Based on my Facebook feed and live conversations with friends in Sanctimony Cities, I have learned that there is a new passion in America for defending the Jewish people. The enemy, of course, is Donald Trump (see previous posting). During the Obama Administration, the only irredeemably bad country on the planet that these folks could think of was Israel. Trips to the grocery store required thinking about whether it was more important to boycott Sabra Hummus or SodaStream.
What is the evidence that the Trumpenfuhrer is like Hitler and that the U.S. today is like Germany in the 1930s? Hitler talked about the Jews frequently. Donald Trump did not mention Jews following telephoned bomb threats to Jewish schools and community centers (my question of “How do we know that the threats were made by residents of the U.S.? Why couldn’t it be one foreign guy with an autodialer?” seems to have been answered (nytimes))
I pressed the Sincerely Concerned for concrete scenarios. I used a middle-aged guy within our social circle who has some Jewish ancestry as an example. Let’s call him “Abraham”. What specifically could the Trumpenfuhrer do to him? Couldn’t Abraham at least escape to Israel? The answers essentially amounted to a higher wealth or income tax for Jews or suspected Jews. Our government would confiscate his wealth before Abraham boarded his El Al flight.
I pointed out that Abraham’s wife, following a brief marriage, had gone down to the local family court and, under Massachusetts family law, stripped this guy of his two young children, his house, and 80 percent of his income going forward. What more could a government hostile to Jews take from him? “They could confiscate his savings,” was a first answer. I responded that legal fees on both sides of the divorce lawsuit had already consumed what had been the Abraham’s savings from 30+ years of working. “They could put him in an internment camp.” Why would the government want to incur the cost of imprisoning a middle-aged guy, whose health care costs even in prison are likely to be staggering, when they could just dump him off on the Israeli taxpayer? None of the American Defenders of the Jewish People (TM) had an answer for this.
Readers: What have you heard about concrete plans for a Trump-directed pogrom? How would it work against Jews who are U.S. citizens given that Trump has been unable to limit visas and new green cards for citizens of Libya, Somalia, Yemen, etc.? Is the idea that Trump first dispenses with the Federal judiciary and then turns his attention to the Jews?
Related:
Just because Jews aren’t the target of what President Trump is doing doesn’t mean Jews shouldn’t be concerned about what President Trump is doing.
The same can be said of hummus. 🙂
BTW, the quality of Sabra hummus is terrible, and that alone is sufficient to boycott them.
As I recall the conversation, dumping him off on the Israeli taxpayer was indeed answered in discussion. Something to the effect “the viability of the state of Israel would seriously be in question if it reached this point. Without the support of the US, Israel would have limited chance of surviving.”
Of course there are no concrete plans for a Trump directed pogrom. If there were any plans at all, they certainly wouldn’t be accessible to all but a very limited cadre, not searchable via Google. The Nazis came to power in 1933. The Final Solution was not defined until 1941, eight years later and two years after the war started.
No one, certainly not me, is saying that Trump is Hitler. However, Trump is highly unpredictable, combative to even his own party, dismissive of the judiciary and disrespectful of the decorum and tradition of the presidency. He is not trustworthy, but any reasonable definition of truth-telling. We’ll see how the next four years play out.
Trump’s success had quite a lot to do with a cultural stirring of explicitly nativist and white interests. Jews just tend to freak out about this sort of thing. They are typically more comfortable in a multi-cultural, cosmopolitan environment and liked the high immigration course the USA has been on. Maybe your friends are more perceptive than you in certain ways. The Hitler comparisons are just nonsense talking points, but the Trump agenda is in fact in opposition to what many jews apparently want.
Whites are the only ethnicity whom it is acceptable, if not praiseworthy, to despise en masse – clinging to their guns and religion, irredeemable, etc.
It seems only natural that there are Jews who, wishing to avoid being placed in the same basket, flee from whiteness by expressing a fear of persecution at the hands of the evil Trump-people.
Phil:
Are you asking who can come up with a good story? Really?
OK, here is my input: Trump’s plan is to sell this country to Russia and hence outsource the dirty business of pogroms to the specialists.
The idea belongs to Steve Bannon who certainly knows a thing or two on how to sell the American Jewry, based on his involvement with the Seinfeld show.
American Jews are “culturally appropriating” the European Jewish experience. This would be like American blacks pretending that they were victims of the Rwandan genocide. AFAIK, American anti-Semitism consisted chiefly of excluding Jews from a few snooty country clubs and reducing Jewish enrollment at Ivy universities from 7x over-representation to 3x. I think this is in part driven by guilt that the American Jews didn’t really do a damn thing to rescue the Jews of Europe.
May I suggest a trip to Berlin?
The Museum topography of Terror chronicles the rise of the National Socialist party in Germany.
Sachenshausen remains, as one of the early concentration camps, where men were initially sent for 6 months of reeducation, before the National Socialist Party descended into wholesale murder.
The Von Stauffenberg memorial and Museum to the German Resistance shows that even Hitler’s own men had decided by mid 1944 that genocide was no longer the path to world domination.
None of this seems to parallel the Trump campaign and administration.
@Anonymous: I’ve been to Berlin several times. But better than that, I can share the experience of my family. My grandfather was a U-boat, one of 5,000 Jews that survived in Berlin during the war. His chemical factory was seized as early as 1933 since it was of strategic value for the growing war machine.
The mistake made then was the unbelievability that a nation as advanced as Germany in terms of science, engineering, philosophy, culture could descend into factory murder in less than a decade.
Given this was less than 100 years ago, it would be inappropriate to think that a country as advanced as the US in terms of science, engineering, philosophy and culture could not possibly descend into similar evil. The US is not so special. Our current and ongoing track record of killing around the world will be judged harshly by history. The precedent is there for Trump in many ways.
Come on “Abraham,” lighten up. What you have to say is trite and belies your purported gravitas.
I would not try to criticize Abraham, even though I do disagree with him. Trying to argue logically with strong emotions is both useless an uncivil: that’s not how humans work. Strong emotions need to be acknowledged and then checked.
Abraham, would you agree that there might be some other people who have experience similar to yours yet have a completely different point of view? Would you accept that some of those people might have come to conclusions opposite to yours? Do you really feel that you may speak on behalf of millions of Jews you might have never met? Do you think there is a limit on suffering? if so, are you sure you have reached that limit? is having seen a limit of suffering a glorious crown? an entitlement?
I personally think @bobbybobbob has summarized it exceptionally well in #4. As to what could possibly happen in our political life, I am no judge. Anything can happen: Elvis might be still alive. Is it worth discussing that much?
> would you agree that there might be some other people who have experience similar to yours yet have a completely different point of view?
yes, of course.
> Would you accept that some of those people might have come to conclusions opposite to yours?
Of course.
> Do you really feel that you may speak on behalf of millions of Jews you might have never met?
I make no such claim. Philip made a blog post about a private conversation we had. He said that I had no answer for him. I recall that I did indeed have an answer and elaborated my reasoning.
I’ll know from now on that any private conversation with Philip might turn into a misconstrued blog post that may need an alternate viewpoint to get the complete picture.
> Do you think there is a limit on suffering? if so, are you sure you have reached that limit? is having seen a limit of suffering a glorious crown? an entitlement?
I have no idea what you are insinuating, nor do I care that much.
Abraham –
It’s that simple really: I am not “insinuating” and I am not trying to blame you for anything at all. I don’t know either you or Philip in real life and I have no idea what you two might have discussed that could have ended up on the blog.
Of course, you don’t have to care of what I think. I am just to make it sure you don’t speak on behalf of *ALL* American Jews. If you want to speak for *SOME*, that is fine with me but please do acknowledge that much. Thank you.
M: I speak only for myself. Thanks.
“Given this was less than 100 years ago, it would be inappropriate to think that a country as advanced as the US in terms of science, engineering, philosophy and culture could not possibly descend into similar evil. The US is not so special. Our current and ongoing track record of killing around the world will be judged harshly by history. The precedent is there for Trump in many ways.”
Germany had a centuries long history of anti-Semitism (and no tradition of democracy) unlike anything ever known in America, certainly not the ultra-liberal America of 2017 where people of all races and perversions are not only tolerated but celebrated. Nothing America has done recently abroad, or especially at home, in any way, shape or form, resembles in any way Nazi genocide. We could waterboard terrorists for the next 1,000 years and it would still not touch what the Germans did in 1 day.
My father was a concentration camp prisoner – one of those skinny guys with a striped uniform. American GIs were the most beautiful thing he ever saw and he thought that America was the greatest country in the world in all of history and he never changed his mind about this until the day he died.
I do not like it when Phil says trumpenfuher. It is important to remember Donald Trump’s own children are jews.
There are two separate issues here: one is Trump and the other is my new found bestest friends forever that I was an idiot enough to once think were actually fairly antagnostic towards Jews.
I have since been corrected and am grateful to discover all these defenders of Jews amongst the millennials and liberals I encounter on twitter, facebook and blogs that I know have said very odd things about Jews in the past, and so I must reconsider that I have been wrong about Trump too. And even about myself since they tell me supporters of free speech are likely nazis who deserve a good punching.
The current President of the United States advocated restricting the travel rights of Americans based on religion. I don’t understand how anyone, much less a member of a religious minority, squares that with the American idea of freedom.
That is simply not true: it is propaganda.
The only contention was about Islam: 19 out of 20 nations with the world’s largest Muslim population are allowed to the US (Iran being an exception.)
Eric and Ivanka Trump married Jews, and Donald Jr’s wife is half-Jewish. If Trump is the next Hitler, he’s off to a pretty bad start!
There is simply no law, either existing or proposed, that would prevent people form entering the US based on their religion. Of course, some people would tell you otherwise–without showing the hard, textual evidence– just to make people feel insecure.
Exploiting other people fears is at the heart of the commercial marketing, now employed by the liberal propaganda.
@toucan sam
Phil did not say “trumpenfuher”. It was “Trumpenfuhrer”, with the leading caps and a missing R. It’s such a shame he was misquoted and taken out of context.
I heard Chuck Schumer was probably behind this conspiracy.
“Donald J Trump is calling for a total and complete shut down of Muslims entering the United States.” – Donald J Trump
Is it literally written in the text of any law you can show us, existing or submitted, or are you just trolling?
We already heard this before, “God Save The Queen, Her Fascist Regime !”
The US already has an exit tax on emigrants in case you wonder.
https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/expatriation-tax
Trumpenfuhrer is no ordinary politician and he speaks his mind without any consideration for being politically correct or even thinking before speaking / tweeting — in my opinion, he is being signaled out because he is not ordinary.
If you look past his “craziness” he is no different compared to many before him: all presidents have blood on their hands or extreme ideology and agenda that they promoted either directly or indirectly all the way from Washington to Obama. Anyone who is consumed with Trumpenfuhrer is just being played and are redirecting their energy on the wrong target. Have a look at [1], [2] to see what Trumpenfuhrer has been doing while many are fearing that he is the next “Hitler”.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_executive_actions_by_Donald_Trump
[2] http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2017-04-03-US–Trump-Undoing%20Obama/id-c4fa9fa659394514aa645a7cfd3c31ed
Gidiland.com
A funny article along these lines: Ezra Levant confident riled-up, far-right mob won’t turn against Jews this time. From the Beaverton, the Canadian version of the Onion; Ezra Levant runs the Rebel, the Canadian Breitbart.
A more serious take on Trump and white nationalism: Jonathan Chait, Trump is failing at policy, but winning at tribalism. Jews are unlikely to be the primary target of hostility (compared to Muslims, Hispanics, and blacks), but I can see why there would be unease.