Many of us agree that Donald Trump has proven to be a racist, Islamophobic, misogynistic excuse of a person. His rise in popularity is understandably terrifying to minorities to the point where many people fear for their lives.
Some have even gone so far as to label him the “New Hitler.”
This labeling of a “New Hitler” is extremely problematic because it trivializes the experiences of those affected by the Holocaust while continuing to dismiss the genocides of peoples of color.
A lot of the issue with the trivialization comes from the fact that while Hitler’s and Trump’s ideas may seem similar, Trump hasn’t killed over 11 million people. Yes, the Republican front-runner has targeted minorities. He’s played off of the fears of the majority to gain support. While this is obviously terrible especially in how it affects the mindset against marginalized people, it isn’t equivalent to murdering millions.
According to Dr. Dvir Abramovich, a leader in the longest running Jewish service organization in the world, “It bears repeating again that these types of historically inaccurate comparisons diminish the profound tragedy of the Holocaust… Such ignorant posts only fuel the gross trivialization of the Holocaust.” Comparing American elections to the defamation, imprisonment, torturing, and murder of millions is dangerous to how seriously we regard genocide.
Furthermore, we need to stop acting like the Holocaust was the only genocide. Hitler himself was heavily influenced by the American history of oppressing others. When Europeans first reached the Americas, it’s estimated that over 10 million Natives lived in the region of the contemporary US alone. By 1900, this population was decimated to a mere 300 thousand.
Most of the deaths in this genocide were caused by famine, accounted for killing roughly 90 percent of the population. However, this wasn’t always coincidental, as we can see in a letter from colonial British commander-in-chief Jeffery Amherst: “You will do well to try to inoculate the Indians [with smallpox] by means of blankets, as well as to try every other method, that can serve to extirpate this execrable race.” This oppression hasn’t stopped either; after colonial times, the U.S. has frequently forced Native Americans out of their homes, and we still continue this today with our treatment of reservations.
In America, we also have a tendency to try to minimize portrayals of slavery (the Trans-Atlantic slave trade alone displaced 12.5 million people). One of the more prominent recent examples of this occurred back in October of 2015, when Texas history textbooks were found with depictions of slaves as mere “workers” and “immigrants.”
While this is unsettling enough, a member of the Texas Board of Education responded by saying that “everybody is too easily offended." Not only do we continue to try to erase our crimes against people of color, but we also place the blame on the oppressed communities as if the accurate reporting of history only exists to protect feelings. We continue to condense our education and acknowledgement of black history into a single month and attack people for saying that Black Lives Matter.
So yes, Donald Trump is a terrible, terrible person. We need to continue to stand up to him and his hateful rhetoric. However, Trump is not Hitler, and should not be compared to Hitler, because of how it trivializes suffering. When we look at history, it's apparent: This brand of blatant racism and xenophobia is all-American.
