Trump And Re-Learning Lessons Of The Holocaust

Yesterday, many countries held Holocaust Memorial Days, commemorating the victims of Nazi genocide in World War II.  Dana Milbank spoke with some Holocaust survivors and writes about lessons of the Holocaust that need to be re- learned today in light of a certain neo- fascist bag o' farts and his imitators:

This year’s Holocaust remembrance comes at a time when Donald Trump, the front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination, retweets to his nearly 6 million followers a message from @WhiteGenocideTM based in “Jewmerica,” and a time when his nearest challenger, Ted Cruz, brandishes the endorsement of a minister who says Hitler was a “hunter” sent after the Jews by God. There has never been a more important time for Americans to heed the moral authority of the Holocaust survivors still among us.

“It’s really frightening,” said Al Munzer, hidden as an infant in the Netherlands with a Dutch family and their Muslim nanny. “When you see these mass rallies that Trump is able to attract, you really wonder: How are they buying into this message of hate?”  [snip]

Now an American presidential candidate has made scapegoats of immigrants, Muslims, Latinos, African Americans, the disabled, women. And for the first time, Martin Weiss hears echoes of his youth. “The guy scares me,” he said after listening to the ambassador’s tribute. “I don’t want to make any comparison to Hitler, but believe it or not his delivery and the way he conducts himself is very similar to Hitler’s way of doing things. He discredits everybody who disagrees with him. He’s insulting. He discriminates against everybody.”  (our emphasis)

Despite the media's soft- focus on the person many of them continue to call "The Donald," and attempts to patronize him as just a buffoon who eventually will be exposed, the truth is Donald "Rump" Trump is a dangerous man with dangerous motivations appealing to the lizard brain of an authoritarian- loving base.  He enthralls the clueless, supine media (today's print edition of the once great Washington Post Bezos Bugle has a full page and a half just about Rump and his "falling out" with Fox "News"!) and looks increasingly likely to be the Presidential candidate of one of our two major parties.  More and more "establishment" Republicans are seemingly resigning themselves to him as their nominee, or as Milbank put it in an earlier op/ ed, "That soft flapping sound you hear is the Grand Old Party waving the flag of surrender to Trump."

When we look at the Stormtrumpers at Rump rallies, we see the mindless hate, the scapegoating, the mis- directed anger, the latent (and real) violence -- and an authoritarian demagogue stoking and leading the mob, animated by his narcissistic ego and a sense of victimhood (see Kelly, Megyn).  It sounds familiar to us, too, Mr. Weiss.