Like much of the mainstream media, the Washington Post going out of its way to disparage Donald Trump. But the Post isn’t satisfied with the normal biased reporting—they have gone above and beyond assigning 20 reporters just to dig up dirt on the Republican nominee. That must have failed because now they are taking the lazy, but disgusting way out with inappropriate Hitler references. Twice in this month Post columnists have compared Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler. Perhaps the editors have designated September as “Trump Is Hitler Month” at the Washington Post.
On Monday they featured a column by Richard Cohen which said in part,
(…) while Trump is neither an anti-Semite nor does he have designs on neighboring countries, he is Hitlerian in his thinking. He thinks the truth is what he says it is.
Mr. Cohen didn’t mention what despot Hillary’s lies reminded him of, but then again the post would never have a “Hillary is Hitler month.” While a Hillary comparison would be just as wrong, the fact that they are only creating a “Trump” month is incredibly sexist.
Six Day’s before Mr. Cohen, another columnist Shalom Auslander wrote “Don’t compare Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler. It belittles Hitler.”
In each of the columns, the writer states that the analogy between Trump and the Holocaust was wrong, before performing the acrobatics necessary to explain to their readers why it is appropriate in this one case. And neither one of them proves that in the case of Donald Trump this depiction is correct.
Hitler references inappropriate because their hyperbolic nature cheapens the memory of the actual horrors that millions of people including six million Jews (1.5 million of them were children). From a journalistic point of view the writer’s exaggeration is a sign of disrespect for their audience. Perhaps they feel their readers are not intelligent enough to understand their prose unless narratives are blown way out of proportion, or maybe they simply lack the semantic agility to craft the appropriate prose to interest and inform their audience
Allow me to explain the only cases where comparisons between Donald Trump and the Holocaust is appropriate.
The reference would be appropriate if Donald Trump forced people to tattoo numbers on their arms. Hitler choose that method of identifying the Jews because tattooing is prohibited in the Jewish faith (he didn’t realize that people couldn’t be punished for forced tattooing). Either way, if Trump never forced people to tattoo numbers on their arms then he probably isn’t Hitler.
If Trump murdered people cremated their remains and buried them in mass graves the analogy would make sense. I never met some of my family because the Nazis killed them, buried them in mass graves, and/or cremated their bodies
If Trump never killed, cremated, and buried people in mass graves then the Hitler comparison is probably not accurate.
Hitler wrote a book called Mein Kampf in which he spoke of his hatred toward Jews and previewed his “final solution:
The black-haired Jewish youth lies in wait for hours on end, satanically glaring at and spying on the unsuspicious girl whom he plans to seduce, adulterating her blood and removing her from the bosom of her own people. The Jew uses every possible means to undermine the racial foundations of a subjugated people…..the personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew….And so he [the Jew] advances on his fatal road until another force comes forth to oppose him, and in a mighty struggle hurls the heaven-stormer back to Lucifer… Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: ‘by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.’
According to Wikipedia Donald Trump wrote 18 books, I only read one (“The Art of the Deal” which contained no Antisemitism nor did it foreshadow a mass genocide of any group). If any of the other books contained quotes such as the ones by Hitler above which talked about the destruction of one group, I guarantee you that they would have been fodder during the primary season. Therefore since Trump never wrote a book about destroying a race, or ethnic group, it isn’t realistic to call him Hitler.
The Nazis conducted horrible painful medical experimentation on humans. Perhaps the most well-known of which were the experiments that Josef Mengele conducted on twins and other victims at Auschwitz, through these experiments he hoped to prove the superiority of the Aryan race. He experimented on over 1,500 pairs of twins and other Jews and Gypsies, injecting dye into their eyes blinding them, or chloroform into their hearts killing them, sew twins together trying to create conjoined twins, forcing them into freezing water (like the picture below), and other experiments too horrible to repeat.
Did Donald Trump authorize horrible medical experimentation on people like Mengele did? If he was doing that, believe me it would be on the front page of the Washington Post. Therefore, unless the Post is covering up the experimentation he is not like Hitler.
After the Nazi’s gassed their victims they collected their hair, their clothes, glasses, gold teeth and even artificial limbs to be used by the Reich. Perhaps I was watching “Family Feud” instead of the news the day Donald Trump killed people and recycled what was usable. If I didn’t miss it, well then Donald Trump is not like Hitler.
I know…perhaps someone at the Washington Posts believes that Trump gassed innocent victims, collected their gold teeth and artificial limbs etc. while they were sleeping so no one complained. Perhaps that’s why the columnists use the comparison.
And what of the camps? Does Donald Trump round up people he doesn’t like, force them into box cars like cattle and deliver them to concentration camps? Because if he did, I would be the first to compare him to Hitler.
Truth is Donald Trump never wrote a book about a future genocide, never forced people to put tattoos on their arms, or crowd them in to death camps where they would suffer torture till they were gassed, shot, thrown in ice water, or died some other horrible death. He never ordered the mutilation of corpses by taking out what can be reused. And he never had bodies thrown in mass graves, or had them cremated.
The Crematorium At Buchenwald Concentration Camp
Until there is evidence of the above, any comparison of Donald Trump to Hitler and/or the Nazis is not only false, inappropriate, and an example of careless writing. It also cheapens the memory of my relatives and the families of other the people who suffered during the Holocaust at the hands of Hitler.
So Washington Post, I hate to ruin what seems to be your month of inappropriately calling Donald Trump Hitler. If you want to call Donald Trump other names names go ahead, it’s still a free country (although not as free as it was before 2008). But if you do decide to call him names–leave the Holocaust out of it. An inappropriate reference to the Holocaust is a disservice to your readers, and more importantly a disservice the memory of the suffering of the real victims of the real Hitler.
