Monday, January 30, 2017

“Unabashed racism”

How these go together: Donald Trump, Holocaust denial, Muslim bans and Japanese internment camps

Image result for jewish refugees turned awayThere is a biting symmetry that Holocaust Remembrance Day, and the failure of the Trump Administration to mention the Jewish people in its statement, occurred at the same time the Administration was blowing up American immigration policy in a way that harkened back to the years before World War II.

For all the reverence in which President Franklin Roosevelt is rightly held, one of the most lasting shames of his presidency was how his government - our United States - turned away boatloads of Jewish refugees fleeing Europe, most of whom returned to their death.

Another lasting shame was the scapegoating of patriotic Japanese Americans who were sent to internment camps based solely on their ethnic heritage.

These twin stains on our national history see fearsome echoes in our own time.



Image result for japanese internment camps
Racism against Japanese-Americans after Pearl Harbor
Whitewashing history to the degree of removing the Jewish people - the 6 million killed and the millions more with ruined lives - from the story of the Holocaust?


Alienating people around the world today along ethnic and religious lines?

And in so doing not only undermining our morality but our national security?

Turning a blind eye to the desperate suffering of others? This is not our national character. And these are not accidental actions.

Image result for syrian refugees
These are the people Donald Trump wants you to hate
One must ask, who is this crowd playing to?

And with Steve Bannon as arguably President Trump's chief advisor, and after all the rhetoric from the campaign, the burden of proof is on the Administration to show that their impulses are not those of unabashed racism.


So far, they are falling far short of that burden.