So. . . wait. . . David Duke thinks Trump is making Hitler look good by comparison?
“Hey, Hitler was bad, but at least he’s no Trump!”
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So. The Holocaust will never happen again, only because that name refers to a specific event. The most famous time in recent history. As far as Europe rounding up Jewish people and killing them… It’s a thing. It’s been a thing since the Romans did it. It was a prelude to every Crusade. It was an awful horrific tradition.
When fate and chance are the fickle will of the gods, and bad luck is an expression of divine anger, it’s a sadly human response to try and find a human culprit, or create a scapegoat. It’s also a powerful political tool to direct this superstitious fear and anger at ones enemies.
Please don’t take this as some apologist stance regarding the Holocaust. I’m saying people are much much more likely to scapegoat Jewish people merely for existing, and do not require special circumstances to do so. The Holocaust something we remember to never let it happen again… But it wasn’t the first time someone attempted to kill all the Jews. When things go south Christians and Muslims both occasionally remember their long tradition of trying to rid the world of Jews. Then the Abrahamic religious slap-fights turn to genocidal madness again.
Our own US history provides a fertile ground for particular analogies that fit our circumstances better. So do present day circumstances around the world.
Are we looking at Hitlers popping up everywhere?
Or are we looking at huge waves of humans being ethnically cleansed from one area, or forced out economically from another area, or by environmental change in other areas?
And white supremacist demagoges… Which are a huge part of our existing political reality. We don’t need to look to Germany for racism. Holy shit. The fascists looked to the US for inspiration.
And there was the whole slavery, racism, the KKK was so effective in their campaign of terror and one issue political bullshitery that the north finally relented… Let the South keep their racism, if not their slaves.
Are we likely to see Trump rise to power and then put Muslims on trains? Or are we likely to see something like waves of hate crimes and driving immigrants and poor people and ethnic minorities out of their homes and communities at gunpoint?
That’s the American history that exists. It’s the way we’ve done it here in the past. Its also how this shit tends to go down most commonly worldwide. This is not something we frequently talk about.
We love to talk about Hitler though!
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I look at that whenever I look at Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank.
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We’ll see what happens if Sanders can pull of the nomination. I expect the Anti-Semitism will spike considerably.
It’s certainly there.
“Constitutional Trumpist” seems to be the preferred label for the white supremacists in the US, and even now at its core its still just as anti-Semitic as ever.
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Oh yes. The focus on many right wingers has turned to Muslims (and here in the US) and Latinos. but once the “Muslim/Latino” question has been “answered” (in their minds), they will refocus on their traditional “enemies”, African peoples and the Jews (and Catholics?). Because they want a “white man’s country.”
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Adolfus did. He also released his birfcertificate it seems.
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I knew it! He was not a German citizen by birth! This invalidates the Second World War!
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Or, if Cruz is the nominee: “Hey, c’mon, nothing bad ever happened when the chief executive came from a neighboring country!”
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Future historians are going to look back at our time and see it as soooo obvious that the whole birth certificate thing aimed at Obama wouldn’t have happened if he were white.
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I actually can imagine Muslims being put on trains. Comparisons to the holocaust would be easily waved away by people saying, “This is different, Muslims are terrorists!”
With someone like Trump (or Cruz, I don’t see him as very different) in power, a significant domestic terror attack could set off some kind of program to secure a specific population. In Canada under our last prime minister I worried what might happen if an indigenous terror group formed. Like you say, killing minorities is something humans do.
But while I’m not quite willing to rule out an actual holocaust-like event in the future, you are totally right that one isn’t needed to displace and oppress people, and it’s happening all over the world this very moment.
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