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The Left’s 'Reductio ad Hitlerum' Obsession with ICE Raids
The Left’s Reductio ad Hitlerum Obsession with ICE Raids
Whenever the Trump administration ramps up immigration enforcement, it is only a matter of time before some lunatic, anti-borders politician decides that the U.S. has suddenly found itself an oompah band and is three beer steins away from b...
Whenever the Trump administration ramps up immigration enforcement, it is only a matter of time before some lunatic, anti-borders politician decides that the U.S. has suddenly found itself an oompah band and is three beer steins away from becoming Nazi Germany.
Just in the last few months, Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker accused the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) of engaging in “Nazi” tactics and “Gestapo-style abductions;” and former Minnesota governor Tim Walz referred to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as “Donald Trump’s modern Gestapo.”
Meanwhile, during President Trump’s first term, Congressional Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez regularly compared ICE detention centers to “concentration camps.”
This tactic is fairly common among historically illiterate buffoons like Pritzker, Walz and Ocasio Cortez.
In fact, it’s so common it actually has a name: the reductio ad Hitlerum – a term coined by Leo Strauss, a German-Jewish professor of political science at the University of Chicago.
The 'reductio ad Hitlerum' is a species of logical fallacy, known as a “fallacy of irrelevance” wherein the horrors of the Nazi genocide are invoked in an attempt to establish guilt by association and foreclose reasonable debate.
It works something like this: The Gestapo arrested innocent Jews in targeted raids. Therefore, because ICE uses targeted raids to apprehend immigration law breakers, ICE’s motives must be the same as those of the Gestapo.
Needless to say, the mere fact that Subject A appears to share one or more superficial attributes with the indisputably wicked Subject B does not, ipso facto, mean that Subject A is also indubitably vile.
~Snip~
And that brings us to the fundamental problem with the playing the Nazi card. It is a scoundrel’s last refuge. A party to an argument typically resorts to the reductio ad Hitlerum when that party is unable to support its arguments with facts and logic.
Anti-borders immigration policies that prioritize the interests of illegal aliens over American citizens are becoming increasingly unpopular on their own merits. Such policies, and those who advocate for them, are even less popular when the best argument for them is to accuse anyone who thinks differently of being a Nazi.
The last presidential election showed that Americans want practical, fair solutions that respect national sovereignty and the rule of law. Continuing to dismiss these concerns with inflammatory rhetoric only deepens division and further undermines the case for less immigration enforcement.
Commentary:
Good article. It’s an internet meme that some professor started. It said the first person to mention Hitler lost the argument. However, there are numerous times and places that comparing the policies of the third Reich or the USSR is completely legitimate.
It goes to the fact that Democrats would use whatever under handed trick or comparison to besmirch and smear their opponent.
None the less. these use Marxist tactics and employ the tactics used by Nazi's to achieve their goals.
As an example the use of the DoJ, FBI IRS and DHS as the DSA's own Stasi, to listen in on opposition political enemies , Christian organizations etc.
