Republican congressman Mo Brooks quotes Hitler's Mein Kampf to accuse Democrats of promoting 'big lie' against Trump

Comments were subsequently criticised

A Republican congressman has been condemned after he quote from Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf to accuse Democrats of lying about Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia probe.

Speaking on the floor of the House of Representatives, Mo Brooks claimed Democrats and the media were guilty of pushing a “big lie” over the conclusions of the special counsel.

“For more than two years, socialist Democrats and their fake news media allies – CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, Washington Post and countless others - have perpetrated the biggest political lie, con, scam and fraud in American history,” said Mr Brooks, from Alabama, saying accusations the president colluded with Moscow were “nothing but a big lie”.

Reading from a translation of Mein Kampf, he said: “In that vein, I quote from another socialist who mastered 'big lie' propaganda to maximum, and deadly, effect. Quote, 'In the big lie, there is always a certain force of credibility because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus, in the primitive simplicity of their minds, they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie’.”

He added: “Who is this big lie master – socialist Adolf Hitler.”

The Washington Post pointed out the expression coined by Hitler was used to claim Jews used their “unqualified capacity for falsehood” to blame a top German military commander for the country’s losses in World War I. He said that a lie could be so large, it defied disbelief.

The newspaper wrote: “It was unclear if Brooks grasped that by levelling charges of the “big lie”, he had inverted his own analogy, making Democrats the equivalent of interwar German and Austrian Jews.”

The comments by Mr Brooks, a five-time congressman from Alabama’s fifth congressional district, were quickly condemned.

“It’s unconscionable for a member of Congress to demonise an opposing party by claiming it's comparable to Nazism,” said the Anti-Defamation League, a US-based Jewish group that fights anti-Semitism.

“The vicious Nazi regime was responsible for the murder of 6 million Jews and millions more. This is dangerous and Mo Brooks must apologise.”

The Post said Mr Brooks, who in 2017 failed to secure the Senate seat vacated by Jeff Sessions when he joined Mr Trump’s cabinet, has yet to respond to the criticism of his comments.