There’s an old adage about the Internet called Gidwin’s Law: “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.” Former Vice President Al Gore has reached 1 and brought it to real life.
During a powerful address at San Francisco’s Climate Week, former Vice President Al Gore issued a warning about the growing dangers of authoritarianism and the manipulation of truth in contemporary politics. Speaking to an audience of around 150 climate advocates and policy professionals at a waterfront science museum, Gore drew sobering parallels between the Trump administration’s tactics and those employed by totalitarian regimes, including Nazi Germany, reports Politico.
I understand very well why it is wrong to compare Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich to any other movement,” Gore said to an audience of roughly 150 climate advocates and policymakers gathered at a science museum on San Francisco’s waterfront. “It was uniquely evil, full stop. I get it. But there are important lessons from the history of that emergent evil.”
Gore’s remarks follow sharp attacks on the Trump administration by a throng of party luminaries and former leaders in recent weeks.
Former President Barack Obama in a recent speech said he was “deeply concerned with a federal government that threatens universities if they don’t give up students who are exercising their right to free speech,” adding that the values of the U.S. under Trump have eroded. Former Vice President Kamala Harris accused the Trump administration of taking unconstitutional actions and said they are contributing to a “sense of fear.” And former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wrote in a New York Times guest essay that Trump was “squandering America’s strength and threatening our national security” — contributing to the battery of free-wheeling attacks as current officeholders in the Democratic Party calibrate their day-to-day approaches to the White House.
Gore, for his part, cited German philosophers’ “moral autopsy on the Third Reich” in the aftermath of World War II.
The White House did not issue a response to Gore’s remarks.
Gore’s address coincided with a wave of public concern from leading Democratic figures. Former President Barack Obama recently condemned threats to academic freedom under the Trump administration despite using the same law to sue Hillsdale College. Former Vice President Kamala Harris warned of rising fear and authoritarian overreach, while Hillary Clinton, still unable to get over losing in 2016, accused Trump of undermining America’s global standing and compromising national security in a New York Times op-ed.
Gore also warned of the growing appeal of authoritarian populism, particularly the use of xenophobia as a political tool. “We’ve seen how migrants are used as scapegoats to fan the fires of nationalism,” he said. “Our Constitution was designed to protect us from exactly this kind of threat.”
Concluding his 25-minute speech, Gore encouraged the audience to remain steadfast in their climate activism, invoking the moral leadership of figures like Martin Luther King Jr. and Pope Francis.
