It’s 2019, so members of Congress must be fighting over the nonsensical question of whether socialists are the same as Nazis.

This inane debate began on Monday when conservative hardliner Rep. Mo Brooks (Ala.) went to the House floor to berate the Democrats and the media for pushing the “big lie” that President Donald Trump or his campaign may have colluded with Russian officials during the 2016 presidential campaign. Special counsel Robert Mueller didn’t find any evidence to back up the collusion allegation following a nearly two-year probe, according to Attorney General William Barr.


Barr’s bombshell announcement led to Brooks’ outburst, which in turn led to discussion about whether socialists are Nazis because they both use the word “socialist” in their title.

“A ‘big lie’ is a political propaganda technique made famous by Germany’s National Socialist German Workers' Party,” Brooks said in his floor speech Monday. Brooks quoted from Adolf Hitler's book "Mein Kampf" about the use of the "big lie" tactic to dominate political struggles, and the Alabama Republican claimed that's what Democrats did to Trump over the Russia allegations.

“For more than two years, Socialist Democrats and their fake news media allies, CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, Washington Post, and countless others … have perpetrated the biggest political lie, con, scam and fraud in American history," Brooks declared.

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Brooks also said — incorrectly — that Hitler was a socialist. “The author was Socialist Adolph Hitler in his book, 'Mein Kampf,'” the Alabama Republican claimed.


Of course, this isn’t true. The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, was fascist, not socialist — the opposite end of the political universe from socialists. But that hasn’t stopped other Republicans from jumping in as well.

On Tuesday, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), another of the more bombastic GOP lawmakers, waded into the “Socialists are the same as Nazis” flap.

During a Judiciary Committee hearing on a GOP resolution seeking information from the Justice Department on whether Trump obstructed justice during the Mueller probe — the special counsel didn’t determine one way or the other — Gohmert raised the issue again.

Gohmert said he feared that a runaway Justice Department could enable a future president — not Trump, he emphasized — from becoming an authoritarian. Gohmert worried that all it would take is "another socialist like Hitler to come along."


"The time is coming when we could lose everything," Gohmert insisted.

Gohmert's comments sparked a sharp rebuttal from Rep. Steven Cohen (D-Tenn.), who said it was wrong to call Nazis socialists.

"I just want you to know how it offends me as a Jewish person," Cohen said. He noted that Brooks quoted from Hitler's "Mein Kampf" on the floor on Monday and underscored the word “socialist” as well.

"I get offended when you compare socialists to Nazis," Cohen said.

"It’s what they were," Gohmert shot back.

After the exchange, Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) scolded Gohmert as well.

"It’s hard to listen to historical revisionism or perhaps ignorance about the Nazis," Nadler said.

Nadler said that although Nazis were dubbed the National Socialist German Workers Party, their ideology was at the "extreme right of the political spectrum."


"Despite the name, the Nazi Party was never considered socialist in Germany,” Nadler pointed out. “We should not try to rewrite history now."

"Concentration camps were built by private firms who submitted the low bid," Nadler said. "It was in no sense a socialist economy or a socialist ideology. You shouldn’t confuse it by absolutely objectively false invoking of Nazis."

Cohen then jumped back in as well.

"Now this week, to talk about the Nazi Party as national socialists — emphasizing socialists — and the logical connection in their messaging is to say that socialists were for the Holocaust, that socialists were against the Jews," Cohen said.

"This attempt to connect socialists as if that’s worse than Nazi and connect them to anti-Trump behavior … is abominable and scary."

