PrintFebruary 13, 2007
Trivializing anti-Semitism
The Associated Press reported that
"Republican Mitt Romney's choice of a museum honoring auto pioneer Henry Ford as the site of his presidential announcement was strongly criticized Monday by Jewish Democrats, who noted Ford's history of anti-Semitism."
And Hitler loved puppy dogs, so dog lovers must be suspect as well. At least, if they are Republican dog lovers.
In a world where Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denies the Holocaust, while rushing to prepare a second, nuclear one, and Leftist Noam Chomsky travels to Lebanon to congratulate Tehran's favorite Hezbollah puppet just before he kills more than one hundred Jewish civilians in Israel, in a world where the Left is again holding hands with fascists (this time around, Islamist ones), it is a disaster to trivialize the charge of anti-Semitism. Ferocious hatred of Jews or Blacks is a lot more serious than that. Political demagogues exploit that hatred for their own uses, and make it much worse.
To use racism or anti-Semitism to play guilt-by-association games in American politics is to trivialize what those hatreds really are. It destroys the language, and creates the suspicion that accusations of "racist!" and "anti-Semite!" are all fraudulent.
The Hitler Holocaust is much too real to utilize for scoring petty partisan Brownie points. So is Ahmadinejad's massive effort to repeat that history.
The Hitler Holocaust is much too real to utilize for scoring petty partisan Brownie points. So is Ahmadinejad's massive effort to repeat that history.
Shame on the "National Jewish Democratic Council" for so abusing the horrors of the past. In my mind they have just destroyed their own credibility.
