Wednesday, October 5, 2016

Have these Jews forgotten what Fascism looks like?



According to the Religion News Service, Jewish voters favor Clinton over Trump by a wide margin.  Here's the key extract:

"... 61 percent of Jewish adults said Clinton and 19 percent picked GOP nominee Trump in the American Jewish Committee survey."    
Whole story here.
All well and good.  But it begs the question: What exactly do the remaining 19% of Jewish voters see in a Trump presidency? According to the article, some are annoyed by the nuclear deal the US and our allies made with Iran, but can that really account for almost one in five Jews preferring the obscenity, xenophobia, and fascist like concepts Trump has expressed as his platform?

Having come from a Jewish family, one that lost relatives in the Holocaust, the similarity between Trump's programs ...one might say "solutions" ... to our national ills is so blatantly fascist that it makes one blanch, or should.
 

It  includes singling out of minorities, Mexicans, Muslims  and Blacks.  According to Trump he'd reinstate water boarding ("enhanced interrogation" is the nice term), profiling, and  "stop and frisk" (which has been declared unconstitutional).  How one can hear that, read that, and not think: "I vant to see your papers mein herr!" baffles me.

Oh but of course,  anyone who is or looks black or Muslim or Mexican has to be up to something.  His declaration that Muslims know more than they tell, that we must treat Muslim "neighborhoods" differently;  that every illegal Mexican is a rapist or criminal (after all "someone is doing all the raping!") and must be rounded up; that Blacks are their own worst enemy and are the highest crime producing people in the nation...all of it speaks of demonization, of scapegoating that smacks of totalitarianism.
 

How does an educated Jew who knows anything about the Holocaust accept the singling out of minorities today, any more than they would have accept the singling out of Gypsies, Jews, the physically handicapped, the Trade Unionists, the Socialists in Germany and then across Europe?

Can it truly be  "Well, I'm not a  Black, or Mexican or Muslim, so what do I care?."  Can 75 years of time have really blunted the horror that such "special treatment" and "solutions" delivered? Can they really embrace the "It can't happen here." fallacy? Can those 19% of Jews be so callous or so blind or so hateful that they'll readily wear the same emblem that their ancestors' persecutors wore in the last century, just invisibly?

No explanation or commitment to other national issues could justify this obscenity among people who shouldn't have to think twice about it.  1 in 5 Jews will vote for Trump!!??  It's enough to make me ashamed of my Jewish  roots. 
 

       

9 comments:

NewEnglandBob said...

I certainly don't understand it.

Dromedary Hump said...

Good...for a while there I thought it was just me.

longhorn believer said...

Are there some Jews that have enough resentment towards the establishment, or have economic concerns they think Trump will solve?

Dromedary Hump said...

You mean like how some Italians turned a blind eye to Mussolini's fascism because he made the trains run on time?
I don't know.

Jono said...

I guess there are always a certain percentage of idiots in any segment of the population.

paul said...

@Jono:
True. It's important to remember that half the population is below "average" in intelligence.

FredT said...

I agree with what you are saying but... if you single yourself out as a group separate from "society", you yourself are not part of the society. So if you are not one of us, then why would we care?
That is the problem of "nationalism" or "religion" or for that matter atheist.

Dromedary Hump said...

Fre,
I do not understand your comment entirely. Who has singled themselves/ourselves out as a group separate from society?

The point of my article is that people who should..of all people... have learned the lessons of what fascism brings, should see the handwriting on the wall. I bemoaned the fact that 19% seem not to have learned it..or are willing to repeat it. It doesn't separate them from society, it separates them from the thinking.

As for why we should care about "the other" if that means Jews, atheists, or any identifiable subgroup of Americans (AMERICANS!!) I'll simply direct you to Martin Niemöller's famous quote.

"First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."


THAT'S why we should care.

David said...

Religion is fundamentally fascist in its nature. It is authoritarian and intolerant of differing viewpoints, and a threat to democracy.

That is why we as atheists should care. The preachers preach at the pulpits what may be one person's moral utopia, but another person's oppression. That is worth fighting against, because it will be only a matter of time before the preachers turn their attention to what matters to you, and it is yourself that is feeling oppressed.