The Alabama Holocaust Commission on Wednesday condemned Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) for using Adolf Hitler’s phrase “big lie” to criticize Democrats, the Montgomery Advertiser reported.
The group tore into Brooks’s speech on the U.S. House floor last month that quoted sections from Hitler’s autobiography “Mein Kampf.”
The millions of people who were killed by the Nazi regime “deserve unique remembrance, and the words of those who conducted and orchestrated this genocide in Hitler’s name do not deserve to be recognized, much less reiterated in the halls of Congress,” the group said in a statement.
{mosads}“Such facile comparisons, used in order to demean opponents and gain political capital, should be actively avoided,” the statement continued. “Using such rhetoric not only trivializes our past, as well as the victims of this genocide, but also cheapens our current discourse and maintains a divisive rhetoric all too common at the present time.”
The commission specifically cited Brooks’s use of the phrase “big lie,” a term coined by Hitler to blame the Jewish people for Germany’s defeat in World War I.
Brooks attacked Democrats and the media for what he called their “big lie” during his March 25 speech, accusing them of inspiring violence against Americans who support President Trump by perpetuating false allegations related to collusion.
The Alabama Republican said he believes Attorney General William Barr’s summary of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian election interference is “vindication” for Trump, despite it saying it did not exonerate the president.
“America must reject [Democrats and the media’s] ‘big lies’ or succumb to the danger that lurks, and horrific damage that results,” Brooks said.
The newspaper also noted that Brooks inaccurately called the Nazi Party “Germany’s Socialist Party,” when its official name was the National Socialist German Workers Party.
Brooks used the incorrect name to blast modern U.S. Democrats as “Socialist Democrats.”
A statement from the lawmaker’s office to the newspaper on Wednesday night blasted the Alabama Holocaust Commission and its “bizarre and history-ignoring letter.”
The commission’s claims “prompt one to wonder how many of the Commission’s members joined America’s Socialist Democrats in undermining the legitimacy of the 2016 presidential election by also spreading the ‘Big Lie,’ without credible evidence, that President Trump colluded with the Russians to steal the 2016 presidential race,” the statement reportedly said.
Brooks continued to defend his statements in a Thursday interview with the newspaper.
“The Socialist Party of Germany is the most infamous and horrific example of the use of the Big Lie propaganda tactic,” the congressman reportedly said. “As such, it should be cited regularly so that people will be reminded of how horrific the consequences can be if we let political figures and the media get by with using the Big Lie propaganda tactic.”