We ask whether we owe it to our ancestors who were swallowed by the Holocaust to decry Trump, Bannon, et. al., as shoving us down the slippery slope into the territory of Never-Again, or whether we owe it to them to not besmirch their tragedy by comparing it to the world’s present political woes.
I wish that folks on the left had somewhat more ability to distinguish between Nazis and Conservatives. It’s fine not to like Steve Bannon, but it’s not okay to smear him as anti-Semitic neo-Nazi goon. Conflating White Supremacists with Breitbart, Bannon or Trump demonstrates an intellectual laziness that is both shameful and despicable. Obama was embraced and extolled by all sorts of nasty fringe figures on the left, but no one confused him with them. Yet when David Duke cheers for Trump, fools on the left immediately merge the two of them into one single, frightful monster.
Israeli journalists whom I respect, such as Caroline Glick, Naomi Ragen, and Martin Sherman, who are conservative but not stupid, have uniformly defended Breitbart as a pro-Israel, pro-Jewish site that gives no platform to anti-Semitic articles. Yet the “progressive” Jewish community prefers to believe otherwise without any real basis to support their ignorance and prejudice on the matter.
For the record, I am the child of two Polish Jews who met at Auschwitz, and I voted for Trump.
Best regards,
-Sam Hilt