Remember a few weeks ago that mayor wrote a letter (cosigned by some governors) saying that Japanese-American internment camps were the right call? That spawned a number of discussions in various places making the comparison between that and proposed treatment of Muslim Americans. Most people don’t go so far as to say the Japanese-American internment was right, but instead bristle at any suggestion that current calls to watch Muslims are like that. The argument I saw for that was basically people saying, “Yeah, but when we did that we were wrong, the people we interred weren’t a threat. This time we are right, Muslims are a threat.”
I guess we would hope that having Hitler to look back upon would make things different, but until Trump literally suggests gas chambers, I’m not sure people who would consider supporting Trump will take the issue seriously, and even then I worry they’ll all just say, “This is different.” They’ll think that Hitler’s mistake was going after Jews who are upstanding citizens, but going after Muslims is a good idea (well, except for the actual neo-nazis who support him, they’ll want to get the Jews after the Muslims).
