Alabama Senator-Elect Suggests America Fought Socialists in WWII, Not Nazis.

Senator-elect Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) falsely claimed in a speech that American soldiers "liberated Paris from socialism and communism" during the Second World War.

The U.S. did not liberate Paris from socialism and communism. It liberated Paris from the Nazis — against whom socialists and communists were among the fiercest opponents in Germany and France. The people who fought communists and socialists in Paris in the 1940s were Nazis.

Whether ignorance or intentional deception, Tuberville's misrepresentation of the Nazis as socialists is a frequent tactic employed by the the political right, including by sitting members of Congress. This tactic is part of a larger revisionist effort to claim that the Nazis were socialists — a suggestion that is patently false. Presenting Nazis as socialists while pointing to the small but growing flank of Democratic socialists in the Democratic Party allows the political right to deflect accusations of and comparisons to Nazism onto their opponents.

Tuberville’s historical illiteracy is not restricted to World War II. He has also faced criticism for not knowing what the Voting Rights Act is.