Senator Brown says Hitler and Stalin opposed labor unions too

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) took to the Senate floor Thursday to defend labor unions, saying that dictators like Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin opposed them.

Brown said that unions have wrongly come under attack from Republicans and conservatives, who are pitting workers against one another in states like his, where governments are taking action on anti-union legislation. Though he said he was not making a direct comparison, Brown claimed that "some of the worst governments we've ever had" have opposed labor unions.

"As a nation, I look back in history and some of the worst governments we've ever had, you know one of the the first thing they did? They went after the trade unions," he said. "Hitler didn't want unions, Stalin didn't want unions. 

That simply isn't true. In fact, if we're going to start making Hitler-Stalin analogies, perhaps the Democrats should be a little more careful.

The fact is, both dictators loved unions - as long as they were beholden to the party. Sort of like the Democrats and organized labor in this country don't you think? Can you imagine a union breaking ranks and going Republican? What do you think the reaction of other unions would be to that?

Unions in America may be "independent" from government control in the grossest sense, but as we saw when Democrats are in power, the difference between "government" and "party" shrinks to nothing. As long as 97% of union campaign contributions go to Democrats, we have no independent unions in America and the analogy to Hitler and Stalin's union policies are much more apt if you compare them to Democrats rather than Republicans.