The Hitler rule

The more basic problem with Hitler comparisons is that they are invariably partisan and usually absurd. No serious player in American political history can reasonably be compared with Hitler — or Stalin or Mussolini. Yet it keeps happening, whether it’s in Saratoga Springs high school curriculum, a Democratic congressman from Virginia tweeting about Trump’s “brown shirts” coming to get people, or Hollywood A-lister Ashley Judd equating Trump voters to Nazis in a foul-mouthed rant on the National Mall the day after Trump’s inauguration.

For his part, the president compared the U.S. intelligence services to “Nazi Germany” days before taking the oath of office. If it’s true, as veteran journalist Michael Kinsley wrote, that the first person to use such language has lost the argument before it begins, then both Trump and his critics are losers. “It’s ridiculous to compare any living person to Hitler or Mussolini,” Kinsley wrote. Yet even while seemingly in the realm of reason, odd impulses arise: Kinsley’s op-ed, published in The Washington Post, was titled “Donald Trump Is Actually a Fascist” — as if the modifier “actually” somehow absolved the author or the newspaper. Meanwhile, The New Republic weighed in with “Yes, Donald Trump is a fascist,” as though prefacing the argument with the word “yes” makes it valid.

And yet, at a time of disquieting discord in American politics, it is hardly out of bounds to discuss whether the conditions in our voting booths, halls of government, and streets bear a semblance to the post-World War I upheaval in Europe that led to the rise of the Axis powers and the ensuing Second World War and the genocide we know as the Holocaust. It is a fact that the fascist governments that took root in Italy and Spain and Germany featured charismatic and dangerous leaders who — at least initially — advanced at the ballot box. It is also a matter of record that in Germany the conversation wasn’t limited to political commentary and campaigns: It included pitched battles in the streets between rightists and leftists who preferred slogans and violence to reasoned argument.