When conducted with integrity and rigor, the study of history raises more questions than answers. And as the most extensively documented crime the world has ever seen, the Holocaust offers an unmatched case study in how societies fall apart, in the immutability of human nature, in the dangers of unchecked state power. It is more than European or Jewish history. It is human history. Almost 40 years ago, the United States Congress chartered a Holocaust memorial on the National Mall for precisely this reason: The questions raised by the Holocaust transcend all divides.
Neither the political right nor left has a monopoly on exploiting the six million Jews murdered in a state-sponsored, systematic campaign of genocide to demonize or intimidate their political opponents.
Both right and left, she points out, have made use of these dangerous analogies.
Recently someone I know slightly posted on Facebook about Nazis in relation to American politics. He listed a few oddly chosen political sins of the Nazis (leaving out depriving people of basic citizenship rights, plus the whole Holocaust death machine!!!) as follows: They “tore down statues; banned free speech; blamed economic hardships on one group of people; instituted gun control; put the state before God; nationalized health care; and placed strict government regulations on industry.” He then posed the question (though it looks as if he copied the whole post from someone else; I don't really know), “Does this sound like the policies of a current political party in the U.S.?”
Well, let’s see. Let’s look at those “sins” one at a time. Here's what he says the Nazis did, which he thinks sounds like one of the American political parties:
Removed statues. Statues of Confederate leaders have been removed in more than one American city and state—are we talking about any statues other than those of Confederates? —and we can probably thank the primarily Democrats for that. Please note that the statues removed were leaders of an armed insurrection against the U.S. government, leaders of an opposing army in a war that cost over 600,000 American deaths, a war that took place over a century and a half ago; that most of those statues went up much later, during the 1890s, the Jim Crow era, i.e., when Reconstruction ended and Southern states began enforcing strict segregation laws; and that the current Republican president, in sympathy with the old Confederacy, has ordered a couple of those statues put back up. (He has never wanted to be the president of “all Americans” and has made that clear time and time again.)
On the other hand, it has been the present Republican administration that removed online memorials to Black and Native Americans, and the Republican president himself had portraits of President Obama and both presidents Bush moved out of a highly visible area of the White House to a place where they are hidden from public view.
Banned free speech. Sounds like the current Republican administration to me, where any criticism of the president is seen as treason, radio stations are threatened with loss of their licenses, newspapers are sued for printing true stories that show the administration in a bad light, etc. I suspect, however, given his general sympathies, that the questioner has in mind bans against “hate speech,” particularly on college and university campuses, so here’s the way the United Nations explains that idea. Did you follow the link for the definition? If “free speech” is an absolute, then “hate speech” must be permitted, and if this is where you come down on it, both parties are guilty restricting speech. The line between acceptable and unacceptable speech under the line has always shifted with shifts in political climate, in every country of the world, under all manner of political power. One absolutist on the matter wrote that he would not even ban yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theatre. Can you go that far? I can’t, although I tend in general to lean towards freedom.
Blamed economic hardships on one group of people. Yes, Nazis blamed economic hardships on one group, the Jews, though they also scapegoated gypsies, homosexuals, disabled people, dark-skinned people, etc., etc. Republicans blame economic hardships on immigrants and Democrats, two different groups. They also love to call Democrats "socialists," because that's a hot button that short-circuits thought for many of their listeners. Democrats blame Republicans for their policies that favor the wealthiest Americans at the expense of everyone else. Not sure how to score this one.
Gun control. I don’t know what the specific German laws about gun ownership were under the Nazis, but neither major party in the U.S. has ever advocated making gun ownership unlawful. Democrats do, however, favor the kind of laws that most Americans also find reasonable,
while Republicans kow-tow to the gun lobby and see any law about ownership of any weapons as an infringement of individual rights. It's strange that while they oppose even the “morning-after pill” as “murder of a child,” they are willing to sacrifice the lives of actual living schoolchildren so that anyone who wants to own a military-style assault weapon can get his hands on one. So yes, if “gun control” is a sin, Democrats are guilty.
Put the state before God. That, like the foregoing, would be in the eye of the beholder. The separation of church and state does not elevate the state above the church and certainly does not elevate it above God. It’s a huge topic, what any individual might mean by this claim.
Nationalized health care. There is only one country in the world, as far as I know, that has national health care, and that is the United Kingdom. Other countries have national health insurance, and the U.S. made a move in that direction with the Affordable Care Act, stopping short of having the government as a single payer. So American health insurance is still the business of for-profit corporations. Hospitals and clinics, too, which used to be owned and operated by cities and religious groups when I was young, are now for-profit businesses. Bottom line: We do not have nationalized health care. Neither major party has pushed for it. There is no country in the world that puts a greater burden on its people to pay exorbitant fees to private companies for health insurance and health care.
Put strict government regulations on industry. This is certainly a sin of the Democratic party. Republicans would prefer that business be completely unregulated, with no safeguards for workers or for public health and no concern for the national resources of the country, on which all of us depend, including the industries.
Here's how I see these points, one by one, in summary:
Every country chooses its heroes, and most adults recognize that we must choose our heroes carefully.
Free speech would be less controversial if public, commonly accepted standards of civility and decency were still in place and respected and adhered to by our country’s leaders.
Purposeful attributions of blame are unfortunately common in politics, but anyone following the news can see that it is much more common coming from Republicans, starting with the current president, the Blamer-in-Chief.
I don’t know that this country will ever have sensible, reasonable discussion of gun ownership and gun control.
Putting one religion above all others (often in a very perverted, materialistic form), rather than “putting the state before God,” is what I see Republicans doing these days, whereas Democrats would be content to maintain the traditional separation of church and state as laid out by the Founders.
Nationalized health care is a straw man: We don’t have it, and neither party advocates for it.
Government regulations on industry are nothing but common sense; the absence of regulations would be nothing but the raping and pillaging our own land and our own people for the short-term gain of the wealthiest segment of the population. I should say, for the short-term gain of the segment of that segment who recognize only one value: money and the power it gives.
A more important question relating to the list, however, is—what, if anything, does this list say about either major American political party? Would anyone want to say that a country with gun regulations or regulations on industry is, because of those regulations, led by Nazi-like politicians? The idea is ludicrous.
As for my own view (which would not be the view of the person who posted the list), I believe that analogies between the present Republican administration and its leader to Nazis and Hitler are unnecessary and beside the point. We don't need analogies. All we need to do is listen to what is said by the Blamer-in-Chief and his diehard supporters and watch what they are doing and ordering done. It's all plenty bad enough without comparing it to other people and times and places. So let's not undermine our testimony with a reductio ad Hitlerum.
But I will let Edna Friedberg have the last word today:
Careless Holocaust analogies may demonize, demean, and intimidate their targets. But there is a cost for all of us because they distract from the real issues challenging our society, because they shut down productive, thoughtful discourse. At a time when our country needs dialogue more than ever, it is especially dangerous to exploit the memory of the Holocaust as a rhetorical cudgel. We owe the survivors more than that. And we owe ourselves more than that.
