I’m a fan of the bloggers over at Lawyers, Guns and Money but I sort of take issue with Erik Loomis’s objection to “liberals referencing Nazis all the time when talking about Trump instead of realizing everything he is doing is very, very American”.
He makes an entirely good argument that American history is littered with examples of American politicians destroying democracy and human rights. Examples include treatment of Native Americans, slavery, the institution of Jim Crow after slavery was technically abolished, and, something he doesn’t mention, the recurrent demonization of immigrants, whether they came from Ireland, Japan, China, or Southern Europe.
But I would submit there is a very good reason why liberals should stick to the Nazi comparison, which is perfectly legitimate. After all, the point of making the comparison is to try to stave off the destruction of democracy. You go with what works, or at least with what might work.
At least at the moment, most Americans still consider the Nazis to be bad guys. It is something that 99% of us agree on, putting aside the holocaust deniers and Stephen Millers among us. Nazis have been successfully demonized (and rightly so) so that if an American hears a comparison to Nazis, and recognizes the legitimacy of that comparison, he or she will more likely to be won over to the side of the person making that comparison. It’s a lot more difficult, given the fact that so many Americans do have a distorted view of American history, to score points by arguing that Trump and his fellow fascists are just like some Americans of the past, Americans about whom most present day Americans are surpassingly ignorant. So I’m glad that folks on our side, such as Al Gore, are making the comparison. It may or may not work, but it has a better chance of working than trying to get people to rethink the American past.