Many on the left see almost everyone who disagrees with them as the next Adolf Hitler.
But overusing the Hitler references can numb people to the historical realities, and backfire badly – as Barack Obama’s former ambassador to Russia learned recently.
Appearing Friday night on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show,” Michael McFaul, a professor of international relations at Stanford University, shared his thoughts on the progress of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. It did not go well.
McFaul appeared on MSNBC shortly after being interviewed by a Ukrainian news station. McFaul noted, “One of the Russian journalists said, ‘You know, there’s one difference between Hitler when he was coming in and Putin. Hitler didn’t kill ethnic Germans. He didn’t kill German-speaking people.'”
McFaul then added, “I think people need to remember that we’re talking about cities like Kharkiv and Mariupol and Kyiv, there are large populations there, you know, up to a third and sometimes as much to a half that are Russian speakers and are ethnic Russians.”
“And yet Putin doesn’t seem to care about that. He slaughters the very people he said he has come to liberate.”
On Twitter, The Maddow Blog, the official account of Maddow’s show, posted McFaul’s comments.
And criticism ensued – over the simple fact that countless numbers of the 6 million Jews murdered by Hitler, as well others not meeting the dictator’s standard for Aryan purity, were in fact German and spoke the language.
One of those who responded was the Auschwitz Memorial, whose official Twitter account noted: “On a factual note: Hitler did kill ethnic Germans & German-speaking people: those who opposed the Nazi regime, those who resisted, those who did not fit into the ‘Weltanschauung’. He ordered the murder of people with different disabilities & finally the murder of German Jewry.”
McFaul and the Maddow show were both forced to apologize. McFaul blamed it on fatigue – not pure ridiculousness.
“After a long [day] of commentary that started with Morning Joe and end[ed] with Maddow, I slipped late last night and violated an unwritten taboo – never compare Hitler with anyone. I agree. He was incomparably evil. I won’t do it again,” McFaul said on social media.
“To those who wrote to me to explain that Hitler committed the same atrocities against ethnic Germans that Putin is committing against ethnic Russians today in Mariupol and Kharkiv, please suggest to me the best scholarly readings on this history,” he continued.
“I’m eager to learn. END And please, to clarify the obvious, last night and today, we were NOT discussing Hitler’s horrific killing of German citizens. Please have some decency to know that I would never compare Mariupol to the Holocaust.”
The Maddow Blog added: “The historical record is clear. Hitler killed millions of Germans. We tweeted out part of an inaccurate statement made last night by former Ambassador Michael McFaul without attribution, and we regret doing so. We have since removed the tweet.”
McFaul may have looked over his own Twitter feed before expressing his remorse over his rule to “never compare Hitler with anyone.”
On Twitter, McFaul has likened Putin to Hitler in at least a half-dozen posts, including on March 1, when he said, “Two dictators in last hundred years have attacked Kyiv— Hitler and Putin.”
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