Table of Contents
Introduction
1.
Most Americans Don't Mind Sacrificing Liberty or Privacy in Exchange
for the Illusion of Security
2. The T.S.A. Confiscates Our Things
and Sells Them on the Cheap, Like the Nazis Did to the Jews
3.
Both I.C.E. and the Nazis Used the Promise of Showers to Deceive
Their Prisoners
4. Most Americans Don't Mind Spending too Much, Working too Hard, to Earn Special Treatment
5. Unpaid Prison Labor and For-Profit Prisons Are on the Rise
6. Fear-Mongering About Disease-Carrying Immigrants Prompts Calls for Ethnic Cleansing
7. U.S. Immigration Authorities Sprayed Immigrants with Zyklon-B, Once Used to Gas Jews
8. Authorities Are Spraying People with Noxious Gas at the Border Right Now
9. Calling Welfare Recipients and Immigrants “Parasites” Normalizes Dehumanization
10. Americans of Both Major Parties Justify Abortion if it's of “the Right Race”
11. Immigrants Are Depicted as Invading Hordes of Barbarians, Like the Jews Were
12. Immigrants Are Depicted as Both “Lazy” and “Taking Your Jobs”, Like the Jews Were
13. President Trump Has Promulgated Stereotypes About Hispanics, Muslims, and Jews
14. President Trump Said He'd Consider Creating a Database of Muslim-Americans
15. President Trump Encourages His Supporters to Harm Protesters and Dissidents
16. Trump's Ex-Wife Claims He Reads and Admires the Fascist Italian Dictator Benito Mussolini
17. President Trump Wants to Amend or Repeal the Birthright Citizenship Clause
18. The President Wants Dictatorial Power, and Congress Has Historically Given it to Him
19. The 2020 Census Could Be Used as an Excuse to Arrest and Deport Undocumented Immigrants
20. The U.S. Already Practices Internment of “Undesirables” and Maintains Concentration Camps
21. People Still Excuse F.D.R. for Refusing to Let Undocumented Jewish Refugees In
22. The Democratic Party's Love of Big Government Makes Authoritarianism Unavoidable
23. An I.C.E. Official Said They're “Just Following Orders”, Like the Nazi Adolf Eichmann Did
24. Trump's Former Press Correspondent Claimed That the Nazis Never Used Chemical Weapons
25. Ultra-Nationalism, Nativism, and Extreme Anti-Immigration Policies Are the New Normal
26. American Citizens in Good Standing Are Already Losing Their Citizenship Without Cause
27. Right-Wingers in Germany, Austria, Italy,
etc. Hope to Form an "Axis" to Solve Immigration
28. Democrats' Enthusiastic Support for Assimilation Plays Right into Republicans' Hands
29. Americans of Both Major Parties Demonize the Far Left, Communism, and All Things Foreign
30. Obama Democrats Made it Difficult to Get Away with Calling the President Racist or Fascist
31. Strong Anti-Fascism is Virtually Non-Existent in Libertarian Circles, the One Place it Matters
32. I.C.E. Separates People by Age and Sex, Like the Nazis Did
33. I.C.E. Confiscates Religious Items, Like the Nazis and Communists Did
34. Post-9/11 Fear of Foreigners and Middle Easterners Threatens the Safety of Jewish People
35. A Growing Number of Americans Want to Silence Discussion of Israel
36. All Criticism of the State of Israel is Deemed Anti-Semitic, and This Silences Jewish Voices
37. Promoting Jewish Stereotypes is Publicly Acceptable in America Nowadays
38. Many Jewish-Americans Have Been Legally, and Voluntarily, Disarmed
39. Israeli Ultra-Nationalism is on the Rise, and Gaza is Already a Concentration Camp
40. George W. Bush's Grandfather Was a War Profiteer, and Bush Loyalists Are Still in Office
41. American Companies That Financed Nazis and the Holocaust Are Still Around, and Popular
42. Americans and Soviets Imported Nazi Scientists As Part of Operation Paperclip
43. Americans Call for More Non-White Police, While Nazis Rewarded Loyalty with Police Posts
44. Many Americans Are Desensitized to Violence, and See Mass Murder as Something Funny
45. A Literal Nazi Ran for U.S. House of Representatives and Won His Nomination Uncontested
46. American Culture is Awash in Alcohol, Which Was Given to Jews to Cope with Their Conditions
47. American Culture Values Competitiveness in Sports, the Economy, and Even Survival
Conclusion
Content
Introduction
The
October 27th
Tree of Life Synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh – in which 11
Jewish-Americans were shot to death in the midst of their morning
prayer1
– confirmed many Americans' fears that the threat of violent
anti-Semitism is real. Many are beginning to wonder whether actual
Nazism itself is on the rise in America today2
(as opposed to just plain American imperialism and authoritarianism,
like we're used to seeing every day).3
On
November 19th,
a video was uploaded to the YouTube channel youthleadermagazine,
entitled “Jeremy Ornstein Sunrise Movement 1: Adults – Face Harsh
Reality – GROW UP!”.4
In the video, an 18-year-old Jewish-American student from
Massachusetts named Jeremy Ornstein, speaks outside of once and
future Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's office in Washington,
D.C.. Accompanied by scores of students holding signs reading “Green
New Deal”, Mr. Ornstein described his brother finding the Holocaust
memoirs of their grandparent who had immigrated from Hungary.
According
to Ornstein, “I walked in, and almost immediately to my right, I
saw a book on the table, and read that the Nazis pretended the gas
chambers were showers
to kill the Jews. And I remembered that I was devastated by that
fact, and all of my resolve fell from my shoulders. And before I left
that room, I had to grow up. So many times in the past few years, I
have had to grow up. Like the first, second, and third time I read
about kids being shot in schools. And when we all learned about the
lead in the water in Flint. And every time that I read or see about
the aftermath of climate-fueled disasters.”4
Mr. Ornstein then described
being on the phone with his father while the shooter in Pittsburgh
was still active, and went on to challenge Speaker Pelosi and the
Democratic leadership to “grow up” like he did.
In his speech – perhaps
intentionally, perhaps unwittingly - Ornstein seemed to be drawing a
parallel between the Nazis' deceptive promise of showers for the Jews
in their custody, and the government's failed promise of clean,
potable drinking water to the people of Flint, Michigan.5
Each involved a promise of water and cleanliness, and neither promise
was fulfilled.
Ornstein
is right to call his government out for failing to deliver on its
promise, and to challenge the Democratic Party leadership to stand up
to the opposition party. While it would be difficult to argue that
Jeremy Ornstein and his ancestors were not victimized by their
governments, it is hard to ignore the tragic irony of his situation:
he is coerced into trusting a government which has already deceived
him many times before. Moreover, he is begging
one party to protect him from the other.
Ornstein
described repeatedly
being let down by the Democratic leadership, albeit while wearing a
T-shirt bearing the words “we have a right to good jobs and a
livable future”, and
while admitting that the Nazis baited their Jewish victims with
promises that they'd take care of them and give them showers. It
would be unfair to blame the victims in these situations, but I'm
compelled to admit that Ornstein's message is, sadly, not as
self-aware as it could be.
In my opinion, one of the main
lessons of the fact that Nazis pretended that gas chambers were
showers - and gave the Jews soap to wash up with as they were being
unwittingly led to their deaths (although some knew, or at least
suspected, what was happening)6 - is that governments are
willing to tempt their people with promises of care, riches, jobs,
and other nice things, even if those governments eventually want
those very same people dead.
The
use of showers as an excuse to “exterminate” people, is just one
small example in a long line of policies influenced by the “ethnic
cleansing” mindset.7,
8
A nation which adopts this mindset will posit that the nation, its
moral culture, and the human gene pool need to be “cleansed” of
“alien” and “sub-human” elements, and takes this as an
ideology of “racial hygiene”, to underlie and inform its public
health policy.9
This idea – and the idea that we're all being fattened-up, and made
to surrender all sorts of measures of privacy, independence, and even
security, for the sake of the illusion
of
security, and a little special treatment – is what I intend to
explore in the remainder of this essay.
I
see many reasons why the administration of President Donald Trump
could, should, and must
be
described as imperialistic and authoritarian, and even as
dictatorial, fascistic, and Naziesque. This essay is intended as a
precise enumeration of the forty-five reasons why I feel that way, and
what parallels I see between the current treatment of immigrants to
the United States by I.C.E., and the treatment of Jewish prisoners by
the Nazi S.S. (schutzstaffel;
“storm troopers”) before and during the Holocaust.
1. Most Americans Don't Mind
Sacrificing Liberty or Privacy in Exchange for the Illusion of
Security
Regarding
a tax dispute in Pennsylvania, Benjamin Franklin once wrote, “They
who can give up essential Liberty to obtain a little temporary Safety
deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”10
Although Franklin made that statement in
favor
of taxation
for the purposes of funding collective defense,11
the statement has been characterized as one in favor of greater
privacy and
less
government intrusion in our lives.12
Franklin's
point is well taken; the political ramifications of the attacks of
September 11th,
2001 – in particular, the U.S.A. P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act,13
and the 2012 N.D.A.A. (National Defense Authorization Act)14,
15
– have demonstrated just how much privacy, independence, integrity,
and peace Americans have been willing to put up with paying, in order
for the illusions of safety and security,16
and in exchange for a little bit of convenience17,
18
and special treatment.
As
a result of the Patriot Act, omnibus defense budgets whose riders
affirmed the policies of the Patriot Act, and subsequent Supreme
Court decisions; the Bill of Rights,19
habeas corpus,20
the
principles of the Magna
Carta,21
and the rule of law,22
are effectively null and void.
F.B.I.
agents write their own search warrants.23
Courts have made it easier for police officers to follow us into our
homes,24
and to declare us domestic terrorists,25
deny our right to trial,26
and freeze our assets so that we can't defend ourselves in court.27,
28
Citizen and judiciary complacency with “Stop-and-Frisk” laws29
have rendered the decision in Terry
v. Ohio
practically meaningless,30
all but ignoring our right to resist officers who violate our safety,
and even violate the law itself, in the course of their duties.31,
32
However,
9/11 did not change everything;
as
many of these restrictive measures were in place long before the
attacks. As the result of a Supreme Court decision made in the 1980s
(Warren v.
D.C.),33
police are rarely held responsible for their crimes,34
and never
held to an expectation that they will protect and serve all
the people.35
As
the result of a Clinton-era law,36
local police departments all over the country are in possession of
weapons of war, from machine guns, to tanks, to drones, etc..37
Those
offenses against the people, as well as the intrusions into our
privacy via
warrantless wiretaps38
and other forms of domestic surveillance, have been well-documented
(of course, not well enough). But those points aside, it should not
escape our attention that the Transportation Security Administration
posted a whopping 95%
failure rate in
a 2015 study, catching only 3 out of 70 concealed weapons.39
The
T.S.A. does create what Franklin described; the feeling of “a
little temporary safety”. But the T.S.A.'s failure shows that this
feeling of safety is just that; a feeling, an illusion. Given this
fact, the reckless invasions of privacy, bodily autonomy, and
physical comfort which are reflected in its policies concerning
pat-downs and body scanners,40
should prompt us to question whether there is anything
at all
in these practices which benefits us
(the people paying for it, and the people subjected to it).
Today, anyone is welcome in
America who steadfastly trusts, and is loyal to, the police. Some
Americans want to believe so badly that the police are doing the
right thing, that they are willing to excuse the unnecessary use of
force (and the disproportionate use of that force against
non-whites41) – or an excessively complicated and even
conflicting set of directions for surrender42 – in order
for an officer of the law to subdue an arrestee. Recent years have
seen Americans arrested after failing to obey orders due to an
inability to hear those orders in the first place, whether it's
because they're deaf,43 listening to music on
headphones,44 mentally disabled,45 a legally
armed security guard who simply didn't hear the order to drop the
weapon,46 or even already paralyzed and in a coma.47
This
devoted trust of police officers and their commands, have given rise
to the idea that “all you have to do is comply, and you won't get
hurt.”48
American comedian Bill Burr remarked sarcastically, “Look, it's
really simple. All you have to do is comply, and you won't get your
ass kicked by police. When they tell you to get down, you get down.
When they tell you to turn in your gun, you turn in your gun. When
they tell you to get in the boxcar, you get in the fucking boxcar.
Why in the Hell is this so difficult to understand, people?”49
In the words of author Patrick S. Tomlinson, “'Just do what they
say and you won't get hurt' is what we tell hostages,
not free citizens interacting with police.”50
As the old saying goes, “If
you give someone an inch, they will take a mile.” That is, if you
let someone tell you what to do, they'll continue doing it. Then,
before you know it, you're just doing as you're told, without
questioning it, instead of doing what you want to do.
Although
is is not required
to think for yourself in our society, it is also not prohibited, and
that is for a reason. If you let other people direct your life,
eventually you will end up their puppet, and the executor of their
will, and you may have to give up your identity, your well-being, or
even your life in order to serve out somebody else's sick purposes.
It's usually acceptable to refuse to obey orders that seriously
violate your conscience and your sense of morality, and having a
healthy distrust of authority is not only acceptable; it's part of
our heritage as Americans (from the Revolutionary War).51
As
you read the remainder of this article, when I discuss American
policies currently in place – I invite you to ask yourself how this
policy affects Jewish-Americans. Set aside how it affects Americans
who are not
Jewish, and then consider the possibility that non-Jewish
Americans' freedoms might be curtailed solely to make curtailments of
Jewish
citizens' freedoms seem normal, or “not as bad” by comparison.
Opponents
may say, “See, the Jews and
the
non-Jews
both have
to do something they don't want to do, that's called sacrifice,52
and it's what you do in a society to compromise”.53
But consider the possibility, instead, that two wrongs don't make a
right. Also, consider that condemning people to equal misery, is
equality, but only equality in suffering.54
2.
The T.S.A. Confiscates Our Things and Sells Them on the Cheap, Like
the Nazis Did to the Jews
The
Transportation Security Administration confiscates more than half a
million dollars in spare change alone from travelers every year.55
Not only that, they sell the items they confiscate from us on the
cheap,56
and you can go online57,
58
to find out how to buy those items back from them in
government-sponsored police auctions.
After
a 1938 Nazi law required Jewish residents to register their wealth
and their valuable possessions, the Nazis confiscated many Jews'
possessions.59
While some Jews were legally ordered to sell their possessions,
others were left with no realistic alternative available but to sell
their most cherished possessions in order to afford to leave the
country, while others were forced to abandon
their property in order leave the country. At times, Jews' property
was sold to finance the government, and/or in order to finance the
Jews' own deportation at the hands of the Nazis.60
American
travelers - and sports fans,61,
62
and concert-goers - have almost gotten accustomed
to abandoning their possessions with little or no notice or thought,
when entering public property, or someone else's private property.
Perhaps this is, to a large extent, a result of the T.S.A.'s rule
banning containers of liquid larger than 3 ounces (in order to
decrease the likelihood that a liquid-based plastic explosive or
“gel-ignite” could be smuggled aboard an airplane flight).63
Once
in 2012, I myself decided not to attend a speech by President Obama
because the online invitation for the event suggested that security
would confiscate my bottle of water on the way in.64
It's hard to go see a band at a festival, concert, or even a punk
bar, without showing your I.D. to prove that you're of legal drinking
age, pay too much for the ticket, get your hand stamped and/or let
them put a bracelet on you (to signify that you've paid already),
and, possibly,
be asked to throw away any food and drinks we might have on us. It
seems excessive.
But
more importantly, it conditions us to put up with similar treatment
by government, and by people who invite us onto their property.
People should not have to choose to abandon water and food, - two of
our most urgent needs - in order to be allowed onto private or
public property. Nursing mothers should not have to throw away breast
milk,65
and cancer patients should not have to be attacked for not enjoying
being grabbed by T.S.A. agents,66
solely in order order to fly “safely” across their own country.
Yet Americans put up with this sort of treatment every day –
enduring all forms of medical torture - simply to get from Point A to
Point B. The fact that the T.S.A. is selling our possessions back to
us, only adds insult to injury.
If
this is all really “for our protection”, then clearly something
is wrong. The right to be secure in our persons, papers, and property
includes the rights of bodily autonomy, physical integrity, the right
to defend oneself, and the right to possess items including
medication, so long as we do not use those possessions to harm
others. No government should have the right to force or pressure us
to abandon, destroy, nor sell our property in order to cooperate with
it, nor in order to cease
cooperating with it (by terminating our citizenship).
The
fact that non-Jewish
travelers suffer these indignities and deprivations, ought not be any
less worrisome than the fact that Jewish
travelers suffer them. And the fact that they both
suffer, only helps to conceal the facts that 1) Jewish travelers are
grossly inconvenienced by these measures, and 2) no traveler,
concert-goer, nor sports fan – either Jew or Gentile – need
undergo them.
Those
who remember the victims of the Holocaust, and whom have learned its
lessons, would do well to consider that if they keep checking their
possessions at the door (to the property, or the country, whatever
the case may be), then they might eventually be asked, or even
expected,
to check even more of their property, and their right to privacy, and
their identity and heritage, at the door. This is a slippery slope
that will lead us to think that privacy, property, and the right to
express ourselves are things that have to be earned at grave costs.
But indeed they are, because
so many have fought for them. That is why we must cherish the right
to own possessions (as long as we don't use them to hurt others or
gain leverage over people), and cherish our right to privacy, and to
express ourselves, or else we will lose those rights.
3.
Both I.C.E. and the Nazis Used the Promise of Showers as a Way to
Deceive Their Prisoners
According
to witnesses, gas chambers at the Dachau extermination facility were
disguised as “Brause
Bad”
(“shower baths”),6
and their ceilings were even studded with fake shower heads made of
sheet metal.67
The German reputation for cleanliness had culminated in an ideology
of “racial hygiene”,9
wherein inferior races can be washed away from the “body” of the
German volk
(“the
German people”) as diseases and parasites are washed away from pure
white Aryan skin along with the dark soot. The disease may be given
as typhus, but the “virus” that the Nazis intended
to
“wash away” was Jewishness.
The
book Crystal
Night details
how the Nazis allowed Jews to purchase food and cigarettes as a
consolation for being deported.68
This fact ought to teach us that when all of our "freedoms"
are only exercised after paying, and when specifically permitted by
government through permits and licensing, government can be made-out
to look benevolent
for
simply removing the obstacles it placed between its employers (we the
people) and the things we want. As Ayn Rand said, through her
Fountainhead
character
Howard Roark, who will let me is "not the point. The point is,
who will stop me?"69
To
Jews arriving in Dachau, the fake shower heads probably provided a
brief moment of hope that the Nazis intended to, at least, keep them
healthy enough to work themselves half to death. But history shows us
that the permissions, allotments, variances, and even gifts that come
from government, are merely as a “betrayal with a kiss" (as in
the story of Judas's betrayal of Jesus). It is said to “Beware
Greeks bearing gifts”, but it is also said not to “look a
gift-horse in the mouth”. I prefer the former quotation.
This
is why I have written this article; to caution people about the twin
dangers,
which always go hand-in-hand: of totalitarianism (the Republicans)
and totalitarianism-enablers (Democrats). Of Nazism (the Neo-Nazis
and Trump loyalists) and the apathy and neutrality which make it
possible. Let no one diminish what horrors the one is capable of
inflicting, and the other of excusing, permitting, and being
accomplice and accessory.
Time and time again, the
establishment Democrats, under leaders like Nancy Pelosi, have let
young men like Jeremy Ornstein down. Democrats betray their own
voters – supposedly a party of, by, and for workers and people of
color – and turn around and push Republican policies on their own
people. Then they try to make up for it by attaching riders to bills,
and bargaining for slightly less repression, in order to tempt the
left-leaning public with political goodies and treats; special favors
intended as bargaining chips so that they'll vote them back into
office.
Democratic Republicanism, even
of the Progressive or Democratic Socialist varieties, only serves to
make unfulfillable and unaffordable promises to the American people,
while using those promises to distract from not just their own
impossibility and unaffordability, but also from the horrendous
legislation the goodies are attached to. For example, Senator Bernie
Sanders voted to support the 1994 crime control bill that was signed
into law by President Bill Clinton. That law led to the incarceration
of at least a million non-violent offenders, but Sanders decided to
support the bill because it included protection against victims of
domestic violence.70
Whether it's a robust social
safety net as a compromise for having to pay for the
military-industrial complex, or compensation to farmers as
consolation for getting “punished” by tariffs,71 the
supporters of both major parties have been bought-out.
Americans can't tell when they're just being fattened-up for the
slaughter. They think they can buy their way out of a system that
unabashedly fumbles for excuses to confiscate their property, and
rules their lives, and regulates their money, and
controls that money's value. The goodies and treats promised in
exchange for the welfare-warfare state “compromise” are soaked
with blood, and are inedible.
When we think of Jews being
saved from “extermination”, one thing that comes to mind is Nazi
Party member Oskar Schindler, who is credited with saving the lives
of over a thousand Jewish people by employing them in his
factories.72 One wonders how many would-be Holocaust
victims were saved solely because other people were not
saved. I am reminded of the story of Rabbi Chaim Rumkowski, whom
the Nazis gave a position as the head of the Council of Elders of the
ghetto in Lodz (or Litzmannstadt) ghetto in Poland. Rabbi Rumkowski
eventually called on ghetto-dwelling Jews to give up their elderly,
their children, and themselves. All the while, Rumkowski performed a
role similar to that of Schindler: shape which Jews survive, and
which Jews escape the country. As a matter of fact, a 1942 speech73
by Rumkowski shows that he thought of himself as a surgeon, with the
collective body of the Jewish people before him on the operating
table, believing that he needed to “cut off limbs in order to save
the body”.73 Captive Jews knew that it would help them
to curry favor with Rumkowski (and with Jewish community leaders in
other ghettos, and also with their Nazi captors).
The sad facts that many Jews
tried to ingratiate themselves to their captors through submitting to
back-breaking labor, and through assimilating (for example, through
their dress and appearance, and through converting to Christianity),
and ingratiated themselves to the members of their own communities
assigned to represent them, ought not serve as a mark of shame. But
the consequences of those actions are felt today; Jews are not alone
among the many peoples of America, or of the world, who cower at the
feet of those who pledge and pretend to protect, serve, defend, and
represent us (military, police, politicians, and bureaucratic special
interests alike) whether they follow through on those promises or
not.
I'm disturbed by the contrast
between that fact, and the fact that the Jewish tradition is one of
peaceful disagreement, civil disobedience, and non-conformity. The
shared trauma of the Holocaust and the horrors of police violence and
domestic surveillance in post-9/11 America have produced a society
wherein Jews and non-Jews alike have been intimidated into
submission; into willfully divulging all of their personal
information,74 and registering many of their valuable
possessions instead of insisting upon owning them outright.75
America and Israel alike are societies full of people who have
experienced Stockholm Syndrome;76 if not at the hands of
genocidal captors, then at least at the hands of their own
tyrannical, imperialist government.
Cooperation
and authority are all well and good. But if it's cooperation with
authority,
or if you didn't give the authority to the authority figure
willingly, or if it's cooperation with people who want you dead, then
cooperating would be unwise because it would be submission to
tyranny. It is not necessary to negotiate with our captors; not when
it is possible to fight back, or when it is possible to prevent
ourselves from falling into our captors' control in the first place.
We can and must
fight back against the demands and expectations that our possessions
and privacy should be simply thrown away, so that we can enter
someone's property, enter public property for which our
taxes
paid, or exercise our natural freedom to travel across the Earth.
This is the condition we find
ourselves in today: that we've allowed ourselves to be deceived. We
believe that eating and smoking are privileges instead of rights,
that do not have to be merely paid for but also permitted by the
government. Many of us have been tricked into thinking that access to clean water is a privilege as well. That collecting rain water is not
a right (when it can be done safely, and without affecting our
neighbors).77 That you have to pay taxes in some towns and
municipalities – including my own former hometown of Lake Bluff,
Illinois (as recently as June 2017) - in order to access its
beaches.78
Where people can be tricked
into thinking that clean water and showers are a privilege, rather
than a right, they can be tricked into being so grateful for those
things, that they can be convinced to give up anything and
everything in order to receive them; their freedom, their
clothing, anything.
Yet most Americans are willing
to give up food and drinks just to get into a movie theater or
concert, give up small weapons they might need for self-defense just
to get in anywhere, and give up their right to expect privacy
wherever they go outside their own home. But most people don't even
have “their own home”, because the bank and the government
can always take it away.
Whenever public utilities
providers fail to deliver clean water, suitable, for drinking and
bathing, to the people who pay their salaries - and whenever
government places unnecessary obstructions to solving the problem
when water must be delivered to people who need it – we should let
our government's failed promises remind us of the Nazis' willful
betrayal.
But most importantly, I.C.E.
(U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) did use the promise
of baths – not showers, like the Jews, mind you; but baths
- in order to trick immigrant women into allowing officials to
take their children away.
According to Texas-based
federal public defender Miguel Nogueres, “Every day we hear that
parents are being separated from their children and are given
different reasons for the separation. Some are told the truth. Others
are told that [their] children are being taken for a break to play,
or bathe, or sleep, … little white lies to ameliorate an exploding
situation. The parents will realize they were lied to when they meet
us before court.”79
In a June 10, 2018 article for
the Boston Globe, entitled “'Children are being used as a
tool' in Trump's effort to stop border crossings”,80 Liz
Goodwin reported that “[Azalea] Aleman-Bendiks, the public
defender, said several of her clients have told her their children
were taken from them by Border Patrol agents who said they were going
to give them a bath. As the hours passed, it dawned on the mothers
the kids were not coming back.”
Goodwin continues, “In late
May, separated parents in McAllen [Texas] were given a number to call
HHS [the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services] and try to
locate their children. It was the wrong number. Last week [early June
2018], parents were given a handwritten note telling them to call ICE
– not HHS – if they wanted information about how to reunite with
their children. But parents did not have access to phones at the
time, rendering the number useless.”
Supporters of President
Trump's immigration policy doubt that the above story has any
veracity; they do not believe that there is any truth behind the
claim that immigrant children were separated from their parents
through promises of baths. But it is the truth, and any student of
history should hear serious alarm bells ringing in his head at the
similarity between this incident and the Nazis' gassing of Jews after
they were told they were about to take showers.
Sure, this is slightly
different, because the Jews were gassed to death, while the
immigrant children are merely missing... but to those who
would make that argument, I ask: What makes you so certain that many
of those immigrant children didn't die too?
4. Most Americans Don't Mind Spending too Much, Working too Hard, to Earn Special Treatment
5. Unpaid Prison Labor and For-Profit Prisons Are on the Rise
6. Fear-Mongering About Disease-Carrying Immigrants Prompts Calls for Ethnic Cleansing
7. U.S. Immigration Authorities Sprayed Immigrants with Zyklon-B, Once Used to Gas Jews
8. Authorities Are Spraying People with Noxious Gas at the Border Right Now
9. Calling Welfare Recipients and Immigrants “Parasites” Normalizes Dehumanization
10. Americans of Both Major Parties Justify Abortion if it's of “the Right Race”
11. Immigrants Are Depicted as Invading Hordes of Barbarians, Like the Jews Were
12. Immigrants Are Depicted as Both “Lazy” and “Taking Your Jobs”, Like the Jews Were
13. President Trump Has Promulgated Stereotypes About Hispanics, Muslims, and Jews
14. President Trump Said He'd Consider Creating a Database of Muslim-Americans
15. President Trump Encourages His Supporters to Harm Protesters and Dissidents
16. Trump's Ex-Wife Claims He Reads and Admires the Fascist Italian Dictator Benito Mussolini
17. President Trump Wants to Amend or Repeal the Birthright Citizenship Clause
18. The President Wants Dictatorial Power, and Congress Has Historically Given it to Him
19. The 2020 Census Could Be Used as an Excuse to Arrest and Deport Undocumented Immigrants
20. The U.S. Already Practices Internment of “Undesirables” and Maintains Concentration Camps
21. People Still Excuse F.D.R. for Refusing to Let Undocumented Jewish Refugees In
22. The Democratic Party's Love of Big Government Makes Authoritarianism Unavoidable
23. An I.C.E. Official Said They're “Just Following Orders”, Like the Nazi Adolf Eichmann Did
24. Trump's Former Press Correspondent Claimed That the Nazis Never Used Chemical Weapons
25. Ultra-Nationalism, Nativism, and Extreme Anti-Immigration Policies Are the New Normal
26. American Citizens in Good Standing Are Already Losing Their Citizenship Without Cause
27. Right-Wingers in Germany, Austria, Italy,
etc. Hope to Form an "Axis" to Solve Immigration
28. Democrats' Enthusiastic Support for Assimilation Plays Right into Republicans' Hands
29. Americans of Both Major Parties Demonize the Far Left, Communism, and All Things Foreign
30. Obama Democrats Made it Difficult to Get Away with Calling the President Racist or Fascist
31. Strong Anti-Fascism is Virtually Non-Existent in Libertarian Circles, the One Place it Matters
32. I.C.E. Separates People by Age and Sex, Like the Nazis Did
33. I.C.E. Confiscates Religious Items, Like the Nazis and Communists Did
34. Post-9/11 Fear of Foreigners and Middle Easterners Threatens the Safety of Jewish People
35. A Growing Number of Americans Want to Silence Discussion of Israel
36. All Criticism of the State of Israel is Deemed Anti-Semitic, and This Silences Jewish Voices
37. Promoting Jewish Stereotypes is Publicly Acceptable in America Nowadays
38. Many Jewish-Americans Have Been Legally, and Voluntarily, Disarmed
39. Israeli Ultra-Nationalism is on the Rise, and Gaza is Already a Concentration Camp
40. George W. Bush's Grandfather Was a War Profiteer, and Bush Loyalists Are Still in Office
41. American Companies That Financed Nazis and the Holocaust Are Still Around, and Popular
42. Americans and Soviets Imported Nazi Scientists As Part of Operation Paperclip
43. Americans Call for More Non-White Police, While Nazis Rewarded Loyalty with Police Posts
44. Many Americans Are Desensitized to Violence, and See Mass Murder as Something Funny
45. A Literal Nazi Ran for U.S. House of Representatives and Won His Nomination Uncontested
46. American Culture is Awash in Alcohol, Which Was Given to Jews to Cope with Their Conditions
47. American Culture Values Competitiveness in Sports, the Economy, and Even Survival
The explanation for reasons #4-#47 will be posted here soon.
Written
on November 20th
through 22nd, 2018
Originally
Published on November 22nd, 2018
Ending of Section #3 Added on November 23rd, 2018
Edited and Expanded on November 28th and December 19th, 2018
Edited on November 30th, 2018
