George Korda hosting his "State Your Case' radio talk show. (Jack Lail / News Sentinel)

The Facebook meme depicts a children’s book cover illustration of man about halfway down a multi-colored slide. He’s wearing a brown uniform and sporting a swastika armband.

The title: “Everyone I Don’t Like is Hitler; The Emotional Child’s Guide to Political Discussion.”

That’s a pretty fair summary of much of the talk surrounding Presidential Campaign 2016. The media, social and otherwise, is decorated with various complaints, particularly about Donald Trump being, acting like, reflecting, emulating, mimicking, or portending a return to the policies of Adolf Hitler.

This detailed knowledge of Der Fuhrer’s life and history is interesting in a country packed with many people who struggle to identify America’s first president, who don’t know what nations won World War II, or who can’t find Israel or Iraq on a map if you spot them on which end of the Mediterranean Sea to start looking.

The probability is higher of an uncomfortable number of Americans knowing the dates that a Kardashian last took off her clothes, which team won a particular Super Bowl, or what we celebrate on July 4 (cookouts and fireworks).

It’s not as if such Hitlersteria is anything new. A lengthy list of U.S. political leaders have been said to behave in a manner that corresponds to that of the master of the Third Reich. Just last year, in a Jan. 13, 2015 Chicago Sun Times article, Chad Merda explored this tendency in a column headlined, “A brief history of politicians being compared to Adolf Hitler.”

Listed in Merda’s column as being likened to Hitler by politicians, an educator, and various adversarial foreign leaders were President Barack Obama; President George W. Bush; and President Ronald Reagan.

This Hitler fetish has been noticed, and has occurred, north of the border, up Canada way. In the Sept. 12, 2012, Huffington Post Canada, Bernie Farber, identified as a human rights advocate, wrote a blog item headlined, “Before You Compare Something to Hitler and Nazis…Don’t.”

Wrote Farber: “And the past is replete with examples from both the left and right of the political spectrum of those who it seems temporarily lost their minds with visions of Hitler and Nazism.

“In accepting his Nobel Peace Prize a few years ago, former U.S. Vice-President Al Gore used the Hitler analogy to compare world leaders ignoring climate change to those who ignored the potential threat emanating from Nazi Germany's early days.

“Here at home, the leader of our Green Party, Elizabeth May, used similar hyperbole, comparing our government's environmental plan to former British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of the Nazis in 1938.”

When Donald Trump came to Knoxville on Nov. 16, 2015, he delivered a “speech,” so to speak, that was remarkably un-presidential. It was instead a stream of consciousness, and occasionally profane, subject-to-subject soliloquy that sounded more like what a bunch of guys would say while sitting around a bar after hoisting a few.

Sometimes Trump makes sense. Sometimes, his words and statements range from head-shaking to distressing. But Hitler he’s not.

Inevitably the evolution of the argument proceeds along this simple path: a candidate or politician a person doesn’t like is another Hitler, which is followed by the same person denying it and becoming angry if a politician they favor is equated with Hitler.

Several years ago at a demonstration in Washington D.C., a woman interviewed by a national cable television network said it was awful that detractors of President Barack Obama had depicted him with a Hitler mustache.

Asked how she felt about President George W. Bush being caricatured the same way, she said that if someone were to be characterized in such a fashion, “wouldn’t he be the right one?”

And therein is the problem. Take Bernie Farber’s advice: before comparing someone to Hitler and Nazism…don’t.

George Korda is political analyst for WATE-TV, appearing Sundays on “Tennessee This Week.” He hosts “State Your Case” from noon – 3 p.m. Sundays on WOKI-FM Newstalk 98.7. Korda is a frequent speaker and writer on political and news media subjects. He is president of Korda Communications, a public relations and communications consulting firm.

