In the wake of Charlottesville, many are comparing the marchers (not the counter-protesters) with the Nazi. And sure, they had the swastikas and had the slogan of the National Socialist German Workers' Party.

I take great offence to this. This just shows how ignorant people are about history; the comparison between the marchers and the Nazi party is grossly incorrect at best, and it should be offensive to many. And I don't say this in the sense that the Nazi party supported the leftist idealism of "anti-big-business, anti-bourgeois, anti-capitalist" political atmosphere. That was later downplayed to gain the support of the big industries. I also don't say this in the sense of racial extermination and segregation based on religions, race, and sexual preferences.

I say this on the basis that the Nazi Party is about a thousand times better than the marchers.

It's crucial to understand just why the party rose to power in the first place, which history classes rarely teach. Statistically, Germany was at its worst in its entire history during the Weimar Republic. The suicide rate in 1923 was at a whopping 39 per hundred thousand (for comparison, Japan at its highest was about 24, and that became international news. US, France, and the UK in 1923 was about 11 per hundred thousand). There is a high correlation between economy and suicide rates.

So what about the economy? Well, hyper-inflation is an understatement. In Nov 1918, a loaf of bread was 1 mark. Five years later? 163 marks. A year after that? An unbelievable 1,500,000 marks. People brought wheelbarrows filled with bundles of bills to buy a loaf of bread. Two months later (Nov 1923)? 200,000,000,000 marks.

That's right. TWO HUNDRED BILLION MARKS FOR A LOAF OF BREAD.

This was in part because Germany decided to borrow the money to finance WWI, so that's the Germans' fault. But that by itself wouldn't have caused this travesty. After WWI, the Allies demanded reparations. It demanded 132 billion marks (USD$33 billion).

The Germans, already beaten, were now forced to pay. Families had lost their breadwinners, and John Maynard Keynes correctly predicted the Treaty of Versailles would be a disaster that would economically destroy Germany. Not only was this a humiliation, it also led to problems, namely starvation (a poll conducted in 1923 in one area of Germany reported 100 towns with 95% malnutrition and 41% with TB).

Congratulations. You have kicked Germany. It's basically lost all its senses, and is cornered. Guess what wounded animals do when cornered? It bites back.

Now, these are all just numbers for now, but imagine this: you have two children, aged ten and eight. Your brother went to fight in the war and never came back. Your nation has lost the war. Money has lost its meaning and is now a piece of paper, milk is a luxury beyond gold, a loaf of bread is two hundred billion marks, your chief bread-winner killed him/herself. Your children are crying because they are so hungry. You haven't eaten in days, and you've lost your job.

And then comes this man out of nowhere, who promises to restore Germany, not just financially, but also give you your job back and put food on the table (if I recall correctly, this was one of the chief reasons many voted for Trump). He comes and gives your kids toys and candy, and you see the kids smile for the first time in months. And he actually keeps his promises. Under his regime new companies are born. Streets are paved. Autobahn is made. Even the US benefited from Hitler's scientific policies: people like von Braun, who later went on to develop Saturn V, originally began their projects under the Nazi party's war efforts.

Guess who you're going to vote for?

When the Nazi party began its ascent, it didn't ascend on people's lack of interest, like it did with this year's French election and last year's American. Voter turn-out rate in 1932 was 84%. People voted for Hitler in droves (in 1932, he received 1/3 of the votes, with about 4 million votes ahead).

There is no doubt that Hitler committed atrocities. He ordered mass genocide, forcefully silenced those who spoke out against him, actively oppressed anyone who didn't fit his idealism of purity. But one must also admit that under his regime came the very foundation of rocket science, modern weaponry, Volkswagen and the foundation of the German economy we see today, not to mention the Autobahn.

The marchers from Friday and Saturday weren't these people who, through no fault of their own, had to watch as their children suffered and starved. Many of them had the financial ability to not go to work on Friday, and actually come out and march. They are not starved. The guy who decided to run over Heather Heyer had a car. They are not desperate, cornered, injured people who have lost everything. I certainly don't see Trump creating jobs and I certainly don't see him giving Americans pride and hope.

So what I want to say is this: stop using the Nazi as some demonic entity. The situation is very different, and by comparing the marchers to the Nazis, you are being rude to those engineers who believed that they were doing their country a service when they developed the Messerschmitt aircrafts. You are being rude to those who cast their votes, not because they hated Jews (I'm sure some of them did, and I am in no way absolving them) but because they were desperate to feed their children. Worst of all, you are being rude to those who died fighting against the Nazis. Do you really mean to degrade those who gave their lives to protect freedom by saying that they had to go to the extent of giving up their lives to fight a bunch of tiki-torch-wielding punks who are so ignorant that they chant "blood and soil" when they themselves are, by heritage, immigrants?

The Nazis should be recorded in history as those who committed mass genocide. But one should also be aware of just why the Germans voted for them, and respect those who gave their lives fighting for freedom by respecting the Nazis as a formidable power. You should respect those Americans who, a few generations before, had been Germans and may have had to fight against their blood relations. And comparing these half-assed ignorami to those Americans' opponents is doing everyone a disservice.