A malignant ideology by any name.

Demonstrators march to the White House in Washington, Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026, as they protest against the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent who fatally shot Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

It is fashionable on the Left to characterize anything having to do with Donald Trump, the Trump administration, federal law enforcement under Trump, the Department of Justice under Trump’s attorney general or any other Trumpian thing to which the Left objects – which is to say everything – as a manifestation of Naziism.

It happens so often as to have become cliché that Trump is compared to Hitler. Immigrations & Customs Enforcement is routinely compared to the Gestapo. In their never-ending quest to delegitimize and cancel Donald Trump, the Left attempts to invoke mental images of the most profoundly evil regime of the 20^th century.

Or do they?

An often-unappreciated historical fact is that as bad as Germany was under Hitler, Russia under Joseph Stalin was far worse. Depending on which source you choose, Hitler is credited with murdering 25 million people. But that number pales when put up against Joseph Stalin. Historians put the number killed by that murderous tyrant at more than 100 million.

When you boil down Naziism and communism you come to understand that they are two sides of the same coin. At their core they both operate from the belief that certain large portions of the population have no right to exist. For the Nazis, that belief is based on race. For the communists, it’s based on class.

And in both ideologies, the state has total control over all aspects of society.

Leftists are willfully blind to an inescapable fact of human nature. You cannot exert total economic control over a population without state coercion. Force takes the place of individual choice and the natural signals of a free market.

It is always the case that political monopolies breed fear among the monopolists. A single ruling party cannot allow rivals, free media or political opposition without risking collapse. Fear and repression thus become the tools of regime survival.

And as the beleaguered citizens of repressive communist regimes like those of the Soviet Union, Cuba, China and Venezuela learned in equal measure to the citizens of Nazi Germany that preceded them, with the courts, churches, media, industry and civil society all absorbed by the state, there is no restraint on state power. Abusive repression follows as night follows the day.

Yet as today’s leftists jibber and prattle and demonstrate and act out about the latter day Naziism they claim to deplore, they never denounce communism. Instead, they embrace the Marxism that unleashed communism. University course catalogs and faculty lounges are filled with classes and professors that glowingly present communism as the brass ring of human societal evolution. Leftists in academia, media and popular culture defend communist regimes like Cuba and Venezuela while managing to completely overlook the horrific numbers of people those malign regimes have killed.

Anyone who compares Donald Trump to Hitler knows nothing of either Donald Trump or Hitler. Anyone who denounces Naziism while supporting or even being willing to countenance communism understands neither Naziism nor communism.

Bottom line: today’s leftists are not only wrong, they are also shockingly ignorant.