Obama Invokes Nazi Germany to Warn Against Political Complacency

Barack Obama invoked Nazi Germany this week as part of a warning against complacency with a changing and seemingly worsening political climate. “You have to tend to this garden of democracy, otherwise things can fall apart fairly quickly. And we've seen societies where that happens,” the former U.S. president said Tuesday at the Economic Club of Chicago, in video reported Friday by CNN. “Now, presume there was a ballroom here in Vienna in the late 1920s or ’30s that looked and seemed as if it, filled with the music and art and literature that was emerging, would continue into perpetuity. And then 60 million people died. An entire world was plunged into chaos,” Obama warned. “So you got to pay attention—and vote.”