[Quincy Lehr]

If this wasn't already clear, give THIS a read. An unsubtle defense of unsubtle slurs, entirely in keeping with the general m.. of Bolsonaro's biggest American fan.

[Mark McDonnell]

Yep. My god, what an absolute dick.

And how utterly dishonest and cowardly to not even include this, the actual tweet that is the focus of the anger, where Trump straightforwardly tells these four American born congresswomen (apart from one who has lived there from age 12, I think?) to ‘go back to where they came from’. Racism doesn't get much plainer.

So interesting to see “Progressive” Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly....and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.

Instead, this guy tries to paint it like Trump was just doing the old belligerent, right wing ‘love it or leave it’ thing.

I think Trump should be made go back to Scotland to see if he can fix the social problems of Govan or Drumchapel in Glasgow. And if he can't do it in 6 weeks the Scots are allowed to put him in a sack and chuck him in the Clyde.

Also, I don’t know what conclusions to draw, but Roger Kimball’s smug smile (in that hideous caricature) is virtually identical to Nigel Farage’s.

[John Isbell]

Defending Trump's tweet is pretty clearly contemptible, and this combines that with radical dishonesty in not citing what it's defending. Of course, pretty much the entire GOP has taken it upon themselves to do just that, from the politicians in their thousands to the base in its millions. Welcome to America (love it or leave it), my homeland.

Cheers,
John

[Aaron Novick]

It's not a fact that I am proud of, and I am always working to better myself, but if I received news of Roger Kimball suffering extreme physical distress for an extended period of time, it would cause me a lot of pleasure.

Nazi fuck.

[Mark McDonnell]

Hey Aaron,

I am prepared to be persuaded that I'm wrong, but something about the frequency with which people get called 'Nazis' these days feels a bit weird. Between them, the trio of Trump, Bolsonaro and this Kimball guy are utterly objectionable, homophobic, nationalistic, misogynist, racist arseholes. My objection to the word isn't through any sense of fairness to them at all, but more out of respect for people who suffered under the actual Nazis who, when they were in power, sent 6 million people to the gas chambers in four short years. I understand the idea of vigilance in order to make sure this never happens again, but in the meantime I think the casual use of the word can diminish the horror of what happened in the 30s and 40s. Just my instinctive take.

Best

Mark

[Roger Slater]

Mark, don't assume that the use of the word "Nazi" is casual or disrepectful to the victims of the Third Reich. Perhaps it is less clear from the other side of the Atlantic, but over here there are lots and lots of us who are deeply afraid of what's going on, and the comparison to Nazi Germany isn't flip but entirely serious. I wonder if people in Germany in the 1930s were told to be careful not to compare what was happening there to the Armenian genocide? At any rate, thousands of people are being locked up on our southern border in conditions that do not even satisfy the Geneva convention, and it's being justified with racist rhetoric by the president himself in language that is specifically defined under US law as constituting illegal harassment. Yes, millions of people have not been murdered, but waiting for that to happen before using the right word to describe what's happening isn't an attractive option.

[Aaron Novick]

I am a Jew by birth, I grew up being told "never again", and while I no longer identify as a Jew, *that* part of my upbringing I take immensely seriously.

Trump, with Kimball as his enthusiastic cheerleader, is using Nazi rhetoric, running concentration camps, and cultivating ICE as an extrajudicial terror squad.

What is the purpose of instilling the mantra "never again" in generations of Jews if, when "again" begins, we haggle and pick away at "well this isn't exactly the same, there are pertinent differences, let's not disrespect the Jews (inter alia) who suffered and died" until we're blue in the face?

To do that, to refuse to allow for the historical comparisons until the death camps start, is to make "never again" a toothless bit of rhetoric meant to make us feel good in our hearts, with no meaningful relationship to making sure analogs to those atrocities never happen again.

That, to me, is to *actually* disrespect the suffering of those who died and were tortured during the Holocaust.

"Nazi" is not an accusation I make lightly. It's an accusation I make out of both careful consideration and deep dread and horror.

[Mark McDonnell]

You may well be right Roger.

Aaron, we cross-posted. I said I might be persuaded otherwise and you do a pretty good job of it. I am sure you don't use the term casually, just as my qualms about its use weren't meant to be casual or flippant.

Thanks for making me think.

[Aaron Novick]

Mark, I have some reading suggestions for you that back up the points made in my last post:

First, here is a good NYT op-ed on the topic, written by Jason Stanley, a professor of philosophy at Yale who recently published a (very good) book called How Fascism Works: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/04/o...trump-ice.html

Second, here is an open letter from a large number of Holocaust historians slamming the Holocaust museum's spineless decision to complain about people calling the ICE camps what they are: https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/0...morial-museum/

edit: Mark, this cross-posted with your edit. I am glad that I have gone some way toward persuading you. There are not many issues on which I'm confident I am right, and fewer still where I am both confident I am right and believe it's important that others agree with me, but this is one of them.

[Mark McDonnell]

Thanks for those Aaron. I do see the strengths in your viewpoint. I appreciate the opportunity to question my instincts. Trump's administration is beyond the pale. It is abnormal. That's beyond question. Maybe the best way of being vigilant is to name it as being the thing it could easily mutate into, even if it isn't there yet. Really, I was questioning the word Nazi to describe anyone who champions Trump, however odious they might be. The Holocaust museum's stance is kind of extreme more than spineless, I think. It doesn't just object to the analogy between the border camps and the Nazi concentration camps so much as it objects to any analogies. It "unequivocally rejects efforts to create analogies between the Holocaust and other events, whether historical or contemporary". I suppose when a group has suffered such extremes, it can lead to an attitude of extreme protectiveness, almost, over the nature of that suffering.