Literally Hitler — Two-panel meme comparing Obama at a church podium to Hitler at a Nazi rally with 'Christian' captions

Literally Hitler

2009catchphraseclassic

Published September 5, 2026

"Literally Hitler" is a hyperbolic catchphrase used to compare someone or something to Adolf Hitler, most often on Reddit and Tumblr as a sarcastic jab at Godwin's Law escalation. The phrase took off in August 2009 with a single-topic Tumblr pairing photos of Barack Obama with Hitler, then mutated into one of the defining circlejerk formats of the early 2010s.

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Overview

The joke works two ways at once. Straight-faced, it's an accusation that some public figure is Nazi-tier evil. Sarcastic, and this is where it lived on the internet, it mocks the reflex to reach for a Hitler comparison the moment an online argument gets heated1. The phrase leans on the misused word "literally" to make the exaggeration land as a punchline instead of a slur.

On Reddit's /r/circlejerk in particular, "literally Hitler" became a plug-in insult you could aim at absolutely anything, from Nickelback to the Kardashians to a photo of Hitler himself2. The bigger the mismatch between the target and the accusation, the funnier the post. The format also fed a small ecosystem of single-serving image generators built around the phrasal template "X is literally Hitler"3.

Origin & Background

Platform
Tumblr / Reddit (viral spread)
Date
2009

In August 2009 an anonymous user launched the single-topic Tumblr blog "Obama is Literally Hitler," which paired photos of Barack Obama with photos of Adolf Hitler to point out coincidental visual similarities4. By June 2013 the blog had wiped all its posts, but its title had already outlived it as a catchphrase2.

The launch lined up with a wave of Obama-Hitler signage at Tea Party healthcare town halls that same month. A widely shared clip of Rep. Barney Frank shutting down a protester who held up an Obama-as-Hitler poster circulated on YouTube and gave the comparison a real-world reference point5.

How It Spread

On August 10, 2009, Gawker highlighted the Tumblr in a post titled "Finally Proof That Obama is Literally Hitler," and BuzzFeed picked it up the same month1. In February 2010 the phrase was catalogued by the blog Literally Misused, which tracked non-literal uses of the word "literally"2.

Reddit adopted it as a running gag. A novelty account named "Literally Hitler" was registered in September 20112, and that November a /r/circlejerk post joking that the word "Nickelback" in Spanish means "literally hitler" pulled over 3,100 upvotes6. The gag peaked in early 2012 after actor Wil Wheaton called the Kardashians "more depressing to me than Hitler" in a clip posted to /r/videos on January 27. The same day, Redditor aidaman posted "Upvote because the Kardashians are LITERALLY worse than Hitler" to /r/circlejerk, gathering more than 3,200 upvotes8. On March 31, a bare photo of Hitler captioned "This guy is literally Hitler" hit the same subreddit and picked up another 3,200 upvotes9.

In February 2013 the single-serving site Is Literally Hitler launched a text-input generator for the phrasal template3, and in March LiterallyHitler.org went up as a wall of user-submitted accusations10.

How to Use This Meme

The format is a plug-in template: "[Target] is literally Hitler." Common convention is to aim it at something obviously not Nazi-adjacent, a band, a celebrity, an app update, or a minor annoyance, so the ridiculous escalation itself is the punchline2. Sincere political usage is still on the table, but online the phrase typically reads as sarcasm about Godwin's Law rather than a real comparison1.

Frequently Asked Questions