We seem to have endless appetite for comparisons to Hitler, Nazis and the Holocaust, and like all forms of gluttony, it’s making us very sick. It’s neither a Democratic thing nor a Republican thing, it’s a simply and disturbingly a tragic fact of contemporary American life. I am with Eric Fingerhut, who opens his essay, “Not Another Hitler Comparison“, with the words: “Make it stop!”
Just two weeks after Republican cried foul over the Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) statement that the American health care system was “a holocaust,” Democrats are upset that the National Republican Congressional Committee posted a Twitter link to a video in which Adolf Hitler says that he is a big supporter of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — well, he at least says so in fake subtitles.
In the version highlighted by the NRCC, Hitler — in the subtitles — rants that ” at least I still have Pelosi on my side” and “like Pelosi, I don’t give a sh– about the American people” and “Pelosi has 256 Democrats in Congress, she can pass whatever the hell she wants.” The fact that the GOP is promoting this video has Democrats upset, and with good reason.
If there is anything that sane people should be able to come together on, it is this: end these inane and offensive comparisons now! More later on why we seem to have such a hard time doing so. Stay tuned.
Author, radio and TV talk show host, and President of CLAL-The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, Brad Hirschfield is the author of 
posted October 14, 2009 at 1:09 pm
the GOP has always been more guilty of this than the Democrats.
posted October 14, 2009 at 6:46 pm
Make it stop – please!
posted October 15, 2009 at 11:52 am
People who compare lesser things to Hitler and the holocaust are just like Nazis.
posted October 15, 2009 at 1:32 pm
The haters of our president are showing up at town meetings, depicting him with a Hitler style moustach and calling healthcare a nazi plan.
Alan Grayson’s comments pale in comparison.
posted October 15, 2009 at 4:16 pm
I am in full agreement that people need to stop undermining what happened in The Holocaust with lessor “offenses”. I do sympathize though when the people who do this are trying to stop what they believe will be another door opened to uthinashia. At least their hearts may be in the right place. At least some of them.
posted October 16, 2009 at 4:24 am
I love the invention of the words “communofacist” and its reverse twin “facocommunism.” Could there be bigger oxymora? Yet people nod their heads in agreement.
It demeans and belittles the blessed memory of those lost in the Shoah when people compare a political disagreement to another Holocaust.
posted October 16, 2009 at 9:50 am
Genie –
Both are premised on the same notion: that the state owns you. In the end, they become the same thing — systems that kill you if you don’t go along with the thugs in power.
posted October 16, 2009 at 11:23 am
I’m not sure which is worse, the idea that no people ever, ever suffered like the Jews in the Holocaust, or the idea that some minor figure is another Hitler. Both take pleasure in anger. Gluttonous pleasure.
posted December 11, 2009 at 12:13 am
Methinks the professionally outraged doth protest too much.
Israel supporters seemed only too eager to brand Saddam Hussein as Hitler. That worked so nice they’re doing it twice, now to Ahmadinejad. Didn’t hear much objection to those intentionally inflammatory comparisons.
posted December 11, 2009 at 2:13 am
All of the worst started somewhere. So why is it not valid to “nip it in the bud?” Hiter started as a mere corporal. The U.S. army has THOUSANDS of corporals in it, and if they behave like Hitler or Stalin in the early years, cut them off. How long do you want to wait? Pelosi is at the third highest position in government now, just two heartbeats away from the presidency, where she would love to practice her unfettered despotic ambitions with little or no opposition.
posted December 11, 2009 at 2:00 pm
Whether the comparisons are valid or not attempts to stop their expression is the last thing we need. The horrors of the national socialist experience in Germany and the soviet socialists in Russia should remain emblazoned on our consciousness so that any modern movements towards them can be called out and stopped while it is still possible to stop them. Let the comparisons be made and let us decide ourselves if they are valid or not.
posted December 11, 2009 at 3:05 pm
Irving:
Hitler performed his duties above average in WW1, such that he got a medal. He hadn’t written his book(s) yet and nobody noticed if he was any more or less antiSemitic than everyone else. There was nothing to “nip”. That is why the German government gave him a job after the war was over.
Otherwise you’re assuming that a defeated government in near anarchy and barely on speaking terms with its own former army ought to have above-average clairvoyance…
The time to have hanged the moustachioed one was when he started acting out as a private citizen. That beer hall putsch should have been a SMALL clue that this was not your average political sideshow.
posted December 11, 2009 at 3:09 pm
BTW: congratulations on your second-order Drudge’alanche. Most of us are here from SFGate.
I may as well mention something on topic – unless you’ve actually read something relevant on The Great Dictator of the day, you oughtta shaddap. I’m in agreement with our host on that.