I get why people react badly to any comparison of modern-day events to any part of or lead-up to the Holocaust, especially when knuckleheads like Jeanine Pirro are saying that about a Twitter ban (FFS). But...

considering how reliably the mainstream commentariat has downplayed Trump's extremism and the likelihood of a coup (Ross Douthat said in the NYTimes there would be no coup just 3 months ago), and how long they've failed to treat white supremacist violence as the threat it is...

there's some value in noting that Wednesday's events, like Kristallnacht, were a violent, ethnonationalist action carried out by civilians with the consent and assistance of authorities, which may yet signal the beginning of a violent escalation. Far more died in Kristallnacht...

and the dynamics of the white supremacists' hold on power are not the same here and now as then and there. So maybe Wednesday was somewhere between Kristallnacht and the beer hall putsch. (Historical analogues are seldom perfect.) But there is value in the comparison:

Nothing seems like it can be as bad as the worst thing we have ever known... until it is. Apologists for present atrocities will exploit our caution around hyperbole and our respect for past losses to downplay their intentions. That is already happening.

We do no disrespect to all those murdered by the Nazis when we recognize that many of Wednesday's insurrectionists would do what the Nazis did if given a chance. They would kill Jews like me, immigrants like my wife, Black and brown people like my friends and constituents.

In other words, this is an occasion where the comparison is apt, and where it sounds a historical alarm that we should heed. These people are very bad and they mean us great harm, and I take this shit seriously.