Please, stop trying to make Nazi analogies and 'The Big Lie' a thing. It's lazy, inaccurate, divisive

By Gary Abernathy

Critics of Republicans have been comparing GOP presidents and the party in general to Hitler and Nazis for decades. Everyone from Barry Goldwater to George W. Bush – including Ronald Reagan – was painted with the Hitler brush. The comparison has reached new heights of absurdity with Donald Trump.

Ever since president-elect Joe Biden accused Trump and other Republicans of adopting Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels’ strategy of repeating “The Big Lie” in regard to allegations of widespread election fraud, Democrats and many of their media allies have been doing their best to make “The Big Lie” a thing. Biden’s allies in politics and media have been working hard to make “The Big Lie” synonymous with Trump’s claims of election fraud by, ironically, repeating the comparison over and over.

It’s true that there was no evidence found of widespread election fraud, and yes, Trump’s repeated refusal to accept the results of the November election and his irresponsible call to action to thousands of his most fervent followers contributed, intentionally or not, to the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol. So stipulated.

But there are millions of Americans who still suspect there are reasons for concern, and not just based on Trump’s complaints. They are honest, peaceful, patriotic Americans who don’t deserve to be compared to Nazis, or to be subjected to the implication that they aren’t smart enough to recognize propaganda. If Biden has a sincere interest in unifying the country, as he says, he’ll drop the Hitler and Nazi analogies.

In fairness, occasionally Republicans have used the Nazi comparison against Democrats, including invoking “The Big Lie” when talking about the dead-end effort to link Trump to Russia through the wasteful and divisive Robert S. Mueller probe into “Russian collusion.”

Anyone truly concerned about Nazi strategies repeating themselves should pause and examine the startling defense that exists among too many Trump adversaries of the actions of social media to silence the voices of Trump and many other conservatives (see next item), which is reminiscent of Nazi tactics to control the media to eliminate any news or opinion with which they disapproved. But let’s don’t go there, either.

Please, everyone, stop trying to make “The Big Lie” a thing. It’s lazy, inaccurate and divisive.

Compare these comments about Big Tech’s censorship

“Now is the time for Silicon Valley companies to stop enabling this monstrous behavior –and go even further than they have already by permanently banning this man from their platforms and putting in place policies to prevent their technology from being used by the nation’s leaders to fuel insurrection,” 

--Michelle Obama, former First Lady

“For four years, Facebook and Twitter have given the President a platform to spew dangerous, violent lies and cause untold harm to our democracy. Facebook has finally taken the long-overdue step of blocking the President’s account – at least for the next 13 days – but I’m deeply frustrated that it took a group of domestic terrorists storming the Capitol before they were willing to do so,"

--Congressman Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.)                

“Removing Trump from @YouTube is the tip of the iceberg, and a 7 day ban isn’t long enough. They need to expunge the white nationalists and disable their algorithms that draw viewers down a rabbit hole of increasingly extremist content.”

--Arisha Michelle Hatch, vice president, Color of Change

“Yes, social media should not be used to incite violence and all that, but this cannot be used as a pretext to suspend freedom of expression… How can a company act as if it was all powerful, omnipotent, as a sort of Spanish Inquisition on what is expressed?”

--Andrés Manuel López Obrador, president of Mexico

What a sad state of affairs when many of our U.S. leaders support the suppression of speech, while it takes the socialist president of Mexico to defend freedom of expression.

By the way, people say, “Trump can still go on television anytime he wants and talk to the American people.” What short memories. Remember when most of the networks cut away from Trump because of their duty to protect the tender ears of the American people from “lies?” The actions to curtail speech should disturb all Americans.