History Main / HitlerAteSugar

** (Here's the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Adolf_Hitler TL;DR]]) Hitler was raised Catholic by his mother (unsurprising, being born in Austria), but after childhood he expressed little interest in organized religion and never attended any church. During his public life he identified himself as a "Christian," but not as a member of any pre-existing denomination. Rather, the Nazis established a church called "German Christianity" - a Christianity deeply infused with Nazi ideology. While Hitler was happy to manipulate religion for his own ends, privately he was not any sort of Christian at all, expressing revulsion and contempt for it. He also considered the interest in the occult and Pagan revivalism of some Nazis (such as Heinrich Himmler) to be ridiculous. But Hitler was no atheist either - at least, not entirely. He was a profound believer in "Providence" and "Destiny," and believed himself to be "chosen" for a great task and purpose. Not to say he saw himself as carrying out the will of a ''personal'' god, but rather as implementing ''Nature's'' law - which, according to him, was [[TheSocialDarwinist survival of the fittest.]]

** (Here's the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Adolf_Hitler TL;DR]]) Hitler was raised Catholic by his mother (unsurprising, being born in Austria), but after childhood he expressed little interest in organized religion and never attended any church. During his public life he identified himself as a "Christian," but not as a member of any pre-existing denomination. Rather, the Nazis established a church called "German Christianity" - a Christianity deeply infused with Nazi ideology. While Hitler was happy to manipulate religion for his own ends, privately he was not any sort of Christian at all, expressing revulsion and contempt for it. He also considered the interest in the occult and Pagan revivalism of some Nazis (such as Heinrich Himmler) to be ridiculous. But Hitler was no atheist either - at least, not entirely. He was a profound believer in "Providence" and "Destiny," and believed himself to be "chosen" for a great task and purpose. Not to say he was carrying out the will of a ''personal'' god, but rather saw himself as implementing ''Nature's'' law - which, according to him, was [[TheSocialDarwinist survival of the fittest.]]

[[index]]
* HitlerAteSugar/FanWorks
* HitlerAteSugar/{{Literature}}
* HitlerAteSugar/LiveActionTV
* HitlerAteSugar/WesternAnimation
[[/index]]

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]

[[folder:Music]]
* According to ''Music/TheAxisOfAwesome'' song "Do They Know It's Pizza?", Joseph Kony cuts pizzas into 8 slices. (Spoofed by an issue of ''Magazine/{{Mad}}'' that has a fake Williams-Sonoma mail-order catalog offering a rusty steel "African Warlord Pizza Machete" that customers can use to cut uniform slices and then lop off the hands of anyone who tries to take some pizza.)
* Because the music of Music/RichardWagner was [[MusicToInvadePolandTo so commonly used by the Nazis in their propaganda]], fans of Wagner can expect to hear this from the ill-informed when they announce their admiration for ''Theatre/DerRingDesNibelungen''. Granted, the situation is more complicated than usual since Wagner himself was anti-Semitic and pushed for a united Germany. Yet, he still died before Hitler was even born. And his only work of music which references his anti-Semitism at all is ''Parsifal'', which the Nazis actually banned for being too pacifistic since Wagner wanted Jews to convert to Christianity - he was ''not'' in favor of genocide. Despite all this, though, if people know one thing about Wagner and his music, it's that he was a "Nazi composer," to the extent that his music is quite ''[[GratuitousGerman verboten]]'' [[BannedInChina in Israel]].
** Fans of Wagner themselves are sometimes called anti-Semitic just for liking his music. Said fans are ignorant of Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, and a huge Wagner fanboy.
** In some lovely {{Irony}}, as Wagner's Opera ''The Flying Dutchman'' is based off a recording of the legends by the poet Heinrich Heine, who was Jewish.
** Averted with Music/AntonBruckner. Hitler was a huge fan of Bruckner (who was a huge fan of Wagner, for that matter). When Hitler's death was publicly announced on German radio, they played the second movement of Bruckner's 7th Symphony (which Bruckner wrote to memorialize Wagner). Hitler even planned to create a museum to Bruckner at St. Florian's Monastery in Linz (including [[{{Jerkass}} kicking all the monks out]]) and paid for the first critical editions of Bruckner's works to be published. Thankfully, Bruckner's reputation seems unharmed by the association.
* This even extends to ''guitar tunings''--according to an urban legend, a leading Nazi officer set the concert pitch of the A note to 440 Hz, leading some guitar experts today to prefer alternative frequencies such as 432 Hz.

[[folder:Newspaper Comics]]
* In a ''ComicStrip/{{Dilbert}}'' [[http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/2006-10-28/ strip]], Ratbert wins every debate on the Internet by using the argument: "How would you like it if Hitler killed you?" In one of his text books, Scott Adams pointed out you can win any argument by comparing something to Hitler. This works so well, he explains, because Hitler was a surprisingly versatile guy; he did everything from invasions to building autobahns.

[[folder:Radio]]
* There's a ''Radio/ThatMitchellAndWebbSound'' sketch about this sort of thing. There's a debate about killing pizza-flyer delivery guys and one of them reduces all the other's responses to comparisons with Hitler, and the other constantly compares his opponent to [[UsefulNotes/JosefStalin Stalin]]. Which culminates in the exchange:
-->"You're like Stalin..."\\
"You ''are'' Hitler".

[[folder:Religion]]
* In regards to sin in general, [[Literature/TheBible I John 3:8]] states that anyone who has committed a sin is considered of the devil, who had committed a sin by rebelling against God. This is paraphrased as "If you do something bad, [[AllCrimesAreEqual no matter how bad it is]], you're following the example of {{Satan}}."
** This isn't saying that committing a sin makes you as bad as Satan, but rather that - like him - you're willingly going against what God said to do.

[[folder:Stand-up Comedy]]
* Comedian Andy Kindler says he uses this trope to break up the "Astrological love-fest" between people with the same Zodiac sign (ie. "Hitler was a Sagittarius"). If it isn't true, no one's going to call you out on it. For the curious, Hitler was a Taurus.
* Lampshaded in a tongue-in-cheek fashion in Bill Bailey's stand-up: asking the audience for famous vegetarians, someone yells out "Hitler!", with Bailey replying: "You're absolutely right, Hitler was a vegetarian. It's very unseemly to think so, but there he was. Just goes to show: vegetarianism - not always a good thing. Can in some extreme cases lead to genocide."
* The entire premise behind Richard Herring's "Hitler Moustache" show is that he is reclaiming the toothbrush moustache. He points out that Charlie Chaplin had it first, but it's become evil by association with Hitler. The toothbrush moustache was also a popular fashion accessory for German UsefulNotes/WorldWarI veterans who joined the postwar ''Freikorps'', a right-wing paramilitary organization formed to restore order in the wake of the political violence in Germany immediately after the war. While many of the ''Freikorps'' troops did become Nazis, various others were Jewish - and one was even murdered by his fellow troopers for it!
** Of course this neglects that Chaplin reclaimed his mustache himself in Film/TheGreatDictator by openly embracing the surface resemblance between Hitler and the Tramp, and clarifying the differences once and for all.

[[folder:TabletopRPG]]
* This is addressed in an editorial in the back of ''TabletopGame/WerewolfTheApocalypse.'' The Wyrm is the [[GodOfEvil incarnation of destruction, decay, corruption, etc]], but it shouldn't be blamed for everything. if someone is Wyrm-Tainted, that doesn't mean the devil made him do it. It just means he did it and the devil noticed.

[[folder:Visual Novels]]
* A borderline InsaneTrollLogic variant appears in ''VisualNovel/PhoenixWrightAceAttorneyJusticeForAll'': a witness states that a bellboy is suspicious because he had stitches on his face and wore non-uniform leather gloves. Phoenix, grasping at straws [[spoiler:and trying to stall the trial for as long as possible]], points out that baseballs have stitches, and footballs are made of leather. Does that make all baseballs and footballs suspicious?
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Webcomics]]

This is a concept called the AssociationFallacy (or the more well-known term "Guilty by Association"), which often overlaps with GodwinsLaw due to how often UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler is used ([[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_Hitlerum also known as]] [[GratuitousLatin Reductio ad]] [[CanisLatinicus Hitlerum]])[[note]]In grammatically correct Latin, this would actually be ad Hitler''em'', because "Hitler" is presumably a 3rd declension noun[[/note]]. After all, Hitler has gained the reputation for being the very embodiment of darkest evil, who oozed "[[WebAnimation/ZeroPunctuation pure liquid malevolence]]" right out of his pores. [[CardCarryingVillain So, he supposedly would only do/like/own things that are as evil as him]]. You know, things like [[Administrivia/PeopleSitOnChairs sitting on a chair]], wearing clothes, eating, taking a walk, and breathing. Hitler did those things, but that doesn't make them bad. Hitler is not a reason things are bad. We don't think [[FinalSolution mass murder]] is bad because [[AntiRoleModel Hitler, Stalin, or other bad people]] did them. We think those people are bad because they committed mass murder. In other words, this trope is backwards. A thing being bad stands on its own as bad. It would be like:

** (Here's the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Adolf_Hitler TL;DR]]) Hitler was raised Catholic by his mother (unsurprising, being born in Austria), but after childhood he expressed little interest in organized religion and never attended any church. During his public life he identified himself as a "Christian," but not as a member of any pre-existing denomination. Rather, the Nazis established a church called "German Christianity" - a Christianity deeply infused with Nazi ideology. While Hitler was happy to manipulate religion for his own ends, privately he was not any sort of Christian at all, expressing revulsion and contempt for it. He also considered the interest in the occult and Pagan revivalism of some Nazis (such as Heinrich Himmler) to be ridiculous. But Hitler was no atheist either - or at least, not entirely. He was a profound believer in "Providence" and "Destiny," and believed himself to be "chosen" for a great task and purpose. Not to say he was carrying out the will of a ''personal'' god, but rather he saw himself as implementing ''Nature's'' law - which, according to him, was [[TheSocialDarwinist survival of the fittest.]]

* This is the reasoning behind the title of ''Film/BowlingForColumbine''. Moore points out that media watchdogs and social commentary pundits were alarmingly quick to point towards all sorts of societal influences that supposedly caused Harris and Klebold's rampage, including video games, bullying, violent movies, and the like. He then questions if they might as well blame the sport of bowling for what happened, as both killers were attending school classes in bowling and played a game the day before the shooting.

* Hitler is such a potent example of evil to modern people that, in some cases, it seems that even things like mass murder and genocide are, indeed, generally seen as less evil as long as it's not ''Hitler'' doing them. For example, the Mongol invasions under Genghis Khan in the Middle Ages were a series of brutal conquests and genocides that rival if not surpass anything committed by the Nazis (and the Mongols did it ''by hand'', with swords). However, historians are likely to say Genghis Khan has a "complex" legacy ("Yes, he was a brutal warlord, but he also ''stimulated trade''," or some such). Meanwhile, historians are unlikely to ever call Hitler's legacy "complex" for any of the "good" things he may have done.

** (Here's the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Adolf_Hitler TL;DR]]) Hitler was raised Catholic by his mother (unsurprising, being born in Austria), but after childhood he expressed little interest in organized religion and never attended any church. During his public life he identified himself as a "Christian," but not as a member of any pre-existing denomination. Rather, the Nazis established a church called "German Christianity" - a Christianity deeply infused with Nazi ideology. While Hitler was happy to manipulate religion for his own ends, privately he was not any sort of Christian at all, expressing revulsion and contempt for it. He also considered the interest in the occult and Pagan revivalism of some Nazis (such as Heinrich Himmler) to be ridiculous. But Hitler was no atheist either - or at least, not entirely. He was a profound believer in "Providence" and "Destiny," and believed himself to be "chosen" for a great task and purpose. This is not to say he believed he was carrying out the ''personal will'' of any divine being, but rather saw himself as implementing ''Nature's'' law - which, according to him, was [[TheSocialDarwinist survival of the fittest.]]

''Please note that this page is for examples where X is claimed to be bad due to being done, eaten, read, watched, or what-have-you by demonstrably bad people. It's not for cases where the meaning is more "Look, just because he/she/it does/eats/reads/watches X, doesn't mean he/she/it is a ''good'' person." It's the difference between the fallacious argument "Hitler ate sugar, therefore sugar is bad" and the valid argument "Even ''Hitler'' ate sugar. Eating sugar does ''not'' automatically make you nice".''

** (Here's the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Adolf_Hitler TL;DR]]) Hitler was raised Catholic by his mother (unsurprising, being born in Austria), but after childhood he expressed little interest in organized religion and never attended any church. During his public life he identified himself as a "Christian," but not as a member of any pre-existing denomination. Rather, the Nazis established a church called "German Christianity" - a Christianity deeply infused with Nazi ideology. While Hitler was happy to manipulate religion for his own ends, privately he was not any kind of Christian at all, expressing revulsion and contempt for it. He also considered the interest in the occult and Pagan revivalism of some Nazis (such as Heinrich Himmler) to be ridiculous. But Hitler was no atheist either - or at least, not entirely. He was a profound believer in "Providence" and "Destiny," and believed himself to be "chosen" for a great task and purpose. This is not to say he believed he was carrying out the ''personal will'' of any divine being, but rather saw himself as implementing ''Nature's'' law - which, according to him, was [[TheSocialDarwinist survival of the fittest.]]

* Hitler is such a potent example of evil to modern people that, in some cases, it seems that even things like mass murder and genocide are, indeed, generally seen as less evil as long as it's not ''Hitler'' doing them. For example, the Mongol invasions under Genghis Khan in the Middle Ages were a series of brutal conquests and massacres that rival if not surpass anything committed by the Nazis (and the Mongols did it ''by hand'', with swords). However, historians are likely to say Genghis Khan has a "complex" legacy ("Yes, he was a brutal warlord, but he also ''stimulated trade''," or some such). Meanwhile, historians are unlikely to ever call Hitler's legacy "complex" for any of the "good" things he may have done.

* In a bit of irony, the Nazis fell victim to a version of this, and thereby handicapped their own attempts to create an atomic bomb, because they considered nuclear physics to be "Jewish science" and refused to use of the ideas of the likes of UsefulNotes/AlbertEinstein.

* Hitler and the Nazis (and other 20th century dictators like Stalin and Mao) did much to discredit the notion that there could be such a thing as a "good" dictatorship, and retroactively tainted all non-democratic forms of government back through history, even though they existed centuries before Nazism or Communism were ever conceived.

* Hitler is such a potent example of evil to modern people that, in some cases, it seems that even things like mass murder and genocide are, indeed, generally seen as less evil as long as it's not ''Hitler'' doing them. For example, the Mongol invasions under Genghis Khan in the Middle Ages were a series of brutal conquests and massacres that rival if not surpass anything committed by the Nazis (and the Mongols did it ''by hand'', with swords). However, historians are likely to say Genghis Khan has a "complex" legacy ("Yes, he was a brutal warlord, but he also ''stimulated trade''," or some such). Meanwhile, historians are unlikely to ever give Hitler similar credit for any of the "good" things he may have done.

* The phrase [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_Hitlerum "reductio ad Hitlerum"]] [[note]]derived from the Latin phrase ''reductio ad absurdium'', "reduction to absurdity"[[/note]], closely associated to GodwinsLaw, was first used in an article written by University of Chicago professor Leo Strauss in 1951, in ''Measure: A Critical Journal'', and re-emerged in another Strauss book titled ''Natural Right and History'' in 1953:
-->"In following this movement towards its end we shall inevitably reach a point beyond which the scene is darkened by the shadow of Hitler. Unfortunately, it does not go without saying that in our examination we must avoid the fallacy that in the last decades has frequently been used as a substitute for the reductio ad absurdum: the reductio ad Hitlerum. A view is not refuted by the fact that it happens to have been shared by Hitler."
** In 2000, Catholic traditionalist Thomas Fleming described its use against traditional values:
--->"Leo Strauss called it the reductio ad Hitlerum. If Hitler liked neoclassical art, that means that classicism in every form is Nazi; if Hitler wanted to strengthen the German family, that makes the traditional family (and its defenders) Nazi; if Hitler spoke of the "nation" or the "folk," then any invocation of nationality, ethnicity, or even folkishness is Nazi ..."
* In an example much like the Bob and Alice example in the intro of this page, FoxNewsLiberal Bob Beckel said that America should attack Bashar al-Assad for using chemical warfare because the only other people to ever use chemical warfare were Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussein. Aside from [[ArtisticLicenseHistory this being hilariously wrong]], it's basically saying that chemical weapons are immoral because they were used by Hitler and Saddam, not simply because they kill people indiscriminately. Even more ironic, Hitler never used chemical weapons in war (he used it only to murder defenseless people). He was aware that Germany was poorly prepared to defend against chemical attacks if the British or Russians decided to retaliate in kind. Chemical weapons advocates in the past include the likes of UsefulNotes/WinstonChurchill (who advocated the use of tear gas in Iraq, to minimise the death of British troops and native rebels). It was also deployed by [[UsefulNotes/YanksWithTanks the United States military]], in the form of the defoliant Agent Orange (infamous for defects which appeared in the mass-production batches which caused it to be deadly to animal life as well), during UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar.

** Taken quite seriously in a book entitled ''[[http://www.amazon.com/Hitler-Neither-Vegetarian-Animal-Lover/dp/0962616966/ Hitler: Neither Vegetarian Nor Animal Lover]].'' The author, a vegetarian, attempts to refute the "Hitler was a vegetarian" argument, by arguing that, actually, [[NoTrueScotsman Hitler was not a vegetarian]].
** One inversion occurs in India, where vegetarianism is part of [[SeriousBusiness deadly culture wars]]. Many people argue that UsefulNotes/MahatmaGandhi was a vegetarian and he was good, therefore being vegetarian is "good." And since vegetarianism is an Indian cultural practice commonly seen as "good," some traditionalists will argue that more dubious Indian practices like gender and caste discrimination are also good. The weird part is that right-wing Hindu organizations use draconian measures to target the distribution of meat and other foods (often to target Muslims, Christians and lower-caste Hindus) which is entirely against Gandhian practises, not to mention that Gandhi was killed by a fanatic Hindu himself.
* Hitler's religious beliefs, which are considered to be highly syncretic and idiosyncratic by neutral observers and historians, are also used to advocate and denounce both the inevitable moral bankruptcy of atheism, ''and'' the repressive, intolerant and oppressive nature of Christianity.
** (Here's the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Adolf_Hitler TL;DR]]) Hitler was raised Catholic by his mother (unsurprising, being born in Austria), but after childhood he expressed little interest in organized religion and never attended any church. During his public life he identified himself as a "Christian," but not as a member of any pre-existing denomination. Rather, it was a Nazi version called "German Christianity" - a Christianity deeply infused with Nazi ideology. While Hitler was happy to manipulate religion for his own ends, privately he was not any kind of Christian at all, expressing revulsion and contempt for it. He also considered the interest in the occult and Pagan revivalism of some Nazis (such as Heinrich Himmler) to be ridiculous. But Hitler was no atheist either - or at least, not entirely. He was a profound believer in "Providence" and "Destiny," and believed himself to be "chosen" for a great task and purpose. This is not to say he believed he was carrying out the ''personal will'' of any divine being, but rather saw himself as implementing ''Nature's'' law - which, according to him, was [[TheSocialDarwinist survival of the fittest.]]
* A strange variant of this trope occurred in Jaslo, Poland in July 2009. [[http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,634758,00.html An oak tree became the target of a political movement to get it felled once it was found out that Hitler planted it in celebration of his 53rd birthday]]. Though really, that isn't saying all trees are bad... just the specific ''Hitler'' Tree.
* Anti-smoking policies are often denounced as Nazi-ist, as the Nazis banned things. Adolf Hitler did indeed disapprove of smoking, and hoped that in his lifetime every cigarette package in Europe would be labeled with a warning message (an idea that has since then become widespread in spite of that Hitler advocated it). He also never drank alcohol, citing its effects on the poor families in Austria. Yet, cigarette corporations have also been accused of fascism on at least one occasion, for profiting on the ills of others.
** This particular aspect of the trope was given front page coverage on the Australian newspaper the "Daily Telegraph" as part of their smear campaign against Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. It included a full page photoshop of him and several other ministers stuck onto the heads of the lead actors from ''Series/HogansHeroes''.
** Ironic that. Cigarettes used to come with picture cards (the forerunner of bubblegum cards), and there were several featuring a Hitler series. You could even get a special album to paste them in.
** The (relative) uniqueness of German anti-smoking beliefs in fact can somewhat tied to circumstances brought about by Hitler himself, rather than because he was ahead of his time in that regard. It was only shortly following scientific collaboration breaking down between German and other western powers' scientists that German scientists began [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-tobacco_movement_in_Nazi_Germany#Research first publishing high quality studies in regard to the effects of tobacco]]. So basically, this trope was having an effect (for good reason), even pre-WWII. Additionally, German scientists led anti-tobacco research prior to the rise of the Nazis (unsurprisingly, as the German prewar tobacco industry was far less powerful and important across the market than in the US); this didn't start out as a pet-project of Hitler's. Furthermore, the harsh conditions of the Eastern Front were causing German physicians to notice cardiac health differences between soldiers who smoked and those who didn't, and obviously they didn't then travel to America and Britain to present their findings.
* For people who don't like porn, they point out that noted psychos (including, guess who) were sexual deviants (Hitler actually modeled and presented himself as a CelibateHero, and most historians note that he was fairly UsefulNotes/StraightEdge compared to Mussolini, who was really a playboy). And people who are pro-porn and pro-sex point out how "oppressive" (read: evil) regimes are anti-those-things (e.g. the Nazis banned contraception/abortion for Aryans and sent gay people to concentration camps).
** That criticism actually began during the Nazi rise to power from their critics, mostly because of the gay-friendly nature of the SA until the Night of the Long Knives, e.g., former Commander-in-Chief Hammerstein-Equord notoriously called them "gangsters and perverts" (''»Verbrecherbande und Schweinigels«.'').
** Poland had a quite straight example along those lines, a billboarding that said, [[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/poland/7354284/Hitler-abortion-poster-sparks-anger-in-Poland.html "Abortion for Poles: introduced by Hitler, March 9, 1943."]] It is a pretty good example of the problems of playing this trope straight; Germany could put up a poster saying that Hitler banned abortions, because he did for Aryans, while legalizing or even forcing them on others. This seems to make him anti-choice, without being pro-life, a viewpoint not exactly (hopefully) relevant in today's society.
** For most Polish women, they did get the ability to choose thanks to Hitler. While they were legalized for all Poles, they were only forced on a minority (usually criminals, disabled, concentration camp inmates, victims of reprisals, etc.) Of course, all this meant is any woman on whom they wanted to force an abortion simply got framed for a crime.
** It should also be noted that neo-Nazis are very much in favor of outlawing abortion, for no other reason than to control women's sex lives, in line with the Nazi ideal of a woman as [[StayInTheKitchen "barefoot and pregnant"]].
* Because all fascist governments were dictatorships, and the downfall of fascism discredited dictatorship for good, it's a common mistake by many historians and commentators to equate ''all'' dictatorships with Hitler, and likewise compare Nazi totalitarianism with Soviet totalitarianism. These are discrete ideologies with very different outcomes depending on the countries that implemented them; how much truth there is to TheHorseshoeEffect is a very contentious topic. On the other hand, denying ''any'' similarities or engaging in NoTrueScotsman fallacies runs afoul of apologia for the crimes of one regime.
** In the original Roman context, a Dictator was a temporary executive position in the Roman Senate, and performed the same function as a Prime Minister and President in contemporary democracies. One of the dictators, {{Cincinnatus}}, was a hero of UsefulNotes/GeorgeWashington. Julius Caesar was the man who made dictatorship an opprobium when he became [[PresidentForLife Dictator Perpetuo]] following the precedent of Lucius Cornelius Sulla. Caesar himself, aside from conquering Gaul, was very different in management and political style to Hitler needless to say.
** Likewise, there was considerable differences in degree and kind between Mussolini, UsefulNotes/FranciscoFranco, Salazar and Hitler, if we are to discuss Western European dictatorships. Franco was an authoritarian catholic military despot, a rabid anti-communist and he did call for Nazi warplanes to bombard his own people, but he also maintained a policy of neutrality during the War (albeit for reasons of self-interest and definitely not humanitarianism). Franco's Spain and Salazar's Portugal were safe havens for refugee Jews and both nations were NATO allies during the UsefulNotes/ColdWar. That said, in Mussolini's case he and his government did start to resemble Nazi Germany more and more when it became increasingly apparent that Hitler had become the senior partner to his former idol, such as instituting anti-Semitic laws in Italy. Ultimately they became a downright Nazi clone after Mussolini was re-installed in a German puppet state called the Italian Social Republic following the initial capitulation of Italy in 1943.
*** The Italian Social Republic may itself have tried to weaponize this trope in the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congress_of_Verona_(1943) Congress of Verona]] (held in 1943) with its "socialization" policy, which on its face was about expropriating uncultivated land for farmers, nationalizing key industries and instituting profit-sharing in private industries, but in reality it was (supposedly) about turning people in the center and south of Italy against them by rendering them associated with fascism.
** The ahistorical association sometimes goes as far as comparing UsefulNotes/NapoleonBonaparte to Hitler. Hitler was a Napoleon fanboy and followed in his footsteps in invading Russia, and World War II propaganda [[EnemyMine in both England and the Soviet Union]], invoked memories of UsefulNotes/TheNapoleonicWars, which often leads to everyone seeing the man most responsible for Jewish deghettoization, and a hero for German-Jewish poet Heinrich Heine, being tarred with the same brush as his polar opposite. Napoleon was in fact an [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlightened_absolutism enlightened despot]] who, unlike Hitler, certainly never contemplated wiping out entire nations. He did seize power from a more or less democratic (if severely dysfunctional) government and was a warmonger more concerned with his own glory than the French people, but he followed his revolutionary predecessors in the many liberal reforms that broke the power of the traditional aristocracy. Also, as mentioned, he scorned anti-Semitism.
* One reason why creationists reject UsefulNotes/CharlesDarwin and evolution can be seen in evangelical minister Ray Comfort and actor Kirk Cameron's special 150th anniversary "introduction" to ''On the Origin of Species'' that pointed out "Adolf Hitler's undeniable connection with the theory", among other things. That's what happens when you let things fall into the public domain, we suppose. Much of this can be explained by (accidentally or intentionally) conflating Darwin's theories on evolution with [[TheSocialDarwinist Social Darwinism]], which is itself a misunderstanding of Darwin's work. It also happens that evolutionists in turn claim that Hitler [[NoTrueScotsman can't have been an evolutionist]] because the works of Ernst Haeckel, foremost German advocate of Darwinism, were banned in Nazi Germany (although it should be noted that they only banned Haeckel because they thought that he placed the Jews too high in the racial hierarchy. Also, Haeckel's theories leaned towards socialism, pacifism, and feminism, all of which were contrary to Nazi ideology. The Nazis still accepted evolution as fact.)
** There is actually a long history around politics and evolutionary theory that predates Nazis, on which many books and articles have been written (including several by Stephen Jay Gould). Much of the hostility to evolutionary theory among the religious in particular comes from the way Social Darwinists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries co-opted the evolutionary theory to justify their social programs, which included both scientific racism and forced sterilization of those deemed "inferior" for biological reasons. The Nazis were especially ruthless in co-opting these programs for their own racist aims.
** On the subject of Darwin, some creationists cite various racist and sexist statements made by Darwin as a reason to reject the theory of evolution.
* This trope was a major problem for the left nationalist movement in Canada during the 1960s. During that time period, Canadians everywhere suffered a major national identity crisis whose finer points are too lengthy to explain in this example (most prominently, there were fears that trade exports with the United States were "contaminating" the country with American lifestyle choices in exchange for a stronger economy), left nationalists reacted by shunning anything and everything American. The debate broke wide open when prominent left nationalist Robin Mathews wrote in the essay "Draft Dodgers and U.S. Imperialism" that American war resisters escaping the Vietnam draft should be refused entry into Canada because, [[InsaneTrollLogic despite holding similar views to many Canadians at the time, they still carried the "stench" of American evil with them]]. For many people in left nationalism, acknowledging that [[MoralEventHorizon Mathews took things too far]] would mean recognizing that America had redeeming qualities, and thus the movement's absolutist views of anti-Americanism fell apart.
* [[http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/29/osama-bin-laden-climate-change Osama bin Laden supported the fight against climate change.]] Cue Right-wing America asking 'What is the difference between bin Laden and Al Gore?'
* As cited [[http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100012893/the-smear-campaign-against-our-euro-sceptic-allies-becomes-demented/ here]], the ''Guardian'' produced an example that's pushing it even for this trope:
-->Although the fringe event was carefully stage-managed – terse political lines trotted out and limited time for questions – there was one unfortunate mistake. The basement room in which delegates gathered to hear the controversial Tory allies was in Manchester’s Midland Hotel, a building Hitler is said to have liked so much that he would have made it his northern residence if he had invaded.
* The Daily Mail has used UsefulNotes/CharlesManson's belief in climate change to ridicule the idea. [[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1378178/Charles-Manson-breaks-20-year-silence-40th-anniversary-gruesome-Sharon-Tate-murders.html Seriously.]]
* The Heartland Institute erected [[http://wonkette.com/471792/check-out-these-lovely-new-heartland-institute-murder-billboards billboards]] to try to discourage belief in global warming by claiming that the Unabomber believed in it. After a great deal of outrage, even from conservatives, the Institute claimed that the billboards were all part of a [[AuthorsSavingThrow brilliant social experiment.]] [[ParodyRetcon Sure they were, boys...]]
* The (slightly left-wing) Labour party of the UK tried this kind of argument on the (rather more right-wing) Conservative party by showing a series of billboards featuring the Conservative party leader photoshopped into [[NobleBigotWithABadge Gene Hunt]], the sexist, homophobic main character of ''Series/{{Life On Mars|2006}}'' and ''Series/AshesToAshes2008''. Which might have been a good idea if Hunt wasn't the most popular TV character in the country at the time.

* Creator/JRRTolkien was a major proponent of Germanic culture and art, and he once wrote to one of his sons fighting in UsefulNotes/WorldWarII that he rather wished he was out there fighting as well, given the degree to which Hitler ruined a lot of otherwise valid ideas (like the old Germanic virtue of courage) through his association with them. He also, famously, wrote a letter trolling a Nazi book publisher who wanted to know if he was Aryan, saying he was sorry he had no Jewish ancestry considering the Jews were such a "gifted people", after explaining the real meaning of Aryan to the man.[[note]]As a professor of comparative linguistics – the study of how languages have changed and diverged over time – he knew that ''Aryan'' is the Indo-Iranian peoples' name for themselves.[[/note]]
* An incident at a certain shopping mall in Manila involving hammers being used for a jewelry store heist prompted the local police to [[http://anc.yahoo.com/news/no-more-hammers-to-be-sold-inside-malls-121908840.html ban hammers from being sold in malls]], on the pretense that it can be used for staging robberies or assaults on civilians. As expected, citizens took this as a stupid and [[InsaneTrollLogic pointless move]] that hurt people with legitimate reasons to get a hammer more than it did criminals, given that they could just use [[ImprovisedWeapon anything else of similar size and weight]] for breaking into a store or assaulting an innocent, but said innocents don't have a lot of non-hammer options for jobs that need a hammer.
** A similar incident occurred in Hong Kong when someone set fire to a passenger train compartment and the train company banned lighters from being sold in the stations. Obviously this led to much ridicule leading to some to joke on social media that "it was a person that started the fire, so clearly they should ban people".
* Manila mayor Joseph Estrada proposed a ban on motorcycle passengers, on the grounds that criminals tend to carry out drive-by shootings and other such incidents as a rider-passenger pair, known in local vernacular as "riding in tandem". It didn't go well with the riding public, simply because in developing countries like the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam, people invest in motorcycles as their everyday transport, as cars are simply beyond their financial reach, and barring passengers from bikes [[UnfortunateImplications would affect law-abiding civilians in the process]], again probably moreso than it would affect criminals.
* Any time there's a national tragedy, the killer's [[NewMediaAreEvil hobbies and musical interests are always demonized]] for having "turned" him into a killer. [[MurderSimulators Video games]] and [[TheNewRockAndRoll hardcore rock/rap]] are always the first to take the heat. [[FridgeLogic No one ever stops to think]] that if an adult or adolescent is letting media direct him to commit atrocities, that says more about his mental state than the media itself; anyone who does point this out is ignored.
** The video game ''Franchise/MassEffect'' was perceived as an example, because the shooter responsible for the December 14th, 2012 Connecticut massacre, according to initial reports, listed the game as a favorite on his {{Website/Facebook}} page. This was subverted mere hours later once CNN revealed that Ryan Lanza, the man originally blamed for the tragedy, was misidentified as the gunman. It was Ryan's younger brother, Adam Lanza, that did the slayings. [[http://kotaku.com/5968683/mob-blames-mass-effect-for-school-shooting-is-embarrassingly-wrong/ Alas, there was plenty of stupidity to pass around before that mistake was clarified.]]
** After the above-mentioned massacre, the company Cerberus Capital Management sold its investments in the "Freedom Group", a collection of various firearms manufacturing companies, simply because one of the companies in said group, Bushmaster, manufactured the rifle that was used in it. In a reversal, consumers began buying "assault weapons" like it up as fast as they could, in expectation of the Clinton-era Assault Weapons Ban coming back into effect.
** [[SubvertedTrope To twist this trope even further,]] the infamously gore-filled and ultra-violent video game series ''VideoGame/{{Manhunt}}'' was tied into a British murder case. At first, the game was accused for giving the teenage murderer ideas on how to commit the crime, but after further investigation, it turned out it was the ''victim'' who owned the game.
** In Germany, ever since the first (of seven) mass shootings, media sources have always been extremely quick to announce "Killerspiele (killer games)" as the reason for why someone would grab a gun and shoot a bunch of people, instead of questioning how a young man in a country with extremely strict gun laws could even get his hands on one (which usually proves that it was a mixture of depression, bullying and hunting parents with very lousy gun safety procedures). It becomes even more ridiculous whenever the media ''[[AccidentallyCorrectWriting do]]'' find out that the shooter played video games and then suddenly announce that everything from ''VideoGame/LeagueOfLegends'' to ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'' [[CowboyBebopAtHisComputer is a first-person shooter that aims at training people to kill]] (how exactly games specifically designed to make people go on shooting sprees are not only an acceptable but ''profitable'' business venture in whatever world these people inhabit is, of course, never addressed). Most German gamers usually react by jokingly taking this trope to the extreme, proclaiming things like "The shooter also ate bread/breathed! Bread/oxygen makes you kill people!" to [[LampshadeHanging lampshade]] how stupid this argument is. A few also play with the trope by proclaiming that they will fill their room with cutesy stuff such as ''Franchise/MyLittlePony'' or ''Franchise/CareBears'', just to finish with saying "Bet that will make them think about MY motives for a while".
** The media even demonized the Columbine killer's ''fashion sense.'' Both killers wore trench coats to school on the day of the shooting (although, going by images from the security cameras, they ditched the coats early on) and there was another clique in school known as the "trench coat mafia" (which was later proved to be just a tongue-in-cheek name, not an actual mafia-like organization). Several schools tried to ban trench coats on the account of them being gang attire. It didn't help that several copycats also wore trench coats.
** Even games as innocuous as ''VideoGame/MicrosoftFlightSimulator'' got under fire when they were blamed for serving as a training tool for the hijackers responsible for the [[DistancedFromCurrentEvents/SeptemberEleventh September 11 attacks]], citing its realism (although this was mostly from Jack Thompson, who even at the height of his relevancy was seen as [[CloudCuckooLander not a real threat]]). Microsoft refuted such claims, though they were prudent enough to remove the World Trade Center from [=FS2002=] and issued patches to retroactively excise the towers from earlier sims as it would be seen in poor taste.
* [[http://blog.beliefnet.com/on_the_front_lines_of_the_culture_wars/2011/04/she-survived-hitler-and-wants-to-warn-america.html#ixzz2Ftjgkf00 This]] article on beliefnet purportedly has a woman who grew up in Nazi Austria "trying to warn America." You know who supported women working outside the home? [[ArtisticLicenseHistory Hitler!]][[note]]The Nazis believed that a woman's role was [[StayInTheKitchen to keep the house, support her husband, and make babies]]. In fact, there's some evidence that Germany's industrial shortages could have been significantly decreased had they followed the American, British, and Soviet example of bringing women into the workforce to replace men who joined the military.[[/note]]
* American political commentator Glenn Greenwald [[http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2010/06/glenn-greenwald-compares-the-iraq-war-to-the-nazi-conquest-of-europe/58966/ compared the Iraq War to the Nazi annexation of the Sudetenland]]; more specifically, he compared the Kurds to the Sudeten Germans because the Kurds supported the 2003 invasion. Whilst there are many differences of opinion regarding the war in Iraq, to compare the Kurds, isolated and massacred with poison gas,[[note]]Supplied to Saddam by Donald Rumsfeld[[/note]] with the Sudeten Germans, protected under the Czechoslovak constitution, many of whom were fanatical Nazis, is so overblown that it would be funny if it wasn't so viciously and inexcusably callous.
** The comparison may be over the top, but the situations of the Kurds and the Sudeten Germans were not that different. Kurds were present, in substantial numbers, in high-ranking positions in both the Iraqi Army and the Baath Party, even as their compatriots were fighting a guerrilla war against the Iraqi government. Germans in Sudetenland did enjoy rights under the Czechoslovak Constitution at the time, but they had a good reason to believe that their situation was still precarious under Czechoslovak rule.
** A more appropriate example of this trope in the context of Sudeten Germans would be the ethnic German Social Democrats in Sudetenland. They were the only major group among the Sudeten Germans that sought to live peacefully in the Czechozlovak state and opposed the Nazi takeover, for which they were persecuted by the Nazis after the Munich Crisis. But they were still Germans to the Czechoslovaks and were deported along with all other Sudeten Germans after UsefulNotes/WorldWarII.
* [[GoodGunsBadGuns All weapons used by the Nazis]] are hated by most people, even though the SOE actually used silenced Luger P08s, and the gun was also a popular war trophy for American soldiers (otherwise known for practically worshipping the M1911) due to its extremely good looks. Not to mention captured MP 40 submachine guns were used by resistance groups and even some British forces when they could get their hands on them after the adoption of the Sten, which was lighter and faster, but [[ReliablyUnreliableGuns lacked reliability]].
** British soldiers quite often set aside their Bren light machine guns when they could get their hands on captured German [=MG42=] medium machine guns, which sprayed a vastly heavier firepower through continuous belts which could be as long as you liked or portable drum magazines that held at least 50 rounds. The Bren was liked and an extremely reliable weapon, but compared to the [=MG42=], its 30-round magazine was negligible, it was much slower and its high accuracy actually hindered its use for suppressing fire. In contrast, the [=MG42=] was terrifyingly fast and could send whole platoons running for cover. The only trouble was its distinctive sound, which could invite friendly fire.
** Some modern weapon historians and enthusiasts seem to take an inversion of this to the absolute extreme and believe that the ''only'' innovative weapon designs in the past century - firearms, armored vehicles, aircraft, anything - were developed by the Nazis, for instance claiming the famous Soviet AK must "obviously" have been a complete rip-off of the [=StG=] 44[[note]]The [=StG=] ''did'' inspire programs within the Soviet Union to create weapons with similar capabilities, but none of those weapons were in any way directly derived from it - the AK is actually closer in design to the American M1 Garand. If there's any post-war weapon that was directly influenced by the [=StG=], it would be the also-German G3, which traces its origin to a proposed upgrade for the [=StG=] and is field-stripped in almost exactly the same way.[[/note]] and glossing over any issues they had like the FG 42's [[ReliablyUnreliableGuns frailty]]. Even the name for the concept the [=StG=] birthed, "assault rifle", is a translation of the name Hitler coined for the weapon in question when he had the chance to test-fire one, yet unlike everything else Hitler ever did, said, or touched, it's gone on to be the backbone of military small arms.
** Inverted with the Walther PPK, which was used frequently by high-ranking Nazis and officers, with Hitler using his personal PPK to commit suicide, and an upgraded variant that never entered production also served as the basis for the post-war Makarov pistol, essentially the Soviet (and therefore "evil") counterpart to the American M1911. Despite this, it's been largely considered a "good guy" gun from being the primary weapon of Franchise/JamesBond from ''Literature/DrNo'' onwards. There's also the fact that the PPK technically ended the European theatre of World War II, even if it was Hitler's own gun.
* Amusingly in context to the above, some gun control advocates ''have'' started to say that assault rifles are bad simply because they were invented by the Nazis and named (Sturmgewehr in German) by Hitler himself. While opinions about assault rifles vary, there are certainly better arguments to be made about them than this.
** Hitler, during much of his rise, pioneered early gun control measures in Europe. Hence, quite a few people arguing that gun control is inherently fascist. Hitler would later reverse course on this and ''force'' loyal civilians to arm themselves in the later days of World War II, causing other people to argue that gun ownership and right wing militias [[MortonsFork are also inherently fascist]]. Of course, both sides ignore the context of these decisions - the first was because Hitler wanted to eliminate any potential armed opposition to him, and, ''far'' less relevantly today, arms factories getting bogged down by fulfilling orders to civilians when they should have been arming the military. He later reversed this position out of sheer desperation because he wanted both as many people to bring as many guns against the Allies as possible and to reduce the number of police, so that they could be converted to proper soldiers.
* {{Inverted|Trope}} in a quip often found on the Internet: "Hitler wasn't so bad. [[DrivenToSuicide After all, he did kill Hitler]]." And a common response to the above is "Yeah, but he also killed the guy who killed Hitler." Some may then point out he also killed the guy who killed the guy who killed Hitler -- cue infinite recursion.
* In a bit of poetic irony, this was the sort of logic that screwed over Nazi Germany's attempts to create nuclear weapons during the war - perfectly valid and workable ideas, ones which helped make America's Manhattan Project successful, were forcibly rejected by [[InterserviceRivalry the nine or so programs competing to create such weapons for the Nazis]], simply because the party had determined said ideas had some association with Jews (i.e. "Jewish physics") and were therefore "tainted".
* Hitler [[http://antaesthetic.wordpress.com/2013/08/26/separating-the-art-from-the-artist/ spent some of his younger years as a painter]], which is sometimes brought up in discussions over whether or not it's okay to enjoy the artistic output of morally questionable people. Never mind that Hitler's artistic output left much (or rather everything) to be desired, or that he was never serious about his artistic pursuit, that his government chased away almost every major artist of the Modernist Weimar era, and the first thing the Nazis did on taking over was shut down the Bauhaus School of Architecture. His paintings can serve as prime examples for {{Kitsch|Collection}}, though.[[note]]A more relevant subject of this discussion would probably be ''Pernkopf's Atlas'' - a set of highly-detailed medical textbooks the Nazis produced by dissecting their victims' corpses.[[/note]]
* Invoking Leni Riefenstahl is nowadays the film buff's equivalent of GodwinsLaw: if someone finds a movie's supposed political message objectionable (as with ''Film/ZeroDarkThirty'' or ''Film/AmericanSniper''), they'll inevitably [[http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jan/04/letter-kathryn-bigelow-zero-dark-thirty compare it]] to [[http://letterboxd.com/cinemole/film/american-sniper/ Riefenstahl's]] [[http://thedailybanter.com/2015/01/american-sniper/ work]]. Never mind that her [[Film/TriumphOfTheWill best-known films]] are [[DocumentaryOfLies propaganda claiming to be documentaries]] rather than [[HollywoodHistory heavily fictionalized depictions of real events]], or that their supposed messages aren't really congruent.
* People who believe DemocracyIsBad and DemocracyIsFlawed love to claim that Hitler was democratically elected. While Hitler was no doubt popular, having achieved 33% of the votes in the 1932 German election, he was actually appointed as Chancellor by President Paul von Hindenburg.
* During the Cold War, Eastern Bloc countries often compared fascism and liberal democracy because both allowed for capitalism.[[note]]Well, they allowed for capitalism [[PersonalDictionary as the term is used by Marxists]]. Neither capitalists or Hitler himself thought that Hitler was capitalist. The fascist "corporatist" model of economy rejected the philosophies behind both capitalism and socialism, while still allowing the party to crib choice policies from both.[[/note]] Never mind that Hitler considered democracy to be evil and ineffectual.
** If the eastern bloc wasn't calling democratic countries fascist, it was calling them imperialist. Many democracies had, in fact, engaged in imperialism, and remained imperialist during when the Soviet Union began to form, and some of its colonial liberations happened under the inspiration of the October Revolution and Lenin, and some of them allied themselves with the USSR (such as post-independence India and many African countries which were former colonies), since some of these democracies were ''victims'' of imperialism. Of course, the Eastern Bloc itself could be considered an updated form of imperialism, and the USSR's invasions of Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan through the Brezhnev Doctrine[[note]]i.e. any "ally" who attempted to modify Communism in any way [[DisproportionateRetribution was fair game for invasion from the USSR to stop that]] - openly because this could lead to liberalization and the introduction of capitalist tendencies, weakening the entire Union; implicitly because such individuality meant it was more likely for the satellite states to realize their primary purpose was [[WeHaveReserves as a defensive buffer to protect Russia]] in the event NATO started a ground war, and choose not to fight in that event. Note also the doctrine was [[LoopholeAbuse so open-ended]] that it was used to justify the invasion of Afghanistan despite them ''not'' being a member of the Union[[/note]] ruined most of its reputation among anti-colonialists. Even Russia itself is an imperial state created through the colonization of much of Asia and the subjugation of the local peoples, making them little different from the Western Europeans in that regard. For extra hypocrisy points, up to 80% of the Siberian Asians were wiped out by smallpox and typhus that the Russian colonists introduced to the area.
* Similarly, people who don't like UsefulNotes/{{Socialism}} have been known to gleefully point out that the Nazis were the National ''Socialist'' party, never mind that their ideology was socialist InNameOnly as a deliberate propaganda strategy.[[note]] Granted, Nazism originated as a MoralSubstitute to socialism as it shared similar economic proposals (working-class solidarity, state control of industry, etc.) but rejected socialism's internationalism in favor of reactionary ultra-nationalism. However, Hitler later purged most socialist-leaning Nazis (known as Strasserists) and shifted the party towards a "corporatist" model in which capitalists can exist so long as they remain loyal to the state and favor native German workers.[[/note]] Although it's worth noting that many such anti-socialists, mostly conservatives and libertarians, use "socialism" as a catch-all term to describe "big government", regardless whether it's actually socialism, statist capitalism, or corporatism.
* The trope came into play as a part of the passive resistance during the German occupation of Norway. It went almost like this: a girl happened to like a certain record. Then she met a German soldier who ''also'' happened to like the same record. After she was encountered with this fact, she forcefully never played the record again. Conclusion: "Germans are the enemy, therefore, we will not like what they like."
* Jonah Goldberg's book ''Liberal Fascism'' compiles many of the above examples (government censorship, smoking bans, vegetarianism, healthcare) and describes fascism as a left-wing ideology. However he includes some more... creative examples. One segment claims that ''Film/BrokebackMountain'' of all things promotes fascism, on the grounds that Ernst Rohm, head of the SA, was a homosexual (neglecting the fact that the Nazis imprisoned and killed homosexuals - including Rohm, who was murdered during Hitler's Night of the Long Knives). Dinesh D'Souza also uses the connection between Hitler and Rohm in his 2017 book ''The Big Lie'' and his 2018 film ''Death of a Nation'' to create "evidence" that LGBTQ rights is a Nazi ideology.
* According to some, Hitler was [[SexIsEvil sexually repressed]], asexual and a virgin when he died and Eva Braun was a [[ConsummationCounterfeit stage prop]] to give the dictator a more masculine image, and that led him to become a very dangerous leader. Therefore SexIsGood [[TheExtremistWasRight and the Hippies were Right All Along]]. However this appears to be false anyway: as much as [[BrainBleach none of us want to know this]], contemporaries have said that Braun and Hitler had an active sex life. He deliberately kept their relationship secret and presented himself as a CelibateHero to the public who was [[MarriedToTheJob "married to Germany"]]. In a further demonstration that all sides of the political aisle engage in this, Hitler's sex life is ''also'' used to suggest that he was a closeted homosexual to support the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_Nazis_myth "Gay Nazis" myth]].
* One of the main complaints about [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockism Rockism]]. A belief that people who listen to rock n' roll, heavy metal, and other sub-genres are good people who appreciate good music. However, [[YouKnowWhatTheySayAboutX those people]] who listen to other more popular genres (especially rap) don't know good music and most likely are criminals, underachievers, and losers. This was also one of the reasons for the HypeBacklash against NuMetal, a rock sub-genre that included elements of rap music, and why many groups that began their careers playing it tried to break away into more "acceptable" rock genres later in their careers.
** This one applies in reverse too, namely the belief held by a few fans of other genres that rock fans (and, by extension, rockism) are inherently racist because rock music has primarily been made by white people since TheSixties -- though this ignores the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_and_roll basics of rock history]], beginning with the fact that rock was born partly out of rhythm & blues and gospel, was initially called "race music", and was played ''only'' on black stations until [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Freed Alan Freed]] came along. Not to mention that many of the most important rock musicians, including some of those that created it in the first place, were black.
* Parodied in a 2016 campaign to get a cat elected as mayor of a Russian city (in protest against corruption): [[http://metro.co.uk/2016/07/26/cat-that-russian-city-wants-as-mayor-is-now-aiming-to-get-face-on-bank-note-6031229/ "Only mice don't vote for Barsik"]].
* PETA infamously published a video about the evils of milk, [[https://twitter.com/peta/status/847832116322639872 starting out by claiming that it's the drink of choice of white supremacists]].
* In the Nazi era, Germany established a nationwide network of radio broadcasters. After the war, the Allies didn't want the network to serve as a mouthpiece for propaganda, so it was broken up into a series of smaller regional networks, while at the same time other Allies' centralized networks like Creator/TheBBC remained intact, having a virtual monopoly over broadcasting in the U.K. This decentralization later influenced the structure of public broadcasting in the U.S., with Creator/{{NPR}} and Creator/{{PBS}} member stations having a lot of leeway in how they program their stations, as a lot of people were uncomfortable with the idea of a UsefulNotes/StateBroadcaster aimed at a domestic audience because of Nazi Germany.
* Anti-porn advocates have gotten a lot of mileage out of the serial killer Ted Bundy's claim the day before he was executed that pornography motivated his crimes.[[note]]Bundy, who enjoyed trolling the public, made the statement (which contradicted earlier comments he'd made) to James Dobson, founder of [[MoralGuardians Focus on the Family]] and well known anti-porn activist.[[/note]]
* Due to [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_owl#Notable_people many people who are either controversial at the very least or downright monstrous]] adopting TheNightOwl sleep schedule, some people use this in order to discredit those who sleep/wake up later.
* The idea that TaxidermyIsCreepy has similarly received a lot of traction thanks to Jeffrey Dahmer's childhood fascination with the craft and the fact that he used some of the techniques to process the bodies of his victims. It's sadly not uncommon to see people in the online taxidermy community (sometimes known as vulture culture) getting harassed under the presumption that they are serial killers in the making.
* During the late 2010s, [[{{Troll}} internet trolls]] started a viral campaign claiming that the "okay" hand gesture was a secret symbol of white supremacy. This, of course, was false (the gesture ''does'' have a more obscure negative connotation, meaning "asshole" but being more in the same vein as FlippingTheBird than racism), but now there are a staggering number of people afraid to use the gesture for fear of being ConvictedByPublicOpinion. It has gotten to the point where in the midst of the hysteria, even Creator/BlizzardEntertainment banned players and visitors of their ''{{VideoGame/Overwatch}}'' esports events from using the OK hand gesture, in addition to any references to [[MemeticMutation Pepe the Frog]]. Because of course it doesn't matter whether or not you actually say or do anything racist - being seen making an innocuous hand gesture that people think is racist because the Internet told them so is enough to torpedo your reputation. [[JerkassHasAPoint It's pretty safe to say the trolls proved their point.]] To make matters even worse, it has also been ZigZagged via PoesLaw when known white supremacists ''have'' flashed the symbol under this newfound context and then claimed a JustJokingJustification for PlausibleDeniability (a "dog whistle", in political science parlance).
* The modern equivalent is 'You know who else.....?" with the answer being "Hitler". Started out as semi-legitimate argument- "You know who else likened other races to disease?"- became more widely stretched-"You know who else used nationalism to stir up mobs?"- then became parody-"You know who else liked dogs?"
* One of the lines in some versions of the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dihydrogen_monoxide_parody Dihydrogen-monoxide parody]] claims that "Hitler/Stalin/notorious murderer used it every day of his life."
* Hitler is such a [[GodwinsLaw potent example of evil]] to modern people that in some cases it seems that even things like mass murder and genocide are, indeed, generally seen as less evil if they were not committed by Hitler et al. For instance, the Mongol conquests under Genghis Khan and his successors were actually far ''more'' brutal than even the Nazis (slaughtering virtually every human being in cities that hadn't immediately surrendered was common practice of the Mongol army, basically [[MakeAnExampleOfThem to set an example]] for the cities that were next in line). When they invaded Iran, they possibly wiped out '''90 percent''' of the local population. And while the Mongol leaders aren't often depicted as noble generals like, say, [[UsefulNotes/AlexandertheGreat Alexander]] or [[UsefulNotes/JuliusCaesar Julius Caesar]] commonly are, they aren't often shown to be outright evil either. Crazy and blood-thirsty, yes, but even when these attributes are applied to them, it's often actually with [[WarIsGlorious hints of admiration]]. So why were their mass slaughterings less evil than those of Hitler? The answer is apparently: because they simply ''weren't'' Hitler.[[note]]Oh, and if you ask the outright fanboys, you are bound to hear the argument that the Mongol leaders were good lawmakers ''within'' their realm. So they slaughtered tens of millions of people, but managed to improve internal stability and security for the few who happened to survive. A bargain. And incidentally also the very same argument that the few remaining Hitler supporters in Germany love to use.[[/note]] But a likely reason for this difference is that Genghis Khan and his successors lived centuries ago, so their atrocities feel very distant, whereas the Nazis' atrocities were recent enough that there are still people alive today who lived through them.
** On ther other hand, many anti-communists would often depict UsefulNotes/JosefStalin as worse than, if not equally as bad, as Hitler, based largely on the questionable criteria that Hitler "killed less of his own people".[[note]]Which requires a lot of cherry-picking, since Stalin's Holodomor and Great Purge killed 5 million and 1.5 million respectively, whereas the Holocaust killed 6 million Jewish people alone, plus 11 million non-Jews. The death of 20 million plus Soviet civilians in the war is generally not included in the criteria either.[[/note]]
* Perhaps the worst of the worst examples is Twitter user Steve Milloy demonizing renewable energy and promoting fossil fuels [[https://fstdt.com/6C_G78C623DRK#comments on the grounds that]] “wind power made the Trans-Atlantic slave trade possible”… as if the slavers wouldn’t have used coal-powered steamboats if they were invented before the Triangle Trade was stopped. [[InsaneTrollLogic It also implies that sailboats are inherently evil irrespective of their cargo.]]
* Some particularly insidious individuals might invert this trope. If someone points out how a group of people are spouting opinions or taking morally bankrupt actions genuinely similar to the Nazis, the people being accused can claim this trope is in play rather than a legitimate comparison. The goal being to make objectively horrible things seem reasonable by implying the Nazis weren't wrong to practice it themselves and that the comparison is therefore spurious. For example, this is particularly common among transphobic individuals when it's pointed out the Nazis preached the same demonizing lies about trans people that they are in the present.
* Toothbrush Mustache was a popular style in the 19th century. Nowadays it's considered a dead style because of its association with, who else, that it's also called Hitler Mustache. The other famous people to sport the look were Charlie Chaplin and Oliver Hardy, but the Hitler association was too strong.

** (Here's the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Adolf_Hitler TL;DR]]) Hitler was raised Catholic by his mother (unsurprising, being born in Austria), but after childhood he expressed little interest in organized religion and never attended any church. During his public life he identified himself as a "Christian," but not as a member of any pre-existing denomination. Rather, it was a Nazi version called "German Christianity" - a Christianity deeply infused with Nazi ideology. While Hitler was happy to manipulate religion for his own ends, privately Hitler was not any kind of Christian at all, expressing revulsion and contempt for it. He also considered the interest in the occult and Pagan revivalism of some Nazis (such as Heinrich Himmler) to be ridiculous. But Hitler was no atheist either - or at least, not entirely. He was a profound believer in "Providence" and "Destiny," and believed himself to be "chosen" for a great task and purpose. This is not to say he believed he was carrying out the ''personal will'' of any divine being, but rather saw himself as implementing ''Nature's'' law - which, according to him, was [[TheSocialDarwinist survival of the fittest.]]

** (Here's the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Adolf_Hitler TL;DR]]) Hitler was raised Catholic by his mother (unsurprising, being born in Austria), but after childhood he expressed little interest in organized religion and never attended any church. During his public life he identified himself as a "Christian," but not as a member of any pre-existing denomination. Rather, it was a Nazi version called "German Christianity" - a Christianity deeply infused with Nazi ideology. While Hitler was happy to manipulate religion for his own ends, privately it is clear Hitler was not any kind of Christian at all, expressing revulsion and profound contempt for it. He also considered the interest in the occult and Pagan revivalism of some Nazis (such as Heinrich Himmler) as ridiculous. But Hitler was no atheist either - or at least, not entirely. He was a profound believer in "Providence" and "Destiny," and believed himself to be "chosen" for a great task and purpose. This is not to say he believed he was carrying out the ''personal will'' of any divine being, but rather saw himself as implementing ''Nature's'' law - which, according to him, was [[TheSocialDarwinist survival of the fittest.]]

** (Here's the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Adolf_Hitler TL;DR]]) Hitler was raised Catholic by his mother (unsurprising, being born in Austria), but after childhood he expressed little interest in organized religion and never attended any church. During his public life he identified himself as a "Christian," but not as a member of any pre-existing denomination. Rather, it was a Nazi version called "German Christianity" - a Christianity deeply infused with Nazi ideology. While Hitler was happy to manipulate religion for his own ends, privately it is clear Hitler was not any kind of Christian at all, expressing revulsion and profound contempt for it. He also considered the interest in the occult and Pagan revivalism of some Nazis (such as Heinrich Himmler) as ridiculous. But Hitler was no atheist either - or at least, not entirely. He was a profound believer in "Providence" and "Destiny," and believed himself to be "chosen" for a great task and purpose. This is not to say he believed he was carrying out the ''personal will'' of any divine being; rather he saw himself as implementing ''Nature's'' law - which, according to him, was [[TheSocialDarwinist survival of the fittest.]]

** (Here's the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Adolf_Hitler TL;DR]]) Hitler was raised Catholic by his mother (unsurprising, being born in Austria), but after childhood he expressed little interest in organized religion and never attended any church. During his public life he identified himself as a "Christian," but not as a member of any pre-existing denomination. Rather, it was a Nazi version called "German Christianity" - a Christianity deeply infused with Nazi ideology. While Hitler was happy to manipulate religion for his own ends, privately it is clear Hitler was not any kind of Christian at all, expressing revulsion and profound contempt for it. He also considered the interest in the occult and Pagan revivalism of some Nazis (such as Heinrich Himmler) as ridiculous. But Hitler was no atheist either - or at least, not entirely. He was a profound believer in "Providence" and "Destiny," and believed himself to be "chosen" for a great task and purpose. Not to say he believed he was carrying out the ''personal will'' of any divine being; rather he saw himself as implementing ''Nature's'' law - which, according to him, was [[TheSocialDarwinist survival of the fittest.]]

** (Here's the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Adolf_Hitler TL;DR]]) Hitler was raised Catholic by his mother (unsurprising, being born in Austria); however, after childhood he expressed little interest in organized religion and never attended any church. During his public life he identified himself as a "Christian," but not as a member of any pre-existing denomination. Rather, it was a Nazi version called "German Christianity" - a Christianity deeply infused with Nazi ideology. While Hitler was happy to manipulate religion for his own ends, privately it is clear Hitler was not any kind of Christian at all, expressing revulsion and profound contempt for it. He also considered the interest in the occult and Pagan revivalism of some Nazis (such as Heinrich Himmler) as ridiculous. But Hitler was no atheist either - or at least, not entirely. He was a profound believer in "Providence" and "Destiny," and believed himself to be "chosen" for a great task and purpose. Not to say he believed he was carrying out the ''personal will'' of any divine being; rather he saw himself as implementing ''Nature's'' law - which, according to him, was [[TheSocialDarwinist survival of the fittest.]]