Reflections During Passover On Sean Spicer’s Holocaust Denial

Spicer’s anti-Semitic dog whistles are indicative of a White House plague of darkness.

O n Tuesday, the first day of Passover, Jews across the country celebrated by recounting the story of our exodus from slavery in Egypt—followed by 40 years as refugees wandering through the desert in our quest for freedom. And in New York City, at an interfaith seder outside the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement building, progressive Jewish leaders sang a revised version of Moses’ famous demand: Let My People Stay.

At the same time, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer held a press conference declaring that Adolph Hitler didn’t use chemical weapons against “his own people” — certainly not “innocent people” — during World War II. He marshaled this jaw-droppingly ahistoric alternative fact as justification for the Trump administration bombing Syria, where the murderous Bashar al-Assad has used sarin gas to terrorize and kill his citizens.

As a secular Jew I didn’t attend a seder this year, but I didn’t need to symbolically dip bitter herbs in salt water to remember the tears we shed in bondage all those centuries ago. Instead, I ugly-cried alone in my living room as I watched the spokesperson for an administration filled with Nazi…