Playing the Hitler/Nazi Card

One of my historical pet peeves is when someone plays the “Hitler Card.” That is when someone compares something here in the USA to Nazi Germany. There is absolutely no comparison and there will never be a responsible way to make this comparison. Hitler and the Nazis killed five million Jews, Gypsies, and mental retards among others all the while sucking the entire world into the most devastating and expensive war the earth has ever seen. Other than the mostly pre-USA germicidal genocide of the Native Americans nothing that has happened in North America can even begin to compare to such atrocities.

Not long ago my sister sent me an article where this brain donor “journalist” compared President Obama’s proposed volunteer corps to the Hitler Youth in Nazi Germany. Volunteer corps…Nazi Germany, really?! Volunteers cleaning up parks! Nazis! Really?! Politics aside would you ever be comfortable making such a comparison?

More recently intellectual giants Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck compared the proposed healthcare reform to Nazi Germany. Healthcare reform…Nazi Germany, really?! Healthcare reform! Nazis! Really?! Again, politics aside would you ever be comfortable making such a comparison?

Thankfully I am not the only one that feels this way. Jon Meacham, editor of Newsweek and author of a fantastic book called American Gospel was so annoyed by the recent comments from wisemen Limbaugh, Beck, and others that he wrote an editorial on the subject. Meacham pointed out such absurd comparisons are made by men and women on both sides of the isle to further their own agenda.

• 1960, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley accused Republicans of “Hitler-type propaganda” when they wanted a recount of the Kennedy – Nixon election.

• 1964, Republican Vice Presidential Candidate referred to LBJ’s Great Society as the kind of system that “came to life in Germany three decades ago when Adolf Hitler offered the people a welfare-state program, with promises to build everything they needed.”

• 1982, feminist writer Gloria Steinem wrote: “A return to a strong family life, women’s primary identity as mothers, tax penalties for remaining single, loans for young married couples and subsidies for childbearing, prohibition of prostitution and homosexuality, contraception, and abortion: all these were issues that the Roman Catholic Church…and the Nazi Party could agree on.”

• 1995, Democratic Congressmen Charles Rangel and Major Owens compared Newt Gingrich’s Contract With America to Nazi Germany.

• 1995, The National Rifle Association called law-enforcement officials “jackbooted [slang for Nazi storm troopers] government thugs.”

One of my own discoveries was a comment by former General Relief Society counselor and former Desert Books CEO Sheri Dew in a 2004 speech to a conservative religious coalition. Now Sister Dew wrote an excellent biography on President Hinckley that I enjoyed so much that I actually read it twice on my mission so it was disappointing and disheartening to see her absurd remarks.

• While talking about same-sex marriage and homosexual parents she declared, “At first it may seem a bit extreme to imply a comparison between the atrocities of Hitler and what is happening in terms of contemporary threats against the family—but maybe not.”

Oh, Sister Dew, conservative Christians are ruining the way you talk! If that is how you have to speak to make these Religious Right nut-jobs your friends then they’re not your friends! Sure, she was just trying to fit in with a bunch of religious zealots who have little or no respect for the Mormon faith but such a comment is ignorant and insulting as Hitler’s Final Solution included ending the lives of thousands of homosexuals so to even make a comparison is awfully inappropriate and insensitive.

Furthermore, those are fighting words coming from a woman who has never been married in a church that emphasizes the importance of marriage. This is another reason why Mormons should stay far and clear from the Religious Right, we don’t want to be associated with such intolerant loonies and quite truthfully we don’t fit in so we need to stop trying! Come on…were better than these exploiters!

At any rate Meacham finished his article fiercely by explaining, “the example of Hitler should not be invoked lightly or often. In this case less is more; to deploy Nazi imagery as a matter of course diminishes one of humankind’s most potent lessons of its meaning and power. The summer of 2009 has not been our finest hour on this front.”

What do you think? Is it acceptable to compare any actions of a democratically elected government in the United States to Hitler and the Nazis? The President Bush won the election through a court decision, his administration dragged the country into an illegal war, they fired numerous US attorneys because they were not loyal enough to the Republican Party, authorized the use of torture, held enemy combatants without trial, and spied on their own citizens’ phone calls and emails but even then, comparing such behaviors with the actions of the Nazis is ignorant and baseless.

Or is this yet another scare tactic? You know, a cheap way to shoot down another’s opinion or idea by using emotionally charged imagery and without actually doing any research on the subject at hand? Blah, blah, blah…are you getting as sick of my preaching as I am?