Tennessee Republican Frank Niceley says Hitler should be inspiration to homeless

“I haven’t given you all a history lesson in awhile, and I wanted to give you a little history on homelessness,” Niceley said. “[In] 1910, Hitler decided to live on the streets for a while. So for two years, Hitler lived on the streets and practiced his oratory, and his body language, and how to connect with citizens and then went on to lead a life that got him in the history books.”

‘The Führer’s child’: How Hitler came to embrace a girl with Jewish roots

Niceley, who said he supported the bill to criminalize homeless encampments on public property, added, “It’s not a dead end. They can come out of these homeless camps and have a productive life — or in Hitler’s case, a very unproductive life.”

Shortly after Niceley’s unsolicited Hitler history lesson, the state legislature passed H.B. 0978 by a vote of 22 to 10, thus making the “solicitation or camping along a controlled-access highway or entrance or exit ramp” a misdemeanor resulting in a $50 fine and community service. The “permissive” bill, which allows local law enforcement discretion to punish homeless people, now heads to the desk of Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R), who is expected to sign it into law.

Niceley has faced backlash from Democrats and critics questioning why hewould even bring up Hitler when speaking on the topic of homelessness. Tennessee state Rep. Gloria Johnson (D) shared a video of Niceley’s remarks that has been viewed about 1 million times as of Thursday afternoon. The Democrat said that “not a single day passes without TN GOP embarrassing the hell out of our state.”

“I’m going to have to apologize to the universe for this guy,” she tweeted.

Letters found in an attic reveal eerie similarities between Adolf Hitler and his father

Niceley did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.

Despite the senator describing his statement is being a history lesson, Hitler did not choose homelessness. Having failed to gain admission to the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, he used up his savings and ended up sleeping on park benches and begging for money.

Years before the Holocaust, he lived in a hostel for the homeless in Vienna between 1910 and 1913, with many of his friends being Jews, according to the Guardian. Historians noted how Hitler described this period of homelessness as the “harshest and saddest” time of his life.

Republican lawmakers have invoked Hitler’s name in a variety of ways in recent years, whether it’s comparing coronavirus vaccine mandates to the Holocaust or quoting from his memoir, “Mein Kampf,” on the House floor about the power of using a “big lie” to mislead a gullible public.

It’s not the first time controversy has found Niceley, who was a state representative before becoming a state senator in 2012.

In 2009, he was among a group of Tennessee Republicans who attempted to force President Barack Obama to turn over his birth certificate to prove he was born in the United States. Many figures on the right, including Donald Trump, perpetuated birtherism falsehoods about Obama during and after the 2008 presidential election. Nicely argued at the time that some of Obama’s Kenyan relatives said he was born in Kenya, according to the Chattanooga Times Free Press.

In 2017, Niceley told E&E News that carbon dioxide, which has emissions that are a significant driver of climate change, is “not a pollutant.” He misleadingly stated that “it’s just as natural as oxygen.”

2°C Beyond the limit: Dangerous new hot zones are spreading around the world

In October, Niceley argued that companies such as Ford moving to Southern states like Tennessee represented how the South was winning the Civil War, which ended in 1865. He mentioned a conversation he had with his grandson, who asked him if the South really lost the war. His answer: “It’s too early to tell.”

“You look at all these great companies like Ford Motor Company, Smith & Wesson coming down south, I think I can tell my grandson the war between the states is going on, and we’re winning,” he said.