Do you think Trump's recent comments about Muslims not being allowed to enter the country is an attempt to self-sabotage? You mentioned that you think he doesn't actually want the job!
Sadly, no. I think he’s speaking sincerely to the subset of people who think that following the Constitution is for girls. There’s this weird masculinity subtext (or text) to Trump’s campaign, where he keeps positioning himself as the only candidate with “balls,” where listening to cooler heads or admitting you don’t have all the answers is symbolic castration. So Trump doesn’t have to be good or right to stay popular with the people who like him, he has to be ballsy.
This is leading him in increasingly bizarre and Hitlery directions as the race goes on.
Plus, obviously, separate from my weird gender analysis, he’s a giant racist.
Please don’t compare people to Hitler if you aren’t Jewish or Romani. Jewish and Romani people have been begging everyone to stop making Holocaust and Hitler comparisons for years and no one ever listens or cares about our wishes. Please stop.
…I’m Jewish. I’m a *German* Jew.
And personally, I’m just fine with people making Hitler comparisons, because this isn’t using “Hitlery” to mean “really bad,” it’s using it to mean “rightist demagogue encouraging scapegoating of minority religions and ethnicities in an extremely familiar way.”
And because learning from history is important. Avoiding Holocaust comparisons doesn’t feel respectful to me, it feels like saying “all we know for sure is it’s wrong to commit genocide in Europe in the 1940s, all other genocidal proposals should be judged on their own merits.” You can’t commit to “never again ” unless you acknowledge that it can happen again.
I am the great grandchild of Hungarian Jews who fled the precursors to what would become the Holocaust, and I endorse anyone and everyone pointing out the similarities between Trump and Hitler.
I’m Jewish - my grandmother’s ancestors fled Russia in the late 1800s for England and the United States. Some of my grandfather’s immediate family and a few cousins and aunts and uncles escaped from Germany and Poland in the 1930s. My grandmother and I sat down to work on our family tree last year and entire branches just ended. Whole families cut off. Most without official dates of death or causes or locations. Just guesses. Practically a whole section of my family simply, devastatingly ended in the 1940s.
Please, please, please continue the accurate and appropriately horrifying and upsetting comparisons of Trump to Hitler. People should be upset by him. People absolutely should be worried. As much as I want to laugh at him and imagine he could never get elected, I remember my great uncle Sol telling my sister and me how people used to laugh about Hitler too. “It could never happen. He is a joke.”
It is a responsibility to remember and to guard against. It is a responsibility to look at the horrors that were committed, not by evil or by monsters, but by men. People did that. People who had families and laughed and drank and danced and celebrated and tried to wipe out entire segments of the population. Just people.
I know it’s upsetting to be reminded. I know it’s awful and horrible and painful to think about and hear about. But we have a responsibility to not let the world forget and to not let the world imagine it could never happen again.
Trump and his jingoism, his fascism, his preying and playing on fear and ignorance and his certainty that he is never, never wrong and will never back down is exactly why we say, “Never forget.”
The US Holocaust Memorial Museum has called out Trump (and his ilk), saying American has a duty to Syrian refugees. The Anti-Defamation League says Trump’s plan to seal borders against Muslims is contrary to our nation’s deepest values.
These major Jewish organizations do *not* make these comparisons lightly. But this is the point of “Never forget” – so that we can see a catastrophe coming and make sure it never arrives.
The man literally admitted that he kept a copy of Hitler’s speeches in his nightstand, which he “received as a gift, but didn’t read.” He’s drawn comparisons with Syrian refugees to the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII, considered one of the most shameful acts of our administration on home soil during that time, and has hinted that he’d like to do the same for American Muslims.
His speeches regarding People of Color are heavily sanitized, safe-for-TV diatribes on white supremacism. He’s publicly endorsed by white supremacist hate groups, including the KKK. They absolutely love him and they’re out there campaigning for him.
And he’s spouting the exact same kind of rhetoric that Hitler did during his rise to power. “Our country is no longer the glorious place it once was. We need to become STRONG again! You see that ethnic/religious group? THEY’RE to blame for all your problems! And if I’m elected, I’ll get rid of them…in perfectly legal and humane ways, of course. -winkwink-”
This isn’t “Let’s Compare A Bad Thing To Hitler;” this is “A Serious Presidential Candidate Is Literally Espousing the Same Views As Hitler In A Modern Setting AND THIS IS BEYOND BAD.”
Also, it’s a separate issue, but let’s not forget that he’s declared bankruptcy four times to get out of paying his debts, deliberately exploits loopholes to pay as little tax as possible (because he thinks the government doesn’t need more money for “wasteful” social programs even though he’s one of the richest men in the world), physically and sexually assaulted his ex-wife and then threatened legal action to bully her into recanting her statement, and has made disturbingly inappropriate remarks about his own daughter to boot. And that’s not even touching his past litanies on why poor people, non-whites, non-Christians, “the gays,” and “uppity” women are destroying America.
Bottom Line: Donald Trump is a horrible person who would make a disastrous president, and none of that is hyperbole. He is a huge glaring symbol of everything that is wrong with our country, and if he becomes President, there WILL be a disaster. And I will be emigrating to Canada.