The Democrat left now accuses Donald Trump of praising Adolf Hitler, because Trump is alleged to have said Hitler did some good things.  There is a difference between acknowledgment that Hitler did some good things and praising him.  As stated by Stannis Baratheon in Game of Thrones, “A good act does not wash out the bad, nor a bad act the good.  Each should have its own reward.”  Hitler’s would have been a Pierrepoint necktie had he survived the war regardless of any good things he did.  (Note how much difference one letter makes, with “Pierrepont” relating to a stylish cravat and “Pierrepoint” to a broken neck.)

One will find very few historical figures of any substance who were entirely good or entirely evil.  King Frederick William I reduced Prussia’s government spending, and therefore his subjects’ taxes.  Not for him were the Baroque structures in neighboring France, all built by King Louis XIV on the backs of the French people.  He also kidnapped tall men for service in his regiment of giants, stretched men on racks to make them taller, tried eugenic experiments to breed taller men, and was physically abusive toward his son and his servants.  King Henry VIII was similarly very good for England, as he laid the foundations for its modern navy, but he was also known for murdering inconvenient wives along with Sir Thomas More and anybody else who got in his way.  Franklin D. Roosevelt, who deserves ample credit for standing up to the Axis even before it declared war on us, shipped Jewish refugees back to Germany and put Japanese-American citizens in concentration camps.  Austria still venerates Empress Maria Theresa for standing up to Frederick the Great even though she was a rabid antisemite who didn’t like her Protestant subjects very much, either, and later helped Frederick and Catherine the Great dismember Poland.

George MacDonald Fraser’s “Flashman’s Lady” recounts, meanwhile, that Queen Ranavalona I of Madagascar abolished the cruel custom of exposing babies at birth to determine whether their births were “fortunate” and added that it was her one humane act.  The Wikipedia reference adds that she persecuted Christians and managed to kill half of her people through torture, abuse, and privation, but also “later academic research recast Ranavalona’s actions as those of a queen attempting to expand her empire while protecting Malagasy sovereignty against the encroachment of European cultural and political influence.”  Russia still venerates Peter the Great even though he killed tens of thousands of people during the construction of Saint Petersburg in winter, with wolves eating unwary passersby in the city’s streets.

Hitler got Germany out of its postwar depression, after hyperinflation turned Weimar Deutschmarks into wastepaper.  He tore up the Versailles Treaty that had been forced on Germany by the war’s victors, reoccupied the Rhineland, rearmed Germany, and enacted the kind of animal welfare laws we take for granted today.  If he had stopped right there, he would have been remembered as an effective leader who said bad things about Jews, much as Woodrow Wilson said bad things about black Americans and forced them out of civil service jobs.  Even Hitler’s annexation of the Sudetenland would have made him no worse than Frederick the Great and, from the German perspective, better than Frederick the Great, who had to fight a war for the same purpose.  All his achievements went out the window when he began to murder Jews, Romany, LGBT people, Slavs, and people with physical disabilities and goose-stepped into Poland, which had nothing to do with the Versailles Treaty.  This underscores the huge difference between a statement that Hitler did some good things and one that praises him or depicts him as anything other than one of the most evil people who ever lived.  I have yet to see evidence that Trump ever depicted him as anything other than the latter.

If we go against Stannis Baratheon by putting good and evil deeds into a balance, where they do indeed cancel each other out, then Franklin Roosevelt’s good deeds (standing up to the Axis) would outweigh but not excuse his bad ones, whereas Hitler’s and Ranavalona’s evil deeds would overwhelm but not undo whatever good they managed to do.  Although Frederick William I, Peter the Great, and Maria Theresa were very good for their countries, their behavior would otherwise not be acceptable today.

The Democrat Left Praises Dictators and Terrorists

Now consider Black Lives Matter, whose former director, Minyon Moore, was chair of the Democratic National Convention.  Although I am sure Fidel Castro also did some good things, he was a murderous dictator who executed thousands of people and turned Cuba, once a prosperous country, into a third-world outhouse (the family friendly and radio-safe version of the term Trump is alleged to have used).  BLM’s official Twitter account says Castro should “rest in power.”  Representation of BLM at the DNC leaves only two degrees of separation between the Democrat party and Fidel Castro — and only one between the DNC and BLM itself.  The latter self-identifies as Black Nationalist and denies the right of Israel to exist.  There is also only one degree of separation between the DNC and Al Sharpton, whose record of racist and antisemitic rhetoric is well known.  See the Crown Heights riots and Freddy’s Fashion Mart for examples, along with the Tawana Brawley scandal.

There are similarly only two degrees of separation between Democrat vice presidential candidate Tim Walz and “Palestine.”  Although Asad Zaman took down his Facebook post that expressed solidarity with “Palestine” on Oct. 7, 2023, I have a screenshot on file. 

There is meanwhile only one degree of separation between Kamala Harris and pro-”Palestine” demonstrators, whose voices she says she respects.  I doubt that the voices of pro-German demonstrators would have been tolerated, much less respected, in 1942.  The same goes for pro-al-Qaeda voices after September 11, 2001.

If Trump did indeed say that Hitler did some good things, he should have added that none of them excuses his crimes against humanity, but I have yet to find his actual purported statement on the matter.  The Democrat party cannot, however, claim the moral high ground when it consorts openly with individuals and groups that do things like praise Fidel Castro along with terrorists (Rasmea Odeh and Joanne Chesimard, “Mama Assata” to BLM), who murder Jews and law enforcement professionals, promote black nationalism, deny the right of Israel to exist, and peddle divisive racism and antisemitism.

Civis Americanus is the pen name of an American Thinker contributor who remembers the lessons of history and wants to ensure that our country never needs to learn those lessons again the hard way.

Image via Pixabay.