Michael Eric Dyson on MSNBC. Photo: Screenshot.

The 100 year old Anti Defamation League, a major Jewish human rights group, has lashed out at MSNBC political analyst Michael Eric Dyson after he compared United States Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to a Jew who sided with Hitler.

In a TV appearance on Wednesday Dyson characterized Thomas’s vote with the majority in the supreme court decision to overturn a key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 as, “A symbolic Jew has invited a metaphoric Hitler to commit holocaust and genocide upon his own people.”

Abraham H. Foxman, National Director of the ADL and a Holocaust survivor expressed shock and outrage.

“We are shocked that anyone would draw such an outrageous comparison between a ruling rendered by justices working within the bounds of our constitutional democracy, and the murderous deeds of the Nazis during the Holocaust,” he said.

Foxman reiterated the ADL’s oft stated position that it finds comparisons between the murderous actions of the Nazis to various contemporary political positions to be offensive.

“As we have said repeatedly, there is no place for comparisons between social or political issues in the 21^st century and the genocidal actions of Hitler and the Nazis, whose crimes against humanity and role in the deaths of six million Jews and millions of others were unique in history and should be respected as such. It is particularly painful when Mr. Dyson references the pernicious notion of a Jew who turns on his own people,” Foxman said.

“Inappropriate comparisons and references to Jews or Hitler in the context of a debate over American political issues only serve to trivialize history and are an insult to the memory of those who fought and died during World War II.  We hope that Mr. Dyson will reconsider his words,” he concluded.

A video of Michael Eric Dyson’s offensive remarks on MSNBC can be viewed below.