What is it with Mexican presidents and their quick-on-the-draw talk of “Nazis” whenever they encounter someone they don’t agree with?
On Tuesday, Mexico’s sitting President Enrique Pena Nieto, compared the rise of Donald Trump, his country’s U.S. bete noire, to that of the Nazis, saying:
“There have been episodes in human history, unfortunately, where these expressions of strident rhetoric have led to very ominous situations,” Pena Nieto told Excelsior, a Mexican newspaper,  in remarks published Monday. “That’s how Mussolini got in, that’s how Hitler got in: They took advantage of a situation, a problem perhaps, which humanity was going through at the time, after an economic crisis.”
Naturally, The Donald is “not happy” with such comparisons. They follow similar charges in the past few days from former presidents Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderon.
But that’s less relevant than the fact that it’s suddenly Mexico lecturing the U.S. about Nazis, as if they ever had anything to be proud of in their participation in the war to end Naziism in World War II. Fact is, it’s the United States and its great power allies that rid the world of Naziism, at a cost of 400,000 U.S. men and a massive outlay of government treasure.
Mexico stayed out as a neutral, but was fairly cozy with the Hitlerites. President Lazaro Cardenas was quite willing to sell oil expropriated from U.S. companies to keep the lights on in Nazi Germany. Nazi Germany in fact was Mexico’s top customer.
It was only at the tail end of the war, when everyone knew what the outcome would be, that Mexico cast its lot with the allies, sharing in a victory it had very little role in winning.
Mexico’s role was so minimal that it amounts to a blank spot on the historical blotter, and as a result, Mexicans seem to know very little about the war. A certain number of Mexicans, as is the case in many countries that have little understanding of the Nazis, even admire them. Get a load of this bizarre event in Guadalajara just last year.
So it’s more than a tad rich to hear Mexico’s leader lecturing the U.S. about Nazis, sounding as if he thinks America’s voters are just sheep unable to distinguish between the Hitlers out there, and a political candidate who just happens to get their goat.
Mexico enabled the Nazis, and they still haven’t come to terms with that to ensure it doesn’t happen again. If its leaders had any decency, they’d get its own house in order on that front instead.