9 Professors Who Compared Trump, GOP to Hitler but Weren’t Canceled

Columbia U prof Jeffrey Lax
Columbia University
Alana Mastrangelo

Actress Gina Carano was fired from the cast of the popular Disney Plus Star Wars spinoff series The Mandalorian on Wednesday after sharing a social media post that likened the direction of society today to Nazi supporters during the Holocaust.

Carano’s social media post in question went as follows:

Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers but by their neighbors… even by children.

“Because history is edited, most people today don’t realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being Jews. How is that any different from hating someone for their political views?”

Critics say Carano’s social media post downplays the experience of Jews during the Holocaust. But others have pointed out a stark double standard, given that a slew of prominent leftists — from Democratic lawmakers to mainstream media pundits and Hollywood figures — have been likening their political adversaries to Nazis for years.

Professors, tasked with educating millions of students across the country, also spent the Trump administration comparing both the President and the Republican party to Nazis.

Here are nine professors who have compared former President Donald Trump, his supporters, and other conservatives to Nazis — but weren’t fired as a result.

1. Columbia University professor Jeffrey Lax

Last year, professor Lax called a conservative student a “neo-Nazi murderer lover,” and told him to “drop dead” over his support for former President Donald Trump.

2. University of Mississippi professor James Thomas

In 2019, professor Thomas argued that that “MAGA teens are a modern day Hitlerjugend,” or Hitler Youth. After being criticized for his remarks, Thomas doubled down, stating that he “meant it.”

3. Grand Valley State University professor Joel Wendland-Liu

Professor Wendland-Liu contributed a column, entitled, “Trump’s White Death Cult” for a newspaper owned by China’s communist party, in which he argued that Trump supporters tolerate “white supremacy,” and “Neo-Nazi militias.”

After being asked if he believes the MAGA hat will one day be seen as the “equivalent of someone in this moment discovering their relatives’ Nazi paraphernalia,” Sears responded, stating that believes the outcome will be “similar.”

4. University of New Brunswick associate professor Matthew Sears

In 2019, associate professor Sears suggested that the “Make America Great Again” hat may one day have a “similar” connotation to Nazi paraphernalia.

“I think it’s similar,” said Sears of making a MAGA hat and Nazi paraphernalia comparison. The professor went on to say that he believes a better analogy for the MAGA hat would be “a Ku Klux Klan hood or robe.”

5. University of Texas at Austin instructor Alex Wild

That same year, instructor Wild took to Twitter to proclaim that President Trump and his supporters are all Nazis.

“Trump is a Nazi. At this point, you are too if you still support him,” tweeted Wild.

In case anyone had any confusion about Wild’s opinion of Trump and his supporters, the professor issued a follow-up tweet days later to clarify his stance.

“When I say (Trumpist) Republicans are Nazis, I mean they kill people of the wrong ethnicity as a matter of policy,” he said.

6. University of Arizona and MIT professor Noam Chomsky

In 2018, professor Chomsky said that the Trump administration not addressing climate change meant the president’s “dedication” to destroying human life was more intense than Hitler.

“There have been plenty of monsters in the past, plenty of them,” said Chomsky. “But you can’t find one who was dedicated, with passion, to destroying the prospects for organized human life. Hitler was horrible enough, but not that.”

7. Harvard professor Laurence Tribe

While the Harvard Law professor said that he doesn’t believe President Trump is turning into Adolf Hitler, he has, nonetheless, compared Trump to Hitler, stating that he believes the two men have relevant “physical and behavioral resemblances.”

“Horrifying,” said Tribe. “I’m not saying Trump is becoming Hitler, so don’t bother tweeting the distinctions. But the physical and behavioral resemblances aren’t altogether irrelevant. No prior president even suggests the comparison.”

8. and 9. Stanford University professor Kenneth A. Taylor and University of New England David Livingstone Smith

In 2017, professors Taylor and Smith made comparisons between Trump and Hitler in a presentation at a gathering of prominent philosophy scholars at the University of Pennsylvania.

You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.

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