Andrew Cruz, the Chino Valley Unified School District board member who sometimes makes puzzling and offensive pronouncements, now seems to be making excuses for Hitler.

I missed the Sept. 6 board meeting, alas, but the video is online. There was a long and emotionally charged hearing involving sex education and parental rights. Cruz, who attends the conservative Calvary Chapel megachurch, spoke for five minutes on the slippery slope he sees with transgender students, gender-neutral bathrooms and abortion.

“Common sense tells, the sermon tells, the direction of our country. So we have to get parental rights. Even if there’s policies that tell us not to, forget that,” Cruz said.

“You know, Hitler, with Germany, it wasn’t Hitler that was bad,” Cruz mused. “It was the people who followed the laws and the agenda. And it went further and further and went out of control.”

He added: “Local (control) is so important, when we take charge for our own community and for our own kids.”

A round of applause is heard. If anyone threw in a “Jawohl!,” the audio didn’t pick it up.

I’m not even sure where to begin with this. But having just visited Auschwitz, the notorious Nazi extermination camp, I have to say I’m a little surprised we’re having this discussion. I wasn’t aware we had to make a choice between who was bad, Hitler or the rank-and-file Nazis. I assumed, perhaps naively, that they were all bad.

Is this really the line of thinking by an elected official in the bucolic Chino Valley, that Hitler was a poor, misunderstood fuhrer and events spiraled away from his original vision?

Since the camera was trained on the dais, where amateur historian/sociologist Cruz sits, it’s unclear from the video if anyone reacted negatively to a seemingly pro-Hitler comment. I didn’t hear any objections. So on Monday I phoned Irene Hernandez-Blair, one of the board members and a Cruz opponent, to ask what she observed facing the audience.

“What I recall, he received applause, did he not?” Hernandez-Blair said.

He did. I mentioned that a half-dozen members of the public spoke shortly afterward, and none of them objected either.

“Those speakers,” Hernandez-Blair said, “were the ones who applauded.”

She did perceive some head-shaking and murmurs, but she said “it was overshadowed by the applause.”

Because she’s not board president, as she was when she challenged some of Cruz’s wackier comments in 2015 – more on that in a moment – Hernandez-Blair didn’t feel comfortable objecting this time. Besides, she added of Cruz’s monologue, “There was a lot that he said. That was just one thing he said.”

That’s true too.

“This is outrageous,” Cruz had said a minute earlier into his rant. “And what is the endgame? What’s the endgame of all this? It is the destruction of gender itself. No such thing in the long run as male, female in our society. And you can imagine the end result. In 40 years when we look at Roe v. Wade, 60 million abortions. You can imagine what will happen in 40, 50 years.”

I’m hoping jetpacks. But no, he segued into the comments up above about common sense and Hitler.

He also cited findings by the American College of Pediatricians regarding abstinence education. As some opponents have since pointed out, the group’s name closely resembles the better-known American Academy of Pediatrics.

But the American College of Pediatricians gets a drubbing from the Southern Poverty Law Center, which calls it “a fringe anti-LGBT hate group that masquerades as the premier U.S. association of pediatricians to push anti-LGBT junk science, primarily via far-right conservative media and filing amicus briefs in cases related to gay adoption and marriage equality.”

The group endorses “conversion therapy” for homosexuals, links homosexuality to pedophilia and discourages adoptions by single parents or same-sex couples. To make this a teachable moment, Don Lugo High should send a debate class to observe Cruz and learn the peril of citing questionable sources.

You may remember that Cruz went off the rails at a meeting in 2015, saying same-sex marriage was wrong, immigrants spread infectious diseases, mandatory vaccinations are un-American and the Confederate flag was being unfairly targeted in the wake of the South Carolina mass shooting at a black church – a shooting he said had nothing to do with race. He also hinted that he believes the government might be spraying us with chemicals from the skies.

After an outcry, Cruz apologized for speaking “in an unorganized, hasty manner.” Then in 2016, he was not only re-elected, he was the top vote-getter. Based on last week’s performance, he may have concluded that unorganized and hasty was his brand.

“What amazes me is that he uses the dais for these political and discriminatory rants,” Hernandez-Blair told me, saying his comments and the video are being posted all over social media. “The public needs to be the ones to voice its concerns because there’s really nothing I can do myself.”

Among those venting online is Bill Klein, who posted Cruz’s Hitler comment on the Chino Connects Facebook page. Klein wrote: “In my 35 years in the Chino Valley, including eight years as a CVUSD Board Member, I’ve seen many strange things; however, I have NEVER, EVER seen a Nazi sympathizer in an elected position.”

What was all this about? Calvary Chapel, the megachurch that backs board majority Cruz, James Na and Sylvia Orozco, got its flock whipped up about trying to undermine or block state laws that expand sex ed and rights for transgender and gender non-conforming students.

Some 700 people attended the board meeting, according to the Chino Champion. Not 70, but 700, an astonishing number for a public meeting.

Can we call them the 700 Club? Anyway, they were riled up about some of the curricula for classrooms under 2016’s California Healthy Youth Act and demanded to be able to opt out of what some called “pornography.”

Orozco, however, probably surprised some by taking the contrary view.

She explained in detail, by reading from board policy and the state Education Code, that parents already have the right to keep their children from getting that instruction. In fact, it’s not passive; in the Chino Valley, parents have to give their written consent for their children to participate. And the material is available in advance, “so you can preview it,” Orozco said.

Hernandez-Blair held up the opt-out form and said abstinence education, another of the concerns, was already part of the local curriculum. She asked what it was that people wanted.

Their defense seemed to take the wind out of much of the audience’s sails. Half the people who’d turned in cards requesting to speak left before their names were called.

Cruz and Na conceded that parental rights are in place but asked that the item be placed on the Sept. 20 agenda for action. It’s unclear if that will happen.

Is there more motivation here than meets the eye? Oh, probably. Two board members, Orozco and dissenter Pamela Feix, are retiring, putting their seats up for grabs in the Nov. 6 election. As Calvary Chapel pastor Jack Hibbs told the board, “It’s voting time and we will vote for those who represent our views.”

If you’re trying to drive people to the polls, it never hurts to get your base worked up. But it’d be nice if someone repudiated the kind-words-for-Hitler stuff. Otherwise, the camerawork at the board’s meetings may wind up being done by the ghost of Leni Riefenstahl.

David Allen writes Mittwoch, Freitag and Sonntag. Email dallen@scng.com, phone 909-483-9339, visit insidesocal.com/davidallen, like davidallencolumnist on Facebook, follow @davidallen909 on Twitter and buy “Getting Started” and “Pomona A to Z.”