"Moreover, this whole issue has been raised to a completely new level since the publication of historian Stanley Elkins's path-breaking book Slavery. Elkins not only drew an elaborate comparison of the plantation as a "closed system" akin to a concentration camp, he also showed that slavery produced personality types eerily similar to those described by Nazi camp survivors. So the point is that even on some of the institutions and practices uniquely associated with the Nazis--from genocide to the concentration camp--the Democrats in a sense got there first."