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Tea partiers do not shy away from comparing Obama to Hitler, but a recent op-ed in Germany’s Der Spiegel shows that on the other side of the Atlantic, comparing anyone to one of the most prolific mass murderers in history is not to be taken lightly. Tea partiers not only diminish the true horror of the holocaust when they compare Obama to Hitler, they also make “it easier for people to say ‘maybe it wasn’t all that bad.'” From Der Spiegel:

Back in June Glenn Beck said that children singing for Barack Obama was “out of the playbook … of the Third Reich ….This is Hitler Youth.” One can assume that not all of Beck’s listeners and viewers know what the Hitler Youth was. Beck himself, an astute, if cynical, student of history, certainly does. The Hitler Youth was the ideological training grounds designed to prepare German boys for a glorious career in the SS murdering anyone who stood in the way of the Führer’s dream of a vast and racially pure German Reich. It was not a dictator’s private children’s choir. One can forgive those like Glenn Beck and his Tea Party followers for hating Barack Obama… But it is hard to imagine even the most hard-bitten Tea Party activist sincerely believing that President Barack Obama wants to systematically murder over 6 million people like Adolf Hitler did. And that is necessarily the implication.

In 2002 a German politician was forced to resign for simply comparing George W. Bush’s political tactics to Der Fuhrer’s. One can only imagine the German response if one of their political candidates dressed as a Nazi for fun.