Comment by lisper | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lisper | Hacker News Reader

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> Do we need to compare everybody to Hitler?

Trump's policies are eerily reminiscent of Hitler's. Seriously, go look up some transcripts of Hitler's speeches, especially the early ones, and substitute "Muslim" for "Jew" and compare the results to Trump's rhetoric. Better yet, show the results to some Trump supporters and ask them if they agree with the sentiments.

But I don't really care what color their shirts are. What I care about is: by what process do we decide who gets thrown out and who gets to stay. Trump's policy is: throw out everyone who can't prove they're here legally. Well, if a passport isn't good enough proof (and it manifestly is not) then I'm not sure I can prove I'm here legally.

Will it be "that bad?" Maybe, maybe not. But if history teaches us anything it is that the time to speak up is before the answer becomes apparent.

[NOTE: I posted this comment in the wrong place in the comment tree, but someone posted a reply before I noticed so now I can't delete it. I re-posted it in the right place: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12418441]

Both my grandparents survived the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. The only time my grandmother mentioned Nazi Germany to me was when Schindler's List was in theaters and she asked if I've seen it yet. Hitler didn't just start killing Jews and others. He slowly progressed to that. Of course, each step towards the final solution didn't seem like a large jump from the previous one. That is what I was told the power of the movie was, that it captured the slow progression. It started when Jews had to register all family members and had to move to ghettos in major cities or leave the country. Trump wants to start with step 1 with Muslims and Hispanic people. Trump is literally Hitler right now. What Trump wants is literally the first scene from Schindler's List. We are in 2016. We should be past this by now.

> We are in 2016. We should be past this by now.

I have read arguments of the form “It is [the current year]. We should be past this by now.” a lot lately, but I do not understand how referring to time provides a useful starting point for an argument about morality. Can anyone tell me?

In 1933 anti-semitism was a respectable political position. Hitler didn't have to hide the fact that he was anti-semitic. He explicitly ran on anti-semitism, and the German people voted for him because of his anti-semitism, not in spite of it. It was only when faced with the reality of what it actually means to carry this moral position to its logical conclusion that the world finally recoiled in horror and said, "Never again." That is what it means to say, "It's 2016." It means that we live in a world where someone actually did this experiment in the not-so-distant past. It didn't end well. And so we should be able to see that doing the same experiment again with Muslims standing in for Jews might not be such a hot idea.

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