A few days ago, here on Medium, Umair Haque published a story called: “Do Americans Understand They’re Beginning to Commit The Legal Definition of Genocide?” Its subtitle was just as juicy: “No, You Don’t Know What Genocide (Really) Is. But You Should.”

Haque’s post takes a turn toward the hyperbolic, since it flagrantly cherry-picks elements of a U.N. definition in order to generate clicks. For example, Haque claims we’re guilty of (e), “forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.” But there’s a massive gulf between condition (e) and condition (a), “killing members of the group.”

Haque makes the point that separating the children from their parents is tantamount to torture, which is an argument that has some merit, but it’s still quite a stretch to consider it genocide. Saying it is genocide because it meets this one requirement is almost like saying a person purchasing sharp knives is “beginning to commit the legal definition of” stabbing someone. The problem is you’re missing the key element. The ultimate wrongness of genocide—and the reason why the charge of genocide is so powerful—lies in the very act of killing, not in actions that remain at several removes from the killing.

With that said, there is something to the Trump-Hitler comparisons, or the Trump-Nazi identifications, this time around.

In the past, they’ve largely been the fever dreams of Trump’s most vociferous detractors — they represent what these critics imagine Trump would become as opposed to what Trump had yet done. However, in this case, the associations seem less contrived.

No, the idea isn’t that Trump is just like Hitler, or even that Trump is a literal Nazi, but rather that the family separation policy is Hitler-esque and has a Nazi-like feel to it.

A more measured take, posted earlier today here on Arc Digital, comes by way of Nicholas Grossman.

Grossman writes:

Comparing political opponents to Nazis is a common feature of 21st century discourse. There’s even a famous internet adage about it, called Godwin’s law: “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Hitler approaches one.” As internet culture’s understanding of Godwin’s law evolved, the term became a shorthand for rejecting hyperbolic analogies, with Nazi comparisons the quintessential example. But the family separation story fits the comparison better than most. For example, U.S. border agents told parents their children were being taken for a bath, only to later tell them they’re not coming back. Nazis used the same lie to separate Jewish families.

What is it about the family separation issue that makes the comparison more apt this time around? Let’s explore.

To begin, contrary to the utterly false claims of the administration, this is an altogether new policy. Immigrants were deported at an alarming rate and many were even mistreated under President Obama, but he never created a policy of intentionally separating families. Weren’t immigrants placed in detention centers under Obama, critics ask? If so, why didn’t he receive Nazi comparisons?

Unfortunately for the administration’s defenders, the policy of separating undocumented immigrants from their children at the border is absolutely a Trumpian prerogative. It is in line with Trump’s — and Stephen Miller’s—views of immigrants more generally. It is but a small part of their larger modus operandi.

Thus, to act as if this Nazi comparison, hyperbolic or not, came out of nowhere is to have been born five minutes ago. The truth is that, since he’s taken office, Trump has waged a ferocious campaign against undocumented immigrants.

There’s a reason why some have started referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as his “Gestapo.” We have seen parents torn from their children while taking them to school — and more than once. We have seen a 10-year-old girl who had cerebral palsy arrested by ICE right after she had emergency surgery. The examples could be multiplied.

Aside from what Trump has done to undocumented immigrants, what he has said about them is similarly alarming. Who can forget his decision to launch his presidential campaign by ripping into immigrants as “rapists” and “criminals.”

Since then, he’s said much more — both explicitly and implicitly. His frequent use of dog whistles are downplayed by his defenders. However, given that his base is comfortable with Trump’s nativist rhetoric, Trump knows he can get away with, for example, making outrageous conflations between the “animals” in MS-13 and immigrants generally, and that his supporters will grasp the subtext.

Most recently were Trump’s comments about how Democrats are allowing “illegal immigrants” to “infest our country.” As David Graham of the Atlantic has pointed out, that’s how you talk about vermin that you wish to exterminate:

“Infest” is the essential, and new, word here. (Also popping up in the tweets is the older coded word “thugs.”) It drives full-throttle toward the dehumanization of immigrants, setting aside legality in favor of a division between a human us and a less-human them. What are infestations? They are takeovers by vermin, rodents, insects. The word is almost exclusively used in this context. What does one do with an infestation? Why, one exterminates it, of course.

This talk of an “infestation,” and the images and video of children locked in cages, make it easy to see why the Nazi comparisons have come to the forefront of many people’s minds.

Trump isn’t gassing these immigrants, sure, but the essence of Nazism shouldn’t be exclusively associated with its worst components. It is possible to do something Nazi-like without being guilty of gassing millions of people.

When the Nazi comparisons were first made, they were motivated by a fear that the family separations were the beginning of something that could descend into a situation far worse than anything we’ve yet seen. Any student of history knows that democracies often die slowly (relatively speaking), and cruel authoritarians often take time building up to their worst atrocities.

At times, it seems as if Trump invites the Nazi comparisons.

Shortly after taking office, Trump announced to Congress that he would be starting a new Department of Homeland Security office called VOICE that would publish and broadcast crimes committed by undocumented immigrants. The Nazis literally did the exact same thing to stir up hatred for the Jewish people, as many have noted. Never mind that crimes are committed by every ethnic group, and Trump could easily announce the many more crimes committed by white citizens. Yet focusing on immigrant-connected crimes was such a Nazi-like move that it’s as if Trump intentionally sought to provoke the comparison.

Entirely outside of Trump’s treatment of immigrants and his statements about them is another reason people see dictatorial tendencies in him: He has publicly praised heavy-handed, authoritarian, even tyrannical uses of power.

Trump has praised multiple violent dictators, from Egypt’s Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte to North Korea’s Kim Jong-un. He told Duterte, who kills drug users out in the open, that he’s doing a great job fighting drug use. He’s publicly yearned for the levers of power Vladimir Putin has at his disposal. Of course, Putin’s reign is free from the pesky checks and balances of a democratic state. No doubt Trump would like to rule without negative coverage shining a light on his manifest failures.

The roaring response to the separation of families caused Trump to sign an executive order that allows detained families to stay together indefinitely. Whether the courts will allow Trump’s order remains to be seen. The important point is that ending the separation of families was a product of the remarkable outcry over this policy; the family separation policy was in no way reversed because of Trump’s own principles or preferences.

This means that there’s a facile counterargument to the Nazi comparisons we should immediately dismiss. One might look at Hitler and at Trump and say: “But at least Trump turned back from policies such as these.” Yes, but that’s because he had to in order to retain power. The midterms are around the corner, and the family separation issue is polling abysmally low.

Trump’s executive order therefore represents political expediency. It certainly doesn’t reflect a newfound appreciation for the dignity and rights of immigrants.

Donald Trump is a cruel authoritarian who admires bloodthirsty dictators, demonizes and dehumanizes minority groups, and feels absolutely no guilt over any of it. That someone like this leading the United States of America is beyond alarming. Trump is probably not the next Hitler, but the Nazi associations aren’t always off the mark.