It's pretty unusual for Godwin's Law to be met by the first post in a thread, and any objective reader would consider the comparison to be beneath contempt; you undermine any valid point you might be able to make.
The next person to make hyperbolic Nazi comparisons in this or any other political thread will be banned.
Jeremy
Jeremy - while I might not agree with the comparison of one in hindsight to the current outcome yet to be determined, and while I would definitely agree that what the current administration has done does not warrant a comparison to the Holocaust (or that anything the previous administration or current left-wing candidates propose equates to Stalinist), the comparison of the media manipulation, gaslighting, and disinformation to Goebbels' pre-war tactics is by no means "beneath contempt" on an academic level.
From
Nicholas O'Shaugnessy, whose book was adapted into an excellent
article on Slate that I would encourage everyone to read. Thing is, when the comparisons are exact, the chance to do anything about them will be long past.
According to Goebbels, what was distinctive about the Nazis was “the ability to see into the soul of the people and to speak the language of the man in the street.”19 The propagandist was an artist who “sensed the secret vibrations of the people.”20 What distinguished European fascism above all was its discovery of new ways, a methodology, of speaking to the working class. The fascists were not ashamed of mass media and marketing, understood the cultures of consumerism, and recognized the role these now played in the lives of the masses; media was a new language with which the masses were now familiar, including its styles, forms, and assumptions. Fascists were at ease in this exciting new world and recognized that it could be exploited for political purposes, both as a source of methods and as a new kind of culture with a different set of governing assumptions.
As I've stated before, this certainly isn't unique to Trump - it's a tactic used by all successful populist demagogues, but the simple fact that it's now being used by Trump does not lower the comparison to "beyond the pale," however controversial it might be to some to make the comparison.
