Leave the Jews Out of the Argument
Since the end of World War II, many political candidates from across the world, but particularly here in the US, attempt to solidify positions or attack their opponents by using references of Jewish persecution under Nazi Germany and the atrocities brought on by the racial genocide and under the Holocaust.
Democrats and Republicans alike are guilty of the use of these insensitive references. By now, in the current American age of racial and religious discrimination, one would think that political candidates and pundits would get the thought that this type of talk is not only taboo and but will lead to the end of their careers.
The most recent soon-to-be victim is Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia’s 14th District. Greene has sparked outrage from liberals, and many within the GOP with her latest exploit comparing the House’s coronavirus-related mask requirement to how the Nazis treated German Jews around the time of the Holocaust.
In a recent TV appearance, she said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) continuing to require masks because many House Republicans haven’t said they are vaccinated relegates members to being “second-class citizens” akin to German Jews.
“You know, we can look back in a time in history where people were told to wear a gold star, and they were treated as second-class citizens — so much so that they were put in trains and taken to gas chambers in Nazi Germany,” Green said. “And this is exactly the type of abuse that Nancy Pelosi is talking about.”
On May 25, Greene took to Twitter to double down on her comparison of the Nazi’s treatment of Jews to current liberal COVID policies and restrictions.
https://twitter.com/mtgreenee/status/1397150992341377027?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Is Greene Wrong in her Wording?
Labeling an opponent as “worse than Hitler” or saying a policy is “like Nazi Germany” is hardly new. So why is it so widespread? In a 2017 report from the BBC, according to America’s Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the answer is simply that it is the “most available historical event illustrating right versus wrong.”
Everyone loves to be correct and hates to be wrong. In addition, particularly politicians, people love to use imagery in their descriptions of policies, especially in their attacks on their rivals. But “misplaced comparisons trivialize this unique tragedy in human history,” the ADL’s national director Jonathan Greenblatt says, “particularly when public figures invoke the Holocaust to score political points.”
Politicians are not the only ones that love to use Nazi references. Today, members of the left love to use radical statements against the Republican Party, labeling them as members of the Alt-Right or Neo-Nazis.
Some loud-mouthed liberals even use Nazi references when attacking members of their party or cause. In 2020, MSNBC Hardball host Chris Matthews apologized for his remark during the Nevada caucus coverage. He compared the inability of establishment Democrats to stop Bernie Sanders to France’s futile hopes against Germany’s invasion in 1940. A month later, Matthews resigned from the network after additional and sexist statements surfaced that caused concern.
But regarding Representative Greene’s recent statements, Democrats don’t have a leg to stand on, for they too have a history of using the tragedy of the Holocaust to serve their interests. In 2019, two House Democrats invoked Hitler’s actions in Germany and the treatment of Jews during World War II and in the 1920s to warn against the direction the US is moving in. Both said Donald Trump’s presidency presented an unprecedented threat to democracy.
House Whip James Clyburn (D-SC), in March 2020, told NBC News, “Adolf Hitler was elected chancellor of Germany. And he went about the business of discrediting institutions to the point that people bought into” it,” the South Carolina congressman said, according to NBC. “Nobody would have believed it now. But swastikas hung in churches throughout Germany. We had better be very careful.”
Clyburn’s colleague, House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY), commented at a Tuesday night town hall in New York. He compared Trump’s rhetoric toward immigrants to propaganda against Jews.
According to Nadler, “This is the same type of propaganda that we heard in the 1920s and World War I against Jews. ‘Jews are Bolsheviks. Jews are thieves. Jews are violent’ – that was the propaganda. And, we were that against the Irish early. Now, we hear it against this generation’s immigrants – and it’s just as false now.”
Regardless of political party affiliation, the only people negatively affected by the continued use of this unnecessary use of imagery and narrative are Jewish faith members, whose decedents and family suffered unbearable atrocities at the hands of Hitler and his henchmen.
Why are Jews and the continued target, whipping post, and hot topic selling story title? Some humans are consumed with hatred, so much in fact, that they use the hatred of someone like Hitler and his Third Reich and attempt to cast aggression, doubt, and shame onto others because they disagree with their political policies. I am here to say, leave the Jews alone; they have suffered enough. Are the American people and their representative political politicians so weak-minded that they couldn’t conjure up another attacking reference – one that didn’t rattle the minds and souls of the over 6-million lost to gas chambers and genocide?
Content syndicated from TheLibertyLoft.com with permission.
