No matter the political climate, some analogies are off-limits. References to Hitler or to Nazi Germany top the list! Yet, despite the vile nature of such comparisons, some Democrats continue to utilize this dark period when referring to their political opponents, their policies, or Republicans in general. Nikki Fried, a Florida Democrat who is running for governor, is the latest to make a similar analogy. Fried’s comparisons are foolish, highly offensive and irresponsible, and have no place in political discourse.
During a television interview with WPTV, a local station in West Palm Beach, Florida, Fried made the following remarks, “What I said, very clearly, was that a lot of the actions that Ron DeSantis has been taking mirror some of the actions that were taken by Hitler on his rise to power.” Fried further noted:
Look at what he’s doing. He’s spent the last three-and-a-half years taking power, limiting people’s rights to vote, scapegoating communities, taking away women’s rights to make a decision for her own body, making it harder to protest. Time and time again, everything he has done in the last three-and-a-half years of his administration is to gain power for one purpose and one purpose only — to run for president in 2024.
The examples Fried references amount to nothing more than “disagreements” between many Republicans and Democrats about various social and other issues. Assuming, for the sake of argument, that all Fried’s points are accurate (in reality, none of them are!), Fried’s analogy still miserably fails and reflects a complete lack of knowledge and understanding of Nazi Germany.
According to the Jewish Virtual Library, Jews who died in the Holocaust “were the victims of Germany’s deliberate and systematic attempt to annihilate the entire Jewish population of Europe,” which Hitler called the “Final Solution.” Moreover, Hitler and/or the Nazis (unlike DeSantis) utilized powerful propaganda methods to promote their sickening goals:
A major tool of the Nazis’ propaganda assault was the weekly Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer (The Attacker). At the bottom of the front page of each issue, in bold letters, the paper proclaimed, “The Jews are our misfortune!” Der Stürmer also regularly featured cartoons of Jews in which they were caricatured as hooked-nosed and apelike. The influence of the newspaper was far-reaching: by 1938 about a half million copies were distributed weekly.
Hitler and the Nazis mercilessly killed people using a variety of methods, including starvation, injections of lethal sedatives, gas chambers disguised as showers and/or crematoria where bodies were burned.
DeSantis is not a “dictator” nor are his policies anything like Hitler’s. Hitler sough to annihilate the Jews out of hatred and disgust. His methods were cruel and inhumane. Jews were slaughtered simply for being Jewish. They weren’t asked, or worried about, their rights to make decisions about their bodies, their voting rights, or their rights to protest. They were worried about if, and when, they would live to see tomorrow.
As reported by The Times of Israel, citing Bal Harbour Mayor Gabriel Groisman, who is Jewish, DeSantis is “loved by the Jewish community.” Groisman further correctly noted:
“Disagreeing with his policies doesn’t make him Hitler. Low.”
“To be clear, any comparison of COVID policies to Hitler or Nazi Germany is asinine, offensive, and has no place in our society. This is true whether coming from Democrats or Republicans, Jews or non-Jews alike.”
