The Daily O’Collegian

A few weeks ago, the O’Colly featured a story about OSU students protesting California’s passage of Proposition 8. As I glimpsed over the photos of the protesters, I noticed one sign that really stuck out to me. It said: “Who else didn’t like same sex-couples? HITLER.”

In political discourse, Hitler is the analogy of choice. Why develop sound, logical arguments to prove your case, when you can simply find that one unique characteristic your opposition shares with Adolf Hitler?

Hitler exterminated 6 million Jews, started a war that would end in the death of 72 million, and left Europe in complete ruins.

With that said, no American has ever committed atrocities even comparable to those committed by Hitler. Nonetheless, almost every prominent U.S. politician has been compared to the man.

Such comparisons are rarely legitimate. For example, many people oppose gay marriage. It is not a characteristic unique to Hitler. Comparisons such as these are only made to evoke strong emotions, and paint your opponent as evil.

The injection of Hitler or Nazism into political discussions stifles rational intellectual thought. It narrows our understanding of political matters and frames issues in one-dimensional terms of good and evil.

Make no bones about it, Hitler detested homosexuality. Thousands of gay men were locked in concentration camps, where they faced castration, torture, hormone experiments, and often death.

However, castration, torture, or hormone experiments were not mentioned anywhere in the wording of the proposition. Therefore the comparison is not legitimate or valid.

Nevertheless, I agree Hitler would have voted for Proposition 8.

But on that same note, so would have the Dalai Lama. In recent years the Nobel Prize winner has called homosexuality “sexual misconduct.” Furthermore, when asked about gay marriage he said “That (is) up to local law, country’s law.”

I guess a sign that says “Who else didn’t like same-sex couples? THE DALAI LAMA” just does not have the same ring to it as a Hitler sign.

I did not write this article to criticize Proposition 8 protesters. For the record, I agree with them. To legitimize the denial of civil rights simply because a majority of the population voted in favor of it is ridiculous. Proposition 8 is no different than bans on interracial marriage. To me it seems obvious; issues concerning an individual’s civil rights should be protected and not voted on by a ballot initiative.

With that said, I believe Proposition 8 protesters do not have to resort to such erroneous arguments.

The sad thing is, I am not the first person to comment on this fallacious argument. Various media figures have done stories or written articles about the prevalence of Hitler comparisons in American politics. Recent stories by Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart and MSNBC’s Rachael Maddow have made light of such comparisons.

The prevalence of Hitler comparisons have even been analyzed in scholarly research. Jewish-American philosopher Leo Strauss developed a formal fallacy to describe arguments that rely on erroneous Hitler analogies. It was formally named Reductio ad Hitlerum, but is better known as “playing the Nazi card.”

Comedian Jon Stewart said it best: “To sum up, please stop calling people Hitler when you disagree with them. It demeans you, it demeans your opponent, and to be honest, it demeans Hitler. That guy worked too many years, too hard, to be that evil, to have any Tom, Dick, and Harry come on and say ‘Yeah, you’re being Hitler.’ NO! You know who was Hitler?… Hitler!”