Here is a link to “A Night at the Garden”, a brief documentary depicting a Nazi rally that took place at Madison Square Garden in New York on February 20th 1939:
https://anightatthegarden.com/
This was before the outbreak of World War ll in Europe – in September of that year – and shortly after British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had met with German Dictator Adolf Hitler and proclaimed “Peace in our time”.The documentary is particularly chilling at this time, when the Republicans are trying to use the purportedly anti-Semitic remarks of Representative Ilhan Omar, the recently-elected Muslim Democratic member of the House of Representatives, to paint the Democratic Party as anti-Semitic. Based on media coverage and personal observation, they seem to be succeeding to some extent, in spite of the fact that their assertions are demonstrably false. Let’s look at the facts.
While Jews make up only 1.4% of the US population, twenty four – 11% – of the members of the Democratic caucus in the House of Representatives are Jewish; and seven (15%) of the forty-seven Democrats in the Senate are Jewish. On the other side, there are only two Jewish Republicans in the House and no Jewish Republican senators. Also, out of a total of 3.45 million Muslim citizens here – 1.2% of the US population – there are only three Muslim Democrats in the House and no Muslims of either party in the Senate.
The rally at the Garden depicted in this documentary shows how Nazi propaganda incited a huge audience of Americans to raise their arms in salute and shout “Heil Hitler”. The disturbing factor in the Trump era is how this is echoed by the partisan rallies that Trump continues to hold while in office, which are unprecedented for a sitting president. In these rallies he incites his supporters to shout “Lock her up”, to paint the free press as the enemy of the people, to disparage his perceived enemies – including even the deceased hero John McCain, to insult his predecessors and to throw other divisive red meat to his supporters. Whether wittingly or unwittingly, Trump is using Hitler’s methods.
All of this is a little less frightening than it would have been if the Democrats had not won a big victory in November 2018, but it is still jarringly at odds with American democracy, values, standards of decency and morality. However, it is a real possibility that, if the Democrats had not won control of the House last November, we could be on our way to a dictatorship right now. If you think this seems overly alarmist, I would simply say that, in February 1939, neither the American nor the British people believed that Hitler’s dictatorship would lead to a world war in which over fifty million people died, including six million Jews – more than a third of the Jewish population of the world. And, as long as we have an autocratic and mentally disturbed person in the Oval Office, the danger to our democracy remains. That is why Trump must be contained by democratic pressure until the next election; and voted out, if he is still in office, at that time.
Gerry Meandering 