Invoking Hitler in the Debate on Healthcare

In 2005, during the Virginia Gubernatorial election that ultimately led to Governor Kaine's victory, Republican challenger Jerry Kilgore ran an attack ad that said that Governor Kaine's opposition to the death penalty would mean that he would not have executed Adolf Hitler. This ad was designed to shock, and turn around a campaign that had been floundering. Instead, the use of Nazi imagery for something like an election for a state governor sealed Kaine's victory - the brutal murder of millions of people was not an acceptable comparison for a legitimate policy disagreement.

Today, Kilgore's ad seems rather...quaint.

Repeatedly for the last couple of months we've seen more and more referencing to the ultimate evil creeping into the discourse without being challenged. Fringe groups have been carrying posters of the President of the United States with a Hitler mustache, and comparisons of the goal of providing health care to people in this country to the Holocaust.

Today - I saw what I will describe as quite possibly the most offensive instance of this discourse. This is from a town hall on healthcare today in Nevada. (h/t Amanda Terkel and David Waldman)

An Israeli emigrate living in the United States speaks about the health coverage citizens in Israel receive, and ties it back to the IDF in what I would call a very Israeli fashion. Midway through his explanation of the system in Israeli, and discussing some wider aspects of the culture - a woman shouts out "HEIL HITLER".

The woman shouting "Heil Hitler" was wearing a t-shirt that had the emblem of the Israeli Defense Force.

For ANYONE to use a Hitler comparison in a debate on US policy, is appalling. To shout "HEIL HITLER" while wearing emblems of the state of Israel is unconscionable.

Every time someone uses the imagery of the Nazis and the Holocaust to score cheap political points, it does nothing for the conversation and chips away at the memory of those brutally murdered. Every time someone compares health care reform to the Holocaust, they are destroying the memory of those innocent lives taken because of an irrational hate.

It was wrong when liberals compared George W. Bush to Hitler, and it's just as wrong when conservatives compare Barack Obama. And it has NO place in our discourse.

I believe that all of my direct family got out of Europe before the Shoah, but that doesn't mean I haven't seen family trees where entire branches - many names - stop with the word "Hitler" underneath. I have cried at Yad Vashem, and I refuse to let the memories of those that were murdered be destroyed by ignorance, and false equivalence. Those ignorant enough to use such imagery do not understand the words they are saying.

You can immediately see the anger rise in the eyes of the Israeli gentleman on the video - and his shouts of "SHAME ON YOU". I'm not sure that if I were in a similar situation that I would have been as civil as that man. But his response is right.

To those who would invoke the death of millions of people to score a political point - SHAME ON YOU.

Shame on You.