As should be obvious by now, the Nazi race laws were the precise equivalent of the Democratic Party's race laws. It isn't merely that the former provided a precedent for the latter; the two sets of laws also had the same functional purpose. Just as the segregation and discrimination laws were intended to supplement, and in some respects replace, the random violence of the Ku Klux Klan, so too the Nuremberg Laws and Nazi discrimination laws were intended to supplement, and in some respects replace, the random violence of the brownshirts. In this respect, as in so many others, the Nazis and the Democrats draw so close that it becomes increasingly difficult to tell one from the other.