The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’s Antisemitic Dad And Why Anyone Listens To His Crap.

Posted On 2024-07-23

You never know who you’re talking to on the internet. That profile picture, that bio, AI isn’t even the boogeyman here- a simple copy-paste may have created a cypher and left you to personify it. And even if that person is real, and is who they claim to be, there’s no telling whether the perspective they’re espousing is their own. The heroes of Anonymous sold out in a heartbeat to the likes of Karl Rove. There is actual math counting the thousands of racist/homophobic X profiles/accounts operated by Russian nationals. And capitalism can’t even be the culprit here- the sheer thrill of trolling could easily be driving the most reasonable mind to say the dumbest noise just for chuckles.

So when you see a Facebook group, for example, called Jews for Trump, there is absolutely no way of knowing what or who is actually going on there. Maybe it’s a paid Russian plant, maybe it’s one of the Christian faithful being charitable, maybe it’s just some 15-year-old being some 15-year-old. Among the followers of the group, the subscribers, whichever, there is just as much mystery. There are however some likelihoods in that crowd. There is a likelihood, for example, that a group called Jews for Trump would attract followers simply curious to see if there were in fact any Jews for Trump. But there is also likelihood that a group called Jews for Trump would actually attract actual Jews in favor of Donald Trump’s re-election. Then of course there are the trolls. So while percentages may be impossible to call, there remains a likelihood that the group’s rolls would include members of the Jewish faith acting in support of the leader of a Nazi party.

Which kind of begs the question …why?

To be sure, this is the internet. Until proven real (myself included), it’s entirely possible one is not. But the other day I joined a dinner with an older man in attendance- seemingly as proud of his Jewish faith as he was of the clearly educated eloquence of newly named BP candidate Herr Vance.

The premise of this essay, and indeed of reality, is that Jewish support for republicans is not merely equivalent to their support for a genuine devil of history, it is in fact direct support for the direct heirs of the Nazis themselves. It is presumptuous, partisan, and hyperbolic of me to stay further that such individuals have at a minimum been profoundly misled, but at the mean are probably being just as willfully ignorant as the rest of Donald Trump’s devout faithful. Reality it turns out is equally presumptuous, partisan, and hyperbolic; fairness is as much a creation of human fallibility as anything else.

To continue further I first need to address an axiomatic premise that has evolved from nothing into a foundational belief for some. There is on the one hand the entirely correct and valid take on the Holocaust as a uniquely and profoundly antisemitic event in the history of the world. It is entirely for the Jews of the world to decide for themselves not only how they want to internalize that cultural horror, but also how they would want to have their fellow man educated by all that spilled blood.

There is on the other hand the notion that the Nazis were a specifically anti-Semitic operation. This premise is patently false and must be undone, it is casting a shade that obscures the present. Yes, there is no question that the Nazis- before they were defeated- had committed themselves to the extermination of Jews around the world. But pause there, really pause, and ask yourself- is there really any question whether the most bloodthirsty and murderous white supremacists in history would have voluntarily stopped after eradicating the folks who looked most like them? The Nazis in our history books are an antisemitic group by definition because they were stopped before they had the opportunity to branch out. Had Rommel held Africa, that beachhead would have absolutely been the gateway to the enslavement and massacre of the subcontinent. The fact that they were IN Africa made clear that they had intentions there. The anecdotal hallmark of Nazism is anti-Semitism, but the factual hallmark of Nazism is a simple inclination towards intolerant violence.

And the actual self-identified Nazi party was a legitimate player in German politics for years before they started putting people in ovens. That doesn’t mean they were good guys until the day of.

So it doesn’t take antisemitism to define a Nazi, it doesn’t take a Holocaust to establish their presence. And let’s be very realistic here- it doesn’t even require the subtlety with which I’m approaching the subject here. White supremacists, on camera, carrying Nazi Flags have been, on camera, praised for their character by Donald Trump. I’ve still got a few more paragraphs here fired up and ready to go, but if his crowd were genuinely interested in learning all they would need to do is roll tape.

It was 18 years from the inception of Germany’s Nazi Party to Kristallnacht. Took the Tea Party half that time to start putting their unwanted in cages.

But anyway, given the premise, I get it. If you take away the requirement that Nazis be anti-Semitic, then no- today’s Republicans don’t necessarily seem like Nazis at all. Again, setting aside the explicit support given to the swastika, but whatever. They’re all about Israel’s right to defend itself. There’s no hesitation in Washington right now on behalf of Palestinians, and Republicans are leading the charge. They are as pro-Israel, and therefore as pro-Jewish, as you can get!

This is however, also a big world, and even the bloodshed in the Middle East is still part of a larger context. Who else for example are the Republicans supporting out there? The Russians against Ukraine. How is that not as telling as their support for Israel? How are the red flags from one made invisible by the green flags from the other? The wannabe Empire seeking domination over another’s cultural Homeland? The exact same Empire, for the record, that pressed the Jews from Russia into Europe in the first place. What embrace is being offered by Tsar Vlad? If the enemy of your enemy is your friend, what is the friend of your enemy? And what do you call them if they’re the same person? A Republican.

So sure, a little troubling perhaps on the white supremacist front, but just look at all the money and all those bombs. Look at the hugs for King Bibi. These people aren’t violently-inclined, they’re not antisemites!

Unless you’ve never heard of Timothy McVeigh. Unless you’ve only seen the Newsmax coup. Except you don’t really need to see THAT raw footage, any more than you need to see the raw footage of Trump praising open Nazis. There are signs all over, and the best ones don’t even require sugarcoating by Fox. Pols in Louisiana and Oklahoma requiring by law the instruction of the Bible and the Commandments to public schoolkids.

To Muslim kids.

To Jewish kids.

To *Jewish* kids.

This is not the act of an altruistic partner, this is the act of an oppressor. This is the institutional faith of the Republican Party, that nonbelievers require indoctrination and conditioning, and that if they have to publicly hang one of their own to make it happen, then that’s just the way it needs to go. That the huddled masses out there yearning to breathe free, belong behind bars behind walls without windows.

If they hadn’t claimed the name of the Grand Old Party, if you heard their conduct described without their being identified, you would hear the anger. You would hear the racism. You would hear the violence. And it would not be unlikely for you to think of these thugs as just another set of petty fascists with dangerous ambitions.

And you would be right.

The Tea Party isn’t THE Nazi Party, they lack the cojones. But they are A Nazi Party, without any doubt. Anyone who isn’t at the top of the same Nazi totem is still going to wind up in the ground. People who support even wannabe Nazis are, to revisit reality, either painfully misinformed or painfully inhumane. Members of the Jewish faith who do so are no exception, and are exceptional only in their denial of history, the present, and irony in equal parts.

Conceptually I get it. But the reality of not just agreeing with, but explicitly promoting your forbears’ killers while they are actively and explicitly coming after your family, your descendants, I just can’t fathom it.

The premise of this essay is that the sky is blue. Fight me.