Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

Vice Trades in March Madness for Hitler

Who’s more worthy of Hitler-comparison, Joseph Stalin or Saddam Hussein? Voldemort or Satan? Bashar Al-Assad or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?

These are the hard-hitting questions that Vice is setting out to answer. Forget March Madness. They’ve come up with Hitler Madness, the tournament to “officially determine the most Hitlerish person of all time.”

Per the rulebook:

Some who play the Hitler card are trying to be funny or controversial in order to get attention; others are just trying to say, “This person is very, very, very bad.” Usually, the comparison backfires horribly and the comparer inevitably has to issue a public statement that says something like, “That person who I said was like Hitler is very, very, very bad—but he or she is not Hitler-esque. I’m sorry.” A good rule of thumb is to never, ever call anyone Hitler, since you’ll end up apologizing and there are far more creative and specific ways to insult your enemies. (And anyway, Hitler is often just a generic term meant to connote ultimate evil rather than an accurate comparison with the real, historical German dictator.)

There are four categories competing, with eight contestants each: Dead People, Living Politicians, Not That Much Like Hitler and Non-Humans.

Who will take home the (not-so) grand prize? Make your picks here and find out.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.