Why Have We Forgotten to #NeverForget?
The Fact There Are Nazi Sympathizers In the White House Doesn’t Bother People As Much As It Should
I ran across an astounding piece a while back. Two-thirds of millennials can’t tell you what Auschwitz-Birkenau was, located in occupied Poland during World War II and one of 18 German Nazi concentration/extermination camps. This at a time when we are more at risk than ever from authoritarian advances on our democracy, which also involves people in power with known white supremacist and Nazi philosophical leanings.
Asked to identify what Auschwitz is, 41 percent of respondents and 66 percent of millennials could not come up with a correct response identifying it as a concentration camp or extermination camp. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum says that at least 1.3 million people were deported to the camp, run by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland, from 1940 to 1945, and 1.1 million of them were killed. It was the largest concentration camp among many built by the Nazis during their campaign to wipe out the Jews and other groups.
I grew up in the wake of World War II. My Arkansas grandfather enjoyed old war movies and shows, including say, ‘Hogan’s Heroes’. Images like the following were burned onto my consciousness in a way the #NeverForget movement needs. I read The Diary of Anne Frank while still in elementary school. I dated a Jewish guy for several years and once visited Dachau when I visited him in Germany. I was aware throughout my life that this is what my fellow humans are capable of. I wondered constantly: how did this happen? Could this ever happen again? Why were Jews, Roma people, intellectuals, LGBTQ persons, disabled people, and other political dissidents so systematically targeted? How did they manage to arrest and kill millions of people?
There was no answer other than the fact that a regime full of hatred and greed was allowed to rise to power in Germany in the 1930s. There was some resistance from German citizens who tried hiding people who were targeted, but for the most part average Germans liked these new trends. And they were seemingly happy to hate anyone their government told them to.
Why Does This Matter So Much in 2018?
There have been numerous Nazi sympathizers in control of our country since Trump’s inauguration in January of 2017. Trump himself has notable white supremacist tendencies (his father was involved with the KKK) and was said to keep a book of Hitler’s speeches in his nightstand while married to Ivana Trump. Soon after the inauguration he hired a cast of absolutely evil characters to round out his White House, apparently inspired by Hitler’s prowess for propaganda.
Stephen Miller is a known white nationalist and was picked to head up Trump’s speech writing and policy efforts, making him the custodian of the heart and soul of the Trump regime. He was just 31 when he was picked for a senior White House adviser role and already had known ties to Neo-Nazi groups. He exhibits a gleeful enthusiasm for stringent immigration laws and is purported to really enjoy seeing photos from the regime’s camps for migrant children.
Steve Bannon of Breitbart News infamy left his post at Breitbart to join Trump’s senior policy team. He was heavily involved in organizing the Unite the Right event in Charlottesville and has known affiliations with various Neo-Nazi characters. He left the Trump Administration in 2017 to return to Breitbart, who are well-know for their anti-immigrant, anti-Islam, anti-women, anti-Left diatribes.
Sebastian Gorka. who is originally from Hungary, is another key Trump White House player (‘Counter-Terrorism Expert) with Nazi connections. Vitezi Rend is a Hungarian organization that was founded in 1920 and is said to have been complicit in the murder of hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews during WWII.
The Politics of Racism and Hatred
So how did we get here? Well, Trump himself is a well-known racist and white supremacist, who employs plenty of Latinos and African-Americans, but only tolerates them when there is an opportunity to exploit their labor. Like the German Nazis, he has repeatedly over the years lauded his ‘superior genes’. Just this week, Trump called an African-American female, Omarosa Manigualt, a dog for trying to call him out on his racist comments. Trump has also mocked disabled people, which is something he has tried to deny but is well-documented.
Trump’s hatred of women has also been on display, but the fact is he doesn’t mind women as long as he think they also exhibit ‘superior genes’, which seems to also require that they are young and hot enough to catch his attention:
The family subscribes to a racehorse theory of human development. They believe that there are superior people and that if you put together the genes of a superior woman and a superior man, you get a superior offspring.
His hatred of and vitriol towards women who oppose him is also extremely well-documented:
Taking a page from the Nazi playbook, Trump and various advisers have used terminology that paints minorities as murderers, rapists, criminals, and has used animal slurs against their opponents.
Trump reminded them the crowds loved his rhetoric on immigrants along the campaign trail. Acting as if he was at a rally, he then read aloud a few made up Hispanic names and described potential crimes they could have committed, like rape or murder. Then, he said, the crowds would roar when the criminals were thrown out of the country — as they did when he highlighted crimes by illegal immigrants at his rallies, according to a person present for the exchange and another briefed on it later. Miller and Kushner laughed.
You can hear it yourself from Trump as he peddles known eugenics propaganda several decades ago:
Perhaps the most telling evidence of Trump’s sympatico with both historical and modern Nazi and white supremacist rhetoric is his support among Neo-Nazi groups and the KKK — David Duke is a major supporter, as is Richard Spencer:
“Hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory!”
That’s how Richard B. Spencer saluted more than 200 attendees on Saturday, gathered at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, D.C., for the annual conference of the National Policy Institute, which describes itself as “an independent organization dedicated to the heritage, identity, and future of people of European descent in the United States, and around the world.” (The Atlantic)
Trump’s attacks on the free press are also a known Nazi trope and something that should cause great concern. The job of the free press in any democracy is to hold the powerful accountable when they step beyond the bounds of acceptable behavior.
The Trump Regime’s Own Concentration Camps
While few of us can imagine the horror of living in a country that inflicts genocide on millions of people, there is a well-known slippery slope towards authoritarianism via the systematic incitement of hatred towards groups that don’t conform to their white supremacist utopian vision. The Trump Administration’s stance on refugees and asylum seekers is shocking, especially since Trump’s and Stephen Miller’s family were refugees themselves.
In short, we should be afraid at this time in our history. I believe we all have a duty and responsibility to at least not be silent about these important matters. But more importantly we need to all be organizing our resistance to concepts and policies that should be anathema to us all at this point. It is well established that Trump and his associates have colluded with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, himself an authoritarian in the vein of Hitler, who is rapidly advancing on a number of nations, including our own.
Will you join me in never forgetting and never again allowing such atrocities to occur without censure and resistance? #NeverForget #NeverAgain #TheResistance
About Me: I am an anthropologist, futurist, veteran, and Mom to a transgender teen. I am a former Russian linguist, studied Soviet politics and culture, and taught media and propaganda.
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