The Slippery Slope to State-Sponsored Terror
In the wake of the murder of ICU nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis—the second in less than a week committed by ICE—a minor scuffle has broken out in the Jewish chat-o-sphere among those who do and those who do not think it appropriate to compare ICE and its tactics to the Gestapo.
Among those who are appalled by the comparison, the argument goes that the Nazi Holocaust was a particularly Jewish trauma, and that to compare any human agent, no matter how destructive or murderous, to the Nazi death machine is an act of cultural appropriation that, if not bordering on antisemitism per se, effectively discounts the unique horror of anti-Semitic violence.
Up to a point perhaps there is a valid point. But to make such a point is, by me, like complaining that you didn’t get a big enough raise to buy a vacation home when your neighbors are going hungry.
For once, it isn’t about us. And that’s because rather than single out Jews to play the role of national scapegoat and boogeyman, the current occupant of the White House has singled out immigrants. You know, those people who mow our lawns, drive our garbage trucks, wheel us from pre-op into surgery, and basically do the work that most more settled Americans don’t want to do. With the help of his singularly despicable advisor Stephen Miller, whose grandparents fled poverty and pogroms in Belarus to land on Ellis Island in the early 20th century, the current President has whipped up a firestorm of hatred and blame and aimed it squarely on immigrants. Not all immigrants, however. Just those who aren’t white. As most American Jews appear to be white (a nonsensical category that I wish we’d get rid of based on the fact that race is a construct) this time around we’re not at the loaded end of the gun.
But when I see pictures of heavily armed, masked and uniformed men dragging people out of their homes in their underwear, marching children out of their classrooms, beating up women as well as men, spraying them with spray-pepper, and pumping bullets into their bodies, then I have to say: sure looks like the Gestapo to me.
Speaking of the Nazi terror, and how easy (and often lazy) it is to compare Trump’s militaristic and strong-armed tactics to those of the Third Reich, I will say this: at least he’s not sending the perceived enemies of the American people to death camps. Even so, there is something Hitler-adjacent about our own mad king. Not so, you say, citing Trump’s support of Israel and his part in winding down the war with Hamas. True enough, but as various comics, including the satirist Andy Borowitz, put it: “If you don’t want to be compared to Hitler, stop acting so Hitler-y.”
I don’t believe that the majority, or even a large minority, of Americans are stewing in resentment, racism, antisemitism, or violent hatred. But the majority of German people weren’t either.
Comparisons of Trump’s tactics with that of der Führer aside, if we, collectively as Jews, can’t protest gross injustice, in what way are we still Jews?
