Ted Cruz is out of the race. John Kasich is out of the race, too. Officially, as of this week, the only Republican candidate running for President of the United States of America is Donald J. Trump.
I am terrified at this new development, certainly. As a democratic, feminist, Black Lives Matter supporting, LGBTQIA rights advocating hippie liberal weirdo, I don’t like Trump’s politics. More than disliking his politics, I dislike his rhetoric. I think it’s wrong for politicians to be crass hatemongering bullies (though technically, Donald Trump is not a politician). The rhetoric Trump uses is sensational at best and scapegoating at worst.
A lot of the anti-Trump rhetoric I’ve seen on Facebook and Twitter has involved the ubiquitous Hitler comparison. Especially with Holocaust Remembrance Day (or Yom HaShoah) this past week, many people have used their platforms to warn of a new age of Trump Fascism Anti-Trump folks love comparing Trump and Hitler. These comparisons are all over the Internet. They are images:
similarities between Donald Trump and Hitler pic.twitter.com/2o0bDvROaQ
— Great Quotes (@lion_faisal) May 5, 2016
They are headlines, they are emails,
They are tweets:
Donald trump is literally hitler 2.0 it's scary
— Tara✨ (@taraamgc) May 8, 2016
Trump loving taco bowls is like Hitler loving matzo ball soup...doesn't really matter does it? #DonaldTrump #racist pic.twitter.com/4LHNa7mLE7
— @Minx (@allys_sons) May 5, 2016
Latino & Muslim coworkers in tears this morning with news that #DonaldTrump is the nominee, like Jews when Hitler was appointed chancellor.
— ViewFromWise (@ViewFromWise) May 5, 2016
And, marking their full ascent into ridiculous all-pervading memery, they are Youtube videos:
You may think you are the first genius to see Hitler in a politician, but you’re not. All politicians, big and small, get the Hitler treatment. Barack Obama, George Bush, Hillary Clinton — all Hitlers. The advent of the 24-hour news cycle and sensationalism on the Internet have also led to the development of Godwin's Law—the longer a topic is talked about, the more likely it is that Hitler or Nazis will be brought up. In fact, some recent data analysis by a Reddit user showed that Reddit threads with more than 1000 comments have a 71 percent chance of discussing Hitler or Nazis.
Hitler doesn’t mean anything anymore. When we say Hitler, we only kind of mean “that guy who killed millions by exacting genocide on his own people.” We really mean “Big Evil Scary Man.” Hitler in the context of political discussion has ceased to be a person—rather, Hitler is the abstract concept of evil, applied to one of the most well-known tragedies in history to make the speaker sound informed.
I am asking you, the average anti-Trump social media user, the largely rational and kind person, from the bottom of my anti-Fascist Jewish heart, to stop comparing these two. It’s hurting us. And the fact is, Trump is no Hitler. He’s a hateful windbag and a fool. Trump never said that Muslims should wear ID badges (a la Hitler’s gold Magen Davids and pink triangles), he never instructed his supporters to raise their hands and sig heil to their leader and he definitely did not orchestrate the horrific murders of 11 million innocent citizens.
When you make those dime-a-dozen Hitler comparisons, you’re not saying much of anything. You’re not doing anyone any good. When you bring up Hitler just to bring up a scary shock word, you’re disrespecting the history Jewish people have. The Holocaust isn’t a scary faraway thing for us -- most Jewish people have a direct lineage to Holocaust refugees. It’s a very real and very upsetting part of our history. This Trump-as-Hitler rhetoric is disrespectful and anti-Semitic and must stop. When you can actually walk the walk of caring about the struggles of Jewish people, you can talk about Trump like he’s Hitler.
