1. "It’s ridiculous to compare any living person to Hitler or Mussolini."
2. No mention of Hitler. A point by point comparison to a historical and previous description of fascism.
3. Not Hitler, talks about conservatism and totalitarianism.
4. No mention of Hitler anywhere.
5. " I am not suggesting that what is happening in the United States replicates in every sense what happened in Italy and Germany. "
6. "The Republican presidential candidate is not a Fascist, but his campaign bears notable similarities to the reign of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini."
Compare these viewpoints to the claim of "But people really were saying Trump is literally Hitler."
Edit: I should also say that I don't doubt you could come up with something somewhere where somebody claimed that Trump is "literally Hitler." However, it is not a prevalent or even mainstream viewpoint. Even calling Trump a fascist, and defending it based on evidence, is a pretty extreme and rare viewpoint.
His point was broadly about the tone in which Trump has been described in the media, and how that contributes to the division that currently exists in America.
"How do you talk people down after spending a year telling them Hitler was coming to power?" vs. "How do you talk people down after spending a year telling them a fascist was coming to power?" isn't a very meaningful distinction to me in that context. Your mileage may vary. Many mainstream outlets have expressed that opinion for a long time, and it's a point of view I've seen defended here on HN many times in political threads. I don't think it's a fringe viewpoint at all.
There's a difference between what all these people are warning of, and then "literally Hitler" of starting a world war and imprisoning all political opponents and then executing millions of the prisoners like cattle in an industrial processing plant.
The "literally Hitler" smear is an attempt to distinguish that careful, and important distinction, so that the entire thought can be dismissed as ridiculous.
Looking at each of those articles where they say "not hitler, but he still is making noises like he'll be bad," do you think that needs to be walked back? Were they ignoring reality, or facing an unpleasant reality?
"Literally Hitler" is not a thoughtful, fair, or even useful characterization of these viewpoints.
I think I misunderstood what you were calling "unrealistic". It doesn't matter whether Trump is really like Hitler. People really did make that comparison, and now the people who were convinced by those arguments are stuck on high alert. As Pigo said, it's going to be very hard to talk those people down to a point that we can have a productive political conversation.
I've seen people saying it's illegal to be Muslim now. You can't underestimate the intelligence of people on social media and rioting cities. Maybe it's different where some of you live, or some of your online circles.
And it's not a mainstream perspective, it is at best a hyperbole of people saying hyperbolic things.
Two hyperboles don't make a right.