George Bush is not Adolf Hitler, meat eaters are not Nazis and aborted fetuses are not Holocaust victims. Nevertheless, activists across the political spectrum bring Third Reich rhetoric and symbolism into completely unrelated debates to evoke emotion and prove the gravity of their causes.

Last week, a group of students on campus resorted to this Holocaust-comparison activism when they presented a pro-life display that they cleverly referred to as the “Genocide Awareness Project.” By juxtaposing images of aborted fetuses with those of victims of Nazi victims, the display managed to reduce both abortion and the Holocaust to mere symbols, providing no context for understanding the complex issues involved in either.

Pro-lifers have referred repeatedly to the “abortion Holocaust,” but they are not the only advocates to evoke Nazi tyranny in an effort to justify a cause. Animal rights organizations such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) have often compared animal slaughter houses to the Nazi concentration camps. PETA even launched a “Holocaust on Your Plate” awareness campaign.

At the start of the recent U.S. invasion of Iraq, a handful of war dissenters carelessly tossed around analogies that compared George Bush to Adolf Hitler. Interestingly, at the same time, television networks aired specials that examined Hitler’s rise to power. Ads for these programs, which ran conveniently during coverage of the war, suggested that the path to Hitler’s power was paved by nations hesitant to take early military action against the dangerous dictator. I suppose it was inevitable that someone would compare Saddam to Hitler.

All these Nazi analogies are undoubtedly problematic. They allow our already weak sense of historical understanding to disintegrate further until the Holocaust is reduced to a simple icon of evil. Furthermore, they muddle our collective ability to grapple with the complexities of current issues. Activists, in shoddy attempts at conveying the gravity of their causes, appropriate and exploit this historical imagery, thereby reducing the horrible and complex atrocities of events like the Holocaust to mere symbolism.

Interestingly, the “Genocide Awareness Project” advocates threw a few additional historical images into their display. Furthering the emotionality of their cause, they compared aborted fetuses to Ku Klux Klan victims and Planned Parenthood to al-Qaida. Like the Holocaust analogies, these comparisons effectively reduced complex historical events to symbols, manipulating them into support for an anti-abortion effort.

While these ridiculous analogies were effective in creating a stir, they weren’t exactly successful in sparking thoughtful discussion about abortion and reproductive rights. In fact, more people seem to be discussing the group’s approach and their free speech rights than their pro-life ideology.

Perhaps, though, thoughtful discussion wasn’t really the objective. Like the other advocates trying to push their opinions, the Students for Life resorted to Nazi imagery for its shock value. They did manage to raise eyebrows, but they failed to raise awareness of the complex issues involved in both abortion and the Holocaust.