DUTERTE AND HITLER: A Case of Weak Analogy

Whoever compared President Duterte to German dictator Adolf Hitler must be given a refresher course in Logic.

Personally speaking, I was appalled when such comparison was made, for the reason that it was akin to comparing apples to oranges. The only identicalness that I can deduce pertains to the killings committed in their respective regimes.

But on second thought, this similarity cannot hold water for a long time, since the issue on human killings will have to be inevitably dichotomized based on the intention of the two personalities.

Hitler’s intention was to make the German race a superior one, which propelled him to order the killing of those people who did not belong to their race and deemed racially inferior, particularly the Jewish people who stood at over nine million across many countries in Europe.

Hitler perceived the Jews and other non-Germans as threats to the German racial community (some sort of contaminants in other words). And this has resulted to the persecution and murder of millions of Jews.

This historical rhetoric alone is more than enough to quash any comparison being made between Duterte and Hitler, for the former’s intention is way different from that of the latter.

As I have said, we cannot compare apples to oranges.

Duterte’s intention is to solve the drug problem in his beloved country, and his the-end-justifies-the-means approach to the problem has resulted to over a thousand deaths of drug personalities. However, this does not sit well with many local and international groups.

But whether or not people agree with Duterte’s approach, I don’t see any concrete reason why he has to be likened to Hitler.

The analogy therefore, that is being hastily constructed between the two is puny. In Logic, this is called the fallacy of weak analogy. To simply put it, this is the error of establishing identicalness between two things that are not alike.

If I may reiterate, we cannot compare apples to oranges.

Thank you.