One of the first to invoke Hitler was Hillary Clinton. Clinton said that Putin was just using the excuse of protecting ethnic Russians to annex Crimea and compared it to Hitler saying he was protecting ethnic Germans in Poland:
"Now if this sounds familiar, it's what Hitler did back in the 30s," Clinton said. [HERE]
In an attempt to be more original, Zbigniew Brzezinski in an op-ed called Putin a "comical imitation of Mussolini and a more menacing reminder of Hitler". [HERE]
Once others saw that Clinton and Brzezinski were not held to account for calling Putin "Hitler", others soon piled on to the name calling bandwagon. Pictures of Putin with a Hitler mustache started popping up everywhere.
Of course one would expect the likes of John McCain, Lindsay Graham and Marco Rubio to call Putin "Hitler". Even some American allies wanted in on the fun too. Canadian Prime Minister Steven Harper, Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird, Britain's Prince Charles and P.M. David Cameron all called Putin "Hitler" too.
Once the politicians got the "Hitler" ball rolling, it did not take long for the political pundits and op-ed writers to wax eloquently that Putin is just like Hitler.
Those that should know better, such as Thomas Friedman who writes for the New York Times and Timothy Garton Ash, writing in the Guardian, could not resist though. [See my earlier article: "The Propaganda War"].
Charles Lane, opinion writer for the Washington Post, did an unremarkable comparison of Putin to Hitler: "Is Vladimir Putin Truly a Modern Day Hitler?" The comparison was so weak as to be laughable. But this is not a laughing matter. [HERE]
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