Louisiana congressman breaks rule No. 1: Don’t make Holocaust comparisons

By Peter W. Stevenson July 5 at 11:26 AM

There's never, to say the least, an upside to invoking the Holocaust in the context of any other subject, a lesson that politicians and their staffs learn with disturbing frequency.

The latest to blunder on this front is Louisiana Rep. Clay Higgins (R).

On July 1, he posted a video showing him solemnly touring the Auschwitz death camp run by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland. The video begins near the train tracks at the edge of the camp, before Higgins walks past vast piles of shoes that belonged to victims. Higgins takes viewers through the actual gas chambers, then to the ovens the Nazis used to incinerate their victims. It's difficult to watch.

But then, at perhaps the video's most emotional moment, Higgins abruptly — and by most standards insensitively — changes subjects.

“This is why homeland security must be squared away,” he says, looking directly into the camera. “Why our military must be invincible.”

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