Thinking outside the Hitler-shaped box

Anti-gay right-winger Robert Oscar Lopez says that the Human Rights Campaign is just like the Khmer Rouge.

The Khmer Rouge was a genocidal army that slaughtered some 2 million Cambodians. The Human Rights Campaign is “America’s largest civil rights organization working to achieve lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality,” and they haven’t slaughtered anybody. So I think, perhaps, Lopez’s comparison is misleading.

Still, though, I applaud the effort to inject a bit of variety into right-wing sky-is-falling hyperbole. Just calling everybody Hitler all the time gets a bit dull. I mean, Hitler, Hitler, Hitler, Hitler, Hitler, Hitler, Hitler. Nazis, Nazis, Nazis, Nazis, Nazis, Nazis, Nazis. …

It all blurs together after a while, doesn’t it? So let’s give partial credit to Oscar Robert Lopez — half a point to Slytherin — for mixing things up a bit.

Here’s hoping his religious-right comrades follow his lead in branching out. Maybe they could try saying that anti-discrimination laws protecting LGBT employees are like Stalin. AP history exams that downplay Thomas Paine’s piety? Maoist. Encouraging renewable energy? That’s just like Genghis Khan. Store clerks saying “Happy Holidays”? They’re modern-day Neros. Insurance without co-pays for mammograms? That’s like something Robert E. Lee would do.

(What’s that? The religious right admires Robert E. Lee and doesn’t consider treason in defense of slavery an example of monstrous evil? Oh, that’s … well, OK, then skip that last one, I guess.)

Hyperbolic hyperventilation shouldn’t be so predictably uniform. Or so uniformly predictable.

So let’s get creative, people. Let’s start comparing outside the Hitler-shaped box. There’s no reason for these over-the-top analogies to be limited to 20th-century history, or even to non-fictional reality at all. The realm of fiction offers a colorful array of monstrous evils to choose from — Sauron, Jadis, Emperor Palpatine, Dr. Doom, Lex Luthor, Michael Myers, Hannibal Lecter, the Joker … let’s stretch a bit more for our strained comparisons.

After all, this is the politicized religion of right-wing culture warriors, not the History Channel. It doesn’t need to be all Nazis all the time.