By Tim Murphy*

Televangelist Pat Robertson isn’t the powerful political force he once was, but as the founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network, he’s still an influential voice on the Christian Right. Yesterday, on his television show, The 700 Club, Robertson delivered a warning to a weary nation: Muslims are the new Nazis:

Robertson: I was thinking, you know, if you oppose Muslims, what is said? Well, you’re a bigot, right? Terrible bigotry. I wonder what were people who opposed the Nazis. Were they bigots? Co-host: Well, in that day I think they were looked down upon and frowned upon. Robertson: Why can’t we speak out against an institution that is intent on dominating us and imposing Sharia law and making us all part of a universal caliphate? That’s the goal of some of these people. Why is that bigoted? Why is it bigoted to resist Adolf Hitler and the Nazis and to say we don’t want to live under Nazi Germany?

Not to nitpick here, but people who opposed the Nazis were not “looked down upon and frowned upon” as bigots. This was a few decades ago, so it’s understandably a little obscure, but the United States actually went to war with Nazi Germany. There was a movie about it and everything.

As you’d probably guess, this is hardly the first time Robertson has compared a large and diverse group of people to Nazis: