Opinion of Trump/Hitler comparisons?

[Xing]

Counter-productive.

[bore]

There are occasions when they're appropriate (there is no better parallel to the way the White House is being run, with a multitude of factions who all hate each other, very little clear direction from on high and a leader who specifically wants a darwinian system of overlapping responsibilities than the Third Reich), and people of all sides need to drop the annoying tendency of lapel clutching at every comparison to anything as if the act of comparing is the same thing as equating. But mostly they're lazy and can be downright offensive as well.

But there is a wider point here. Historical comparison only works if the audience gets the history. It may well be that King Michael the Obscure of Belgium is the best comparison to Trump, but if no one has heard of him then comparing the two is rhetorically useless. A large part of the reason that everyone jumps for Hitler comparisons is the Second World War is one of the very few historical events that everyone has in common both through school and through films and TV. If you want a better standard of comparison then you need to teach better history.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

"Oh wow, it's like comparisons to Hitler are made so frequently and so cheaply that it minimizes the true ugliness of his regime and hampers contemporary attempts to make honest appraisal of the potential rise of the far right. Weird how that works out, huh?"