But that's almost never the specific argument of people who fall into the mistake of "Nazi" as analogy. In fact, many people use these overly-specific points as a fallacious straw-man rebuttal. Often, the specific, functional points are complaints of:
- stereotyping of a group
- quick and prejudicial characterization of a person as member of the group
- certain moral/ethical positions irrationally ascribed to the group
- said group being demonized with lurid, emotional language
- actions by a number of persons against a perceived member of the group
- use of exclusionary, inflammatory, and violent tactics against the same
MLK and Gandhi carefully and very specifically structured their movements to account for people falling into such patterns of behavior and besmirching their causes. We are all subject to such mental patterns, and they require specific mental effort to combat. In particular, they were aware that people engaged in activism are especially vulnerable to these phenomena. Society and rational thought would be greatly helped by a language and cognitive tools to calmly think and speak about such phenomena.