Jeffrey Goldberg, Columnist

The Value of Inane Holocaust Comparisons

I realized in watching this sad episode that I could not muster the same anger others felt toward Perkins.
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So, everyone is upset with Tom Perkins, the superannuated co-founder of the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, for comparing, in a letter to the Wall Street Journal, the hatred directed at Germany's pre-war "one percent" -- Jewish people -- with today's American "one percent" -- rich people.

"This is a very dangerous drift in our American thinking," Perkins wrote. "Kristallnacht was unthinkable in 1930; is its descendant 'progressive' radicalism unthinkable now?"