“(Question: Before Hitler came along, what did angry liberals draw on pictures of people they didn’t like? And what if you were protesting Hitler himself? Would you erase the mustache?)”
Look back at your history. Most of the progressive movement thought Hitler was a pretty good guy with his spiffy National Socialism. Of course, he wasn’t as good as Stalin, with his pure-as-snow communism. But he was pretty good.
Then he made the mistake of attacking Stalin. Progressives swung hard against Hitler right at that point.
So for years, Hitler’s big sin (ala progressives) was NOT that he was a right winger. It was that he attacked a communist country. Now, the story is all different.
They are conflicted about Hitler because his organization of society and the economy looks a lot like their ideal (minus the dead Jews in his own country—for American progressives, the dead Jews will be in Israel and others will do the dirty work. At least Hitler did his own dirty work. Weird for a movement that started out with a whole lot of Jews in the movement.).