And as bad as the above figures are, there’s one more comparison that can be made, and it’s truly chilling. Professor Peter Merkl’s landmark study “Political Violence Under the Swastika: 581 Early Nazis”
(Princeton University Press, 1975) used contemporaneous biographical studies and personal documents to profile five hundred and eighty-one early, founding members of the Nazi Party (the hardcore Nazis who shaped the party and brought it to power). Merkl provided statistical analysis of the founding Nazis’ political, societal, and religious views: 33.3% of these Nazi Party members showed no interest in anti-Semitism. 14.3% expressed “mild verbal clichés” regarding Jews. 19.1% displayed “moderate” disdain for Jewish cultural influence in Germany. But only 12.9% advocated “violent countermeasures” against Jews. If you take Merkl’s findings and measure them against the Pew survey results, you’re left with a truly startling conclusion: There are more Muslims in today’s world who support violence in the name of defending Islam than there were founding members of the Nazi Party who supported violence against Jews.
