Not everyone is Hitler

Happy New Year!  Many people like to make New Year’s resolutions.  Even if you don’t I feel like our society as a whole needs one for next year:  stop comparing people to Hitler...here’s my case.

#1-We, as a society, are generally not good at comparisons.  For example, largely due to Trump discussing COVID in New Zealand, comparisons between New Zealand and the U.S., as well as other countries, started to pop up.  New Zealand has several geographic advantages, such as it’s an island and has a fairly low population density, when compared to the U.S.  It also has more sheep than people.  While it should be applauded for its successful handling of the pandemic and there are certainly lessons to be drawn from their example, comparing New Zealand to the U.S. is not a good comparison.  In U.S. foreign policy everything is compared to Vietnam or to the War in Iraq.  Many people argued the U.S. should stay out of Syria because it would be another Iraq or Libya.  There may have been good reasons for the U.S. to stay out of Syria but the comparisons to Iraq and Libya were flawed.  

#2-Poor comparisons lead to poor policies, decisions and arguments.  One of the best books written about the use of comparisons in U.S. foreign policy is Analogies at War by Yuen Foong Khong.  In it he argues that we use analogies to more easily process information and provide a framework, or schema, to help us reach a conclusion.  The problem is that once we’ve made the comparison we process information from the top down, fitting any new information into the comparison we have already made.  Analogical reasoning is easier and faster, which is why we tend to like it.  But as he argues with respect to U.S. foreign policy, this has led to poor decisions and poor policy.  Making good comparisons is difficult and takes time, which is why we tend to fall back on big events (Pearl Harbor, Munich, 9/11), recent events (2016 election, 2008 financial crisis) or prominent people (Reagan, FDR, Hitler).

#3-Too many people get compared to Hitler.  “Godwin’s Law” posits that the longer an online discussion persists, the probability of a Hitler comparison approaches 1.  This blog lists 76 people who have been compared to Hitler, including most of the recent U.S. presidents, a pope, Mother Teresa and a cat.  Saying someone is like Hitler, or Nazis, has come to mean nothing more than we disagree with that person or that we don’t like them.  Not only is this lazy but it diminishes the evil and cruelty of Hitler.  If everyone is Hitler, then not only do the comparisons become meaningless but the sinister nature of Hitler also becomes meaningless.

#4-Hitler comparisons are lazy and lack creativity.  Comparing someone to Hitler is a pretty good sign that the person has not thought a lot about the issue, does not have a good argument or does not have a deep knowledge of history.  Of course, it doesn’t just stop with Hitler.  There are comparisons to Nazis and fascists, communists and Castro.  The ubiquity of these comparisons reveal how unserious they are.  The point of the comparisons is not to actually compare but to stop conversation (that person is Hitler, you can’t vote for them) and to simply indicate dislike of the person or group.  It would be funny but it happens so frequently and people start believing it as they try to fit information into their established analogy.  

Based on the evidence it is clear that Hitler comparisons, and most other comparisons we find in political discussion, do more harm than good.  Good comparisons take time, effort and knowledge, which are not things we associated with modern political discourse.  Instead of comparing people to Hitler (or fascists or communists or whatever) evaluate the person or event based on their own characteristics and actions.  If you immediately compare that which you don’t agree to the most horrible thing you can think of, the discussion will only go down from there.  It is not a tactic that is meant to lead to a productive outcome but is meant to lead to anger and division.  Hopefully, we can all agree that if we stop such comparisons in 2021, the world will be a slightly better place.

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