Appearing on Jimmy Kimmel Live last week, actor Tim Allen - the voice of Buzz Lightyear - courted controversy after comparing being a Donald Trump supporter in Hollywood to Nazi Germany.

"You’ve got to be real careful around here,” Allen told Kimmel after being asked about attending the President’s inauguration. “You get beat up if don’t believe what everybody believes. This is like ’30s Germany.

“I don’t know what happened. If you’re not part of the group, ‘You know what we believe is right,’ I go, ‘Well, I might have a problem with that.’”

While the audience may have been laughing - quite awkwardly at that - the comments have been highly criticised online. The executive director of the Anne Frank Center, Steven Goldstein, has written an opposing statement, asking Allen “have you lost your mind?”

Goldman continued: “No one in Hollywood today is subjecting you or anyone else to what the Nazis imposed on Jews in the 1930s — the world’s most evil program of dehumanisation, imprisonment and mass brutality, implemented by an entire national government, as the prelude for the genocide of nearly an entire people.

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“Sorry, Tim, that’s just not the same as getting turned down for a movie role. It’s time for you to leave your bubble to apologise to the Jewish people and, to be sure, the other peoples also targeted by the Nazis.”

While on Kimmel, Allen also spoke about a handful of people in the entertainment industry who are conservative but refuse to tell anyone for fear of retaliation, saying if anyone in Hollywood "finds out you support Trump at all, it's like you smell bad".

“You get bullied into a position, but I don’t want to defend the guy,” Allen explained. "To me, he acts like a new talent comedian. These are guys that have great material that have very bad comedy timing. And he's got terrible timing.”