How the Media’s Nazi Comparisons Fan the Flames of Division

The reductio ad Hitlerum is perhaps the most common fallacy in politics, but that doesn’t stop people from using it. In a recent article, Jana Reiss outright accused Latter-day Saints of being complicit with modern fascism by voting for Donald Trump, likening their actions to German Latter-day Saints who “accommodated” the Nazis during World War II. This comparison is not only troubling but also misleading. It misrepresents the nature of American conservatism, mischaracterizes conservative Latter-day Saints, and distorts the historical context of German Latter-day Saints living under Nazi rule.

At the core of Reiss’s argument is the assumption that Trump equates to Nazism. However, while many scholars recognize the problematic aspects of Trump’s rhetoric and policies, there is a broad consensus that he does not fit the definition of a fascist, much less a Nazi (and yes, there are distinctions between Italian Fascism and the racialized National Socialism of Nazi Germany, both of which differ substantially from Trump’s crude mix of conservative nationalism and populism). If experts don’t agree on Trump’s classification within the broader spectrum of generic fascism, it is irresponsible to label him specifically as a Nazi and imply that Latter-day Saints are guilty by association simply for voting for him.

Reiss also cites the annual American Values Survey to assert that nearly one-third of Latter-day Saints believe immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the nation, attempting to link such statements to Nazi ideology. Of course, this means that more than two-thirds of Latter-day Saints do not believe this statement, so the sentiment is hardly representative of LDS attitudes in general. She also fails to mention that the survey is not asking about immigrants generally but illegal immigrants, and as Stephen Cranney and Jacob Hess note, the question itself is manipulatively framed in such a way to garner responses that sound xenophobic by “cuing respondents to remark on immigrants who are, by definition, people engaging in at least one illegal act. The survey question was, knowingly or not, worded in such a way as to conjure up images of more than just illegally crossing the border, hinting towards smugglers, sex traffickers, and such to prime people towards giving an anti-immigrant response. Given the way the question is asked, we are not surprised that it incurred responses making a substantial minority of Americans sound xenophobic.”

To read the entire article: Public Square Magazine