This election is a joke, and you will get absolutely no argument from me on that front. On one hand, we have a bigoted celebrity businessman. On the other, we have digital-age Richard Nixon. The problem among citizens this election season is that very few people strongly support one candidate over the other, we’re just trying to figure out who is the lesser of two evils. As a result, the only argument that people have to support one side is by comparing one of the two candidates to Adolf Hitler.
Our choices may not be great, but to compare either candidate to the biggest mass-murderer in history is nothing short of a stretch. A hobby some people seem to have is taking Hitler quotes, and comparing them to a quote made by either Donald Trump or Hilary Clinton. Some of these are made more as jokes, but there is also a fair amount of people who genuinely feel that the candidate they are not voting for could be the next Hitler.
The argument that one candidate is the equivalent of Hitler is nothing more than a ridiculous (if somewhat tasteless) joke. Most of the ‘Trump/Clinton is Hitler’ arguments come in the form of joke articles, usually titled something along the lines of “Who Said It, Trump/Clinton or Hitler.” But, like most jokes, this has been taken too seriously, and now there are certain people who are basing their vote simply on the fact that they think a certain candidate is Hitler incarnate.
To dismiss a candidate for being ‘like Hitler’ is just a way to completely ignore a candidate altogether. Some people will have you believe that a certain candidate’s political campaign and ideas are similar to Hitler’s, when in reality the comparisons are don’t hold a lot of weight.
While neither candidate is safe from Hitler comparisons, Trump has definitely gotten the worse of it. There’s no shortage of articles calling Trump’s rise to power identical to Hitler’s, usually based on the ‘Make America Great Again’ slogan. The argument is that Hitler claimed he would restore Germany to its former glory. It’s true that Hitler used this tactic, but Germany at that time was in much worse condition that America is now. The people were desperate, and Hitler and had to get rid of freedom of the press to push his anti-Semitic propaganda. Trump is saying that he can restore America to its former glory, but America isn't in a poor enough state that Trump can take complete control over the nation.
Clinton gets plenty of Hitler comparisons as well, but these arguments have even less to stand on than the Trump-Hitler comparisons. Besides the occasional pair of similar quotes, the Clinton-Hitler comparison is just empty. Some might try to argue that Clinton is reaching out to those who feel oppressed, and using them to gain support. It's true that Hitler used this tactic, but so have countless other politicians. To win an election, candidates have to win support. That's just how the game is played.
There’s a lot of information about the Nazi rise to power that is worth looking into and readily available. So it’s hard to believe that people are really convincing themselves that the candidate they don’t like is ‘like Hitler.’ These comparisons, regardless of which candidate they’re aimed at, are just a waste of time and energy. There are plenty of fair and logical reasons to hate both candidates.
