No. of Recommendations: 19
The current "Hitler" scare is an attempt at generating a panic, by people who do panic for a living and who have, unfortunately, succeeded before, at great cost to the rest of us. The price of a "Nazi" panic is likely more than we can bear.
But it's not, really. For various reasons, I developed an interest in that era of history. My book reports and essays in high school and college were all related to that, as much as I could. The use of "Hitler" is really a short-cut, easily understood as "cruel dictator". Is the Felon an actual NAZI? He's not affiliated with that Party as near as I can tell. But he is an authoritarian, following many of the examples that the NAZIs followed in the 1930s. Similar rhetoric, similar actions. I saw it during his first run in 2016, and I'm really seeing it today. He's not as good a speaker as Hitler was (good thing!). But his messaging is very similar.
I can deal with policy differences. This isn't that. It's the subversion of our democracy, the suspension -in effect- of the Constitution, the persecution of opposition...that is worthy of a bit of panic. Mainstream Germans in the 30s were discontented (rightly so), and many (about 32%) voted for "change", and then later wondered what happened to their democracy as it faded away.
The lesson is that you can't compromise democracy or rule of law even a little bit for expediency, or you could just lose it entirely.
