How would Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign come into play here? We have people in both major American political parties making comparisons between Trump and Hitler due to Trump's scapegoating of Muslims & Mexicans and ideas of a "muslim registry". There have been a lot of examples of this trope in Real Life, so what happens when it turns out that all of those examples were people Crying Wolf?
I know that due to the Rule Of Cautious Editing Judgment, I shouldn't put it like that. What I had in mind was an entry that states "people in both parties are now _____". Would that work?
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No clue. I would say wait till the 2016 election has come and gone and leave it at that.
@ike775, Please don't. Also, an actual Holocaust survivor commented that in fact Trump's presidency had very little to do with "literally being Hitler."
http://www.wnd.com/2017/01/holocaust-survivor-comparing-trump-to-nazis-is-crazy
(It keeps breaking the link by adding tvtropes and ' to the front of it, /' to the end)
I'm also not sure Guilt by Association should be linked to Hitler Ate Sugar. Whenever I think of guilt by association, I don't think of hobbies or objects related to people, I think of a person's friends. For instance, Jesus ate with sinners, murderers, or tax-collectors. Therefore he must be as bad as them. Or, if you join a MMORPG guild and one of the other members are hackers, you can be banned because obviously you knew about it and did nothing.
Edited by bulmabriefs144
But your argument is worth more weight if you stop using far-right fake news websites.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WorldNetDaily
Linking to a past Trope Repair Shop thread that dealt with this page: Is my trope concept covered by this?, started by HiddenFacedMatt on Aug 8th 2011 at 5:45:17 PM
Contrary to SMBC, when Soviet archives were opened in 1992, Bill Maher said that they revealed Hitler's skull, demonstrating that he did floss. Just sayin'.
Some of these seem to be just a way of saying "X does not automatically make one a good person", rather than having the "X was done by bad people, and is therefore bad" meaning.
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If some are that (but make sure), then delete them.
I'm on the internet. My arguments are invalid.
Not sure I have the time to go through them all, but I can make the distinction in the trope description.
For that matter, this isn't really a subtrope of "So Was X", but an inversion.
I heard that Hitler was a vegetarian, but it had to due to meat giving him horrible gas, it wasn't animal rights.
Hitler was a vegetarian when it suited him. He did believe in animal rights, for the record, but he still ate meat on occassion, like on special occasions.
Hitler was not only not a vegetarian, but would make fun of any of his officers who were. He was very fond of game pies and pigeon.
Just a note: the Real Life examples seem to show right-wingers accusing left-wingers of being Hitler more often than the reverse. In real Real Life, it is more likely for left-wingers to do that, since Hitler really was a right-winger to the extent that his politics match any significant current politics—ie somewhat.
(The reason right-wingers use Hitler at all is that everyone agrees tha Hitler was evil. Stalin doesn't work as well. Very few people argue that Stalin wasn't evil—but a fair few argue that anyone claiming Stalin was evil, must themselves be a right-wing fanatic. And arguing that Stalin wasn't so bad will not get you kicked out of nearly as many Internet fora as arguing Hitler wasn't so bad. Some rationales for killing millions in concentration camps are worse than others.)
Interesting point, I agree it seems more likely but I don't know that it's borne out. Since it is such poor taste, however factual or not to link people to Hitler, it seems to me that it's more a style choice than well reasoned politics of the O'Reilly and Glenn Beck types, who happen to be of the right.
the Undecided
I was thinking that a reverse version of this trope could be "If X were alive he would agree". I was watching Television and I noticed how a lot of people were saying that 'if MLK were still alive (since his birthday was just a few days ago) he would agree with me' on some rather outlandish things just to make their own point seem more valid.
Hypothetical: If MLK were still alive he would agree with me that America needs to exercise its Nuclear Options.
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That is Appeal to Authority (but with the added problem of making the authority's opinions at least partially hypothetical.)
Not sure this is notable enough for the trope page (Web Original?), but it seems relevant: https://imvotingteaparty.com/design/righthanded/
"on brought the author of "Liberal Fascism" (Jonah Goldberg) onto his show and asked him to explain why organic foods are fascist. The author's response? Hitler made his troops eat organic foods (which aren't even "liberal" in the traditional sense, either. Goldberg apparently got "left-wing" confused with "alternative lifestyle"). "
Way to take something out of context. Actually Jonah Golberg was trying to show that Nazism did mean something specific and not just a "code for evil".
Hitler also breathed (as any human being)...so stop breathing now or you will become evil/nazi!!! (and die as the stupid false moral guardian/idiot pedant YOU REALLY ARE!!!) XDDDDD
Sanity is overrated
Does <a href="http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/05/04/the-heartland-institute-sinks-to-a-new-low/">this</A> count as an example?
That's good enough to be the page image IMO, and I came here to suggest exactly that.
I know I'm unique in that terms, but I just felt like pointing out that the picture statement is not really showing the absurdity of the trope, because liking Dogs is actually evil.
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Can we change the name of this trope to "The Hitler Card"? Honestly, that's what the rest of the world calls it, and it's generally better to have a name that instantly tells you what the trope is about, rather than a name that is a quote from some TV show.
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We have the forums for that. But as it's a redirect, write that if you want to mention the trope.
Edited by DragonQuestZ I'm on the internet. My arguments are invalid.
I added this to the main article, but then removed it because I think I need a second opinion before going forward.
"Some particularly insidious individuals might invert this trope. If someone points out how a group of people are spouting opinions or taking morally bankrupt actions genuinely similar to the Nazis—such as transphobia—the people being accused can claim this trope is in play rather than a legitimate comparison. The goal being to make transphobia seem reasonable by implying the Nazis weren't wrong to practice transphobia themselves and that the comparison is therefore spurious."
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