By Aldous Tyler
Journalist and Blogger
I fight Nazis. I make no apologies. My grandfather fought Nazis—there was no alternative. Nazis were evil incarnate, to be taken down without hesitation. Everything else took a back seat to that #1 priority.
Whenever elections come around, people forget themselves. Problems, genuine or imagined, get blown out of proportion. As all sides heat up, comparisons to fascism, no matter how misplaced, fly freely. YOUR champion is the greatest hero since Lincoln; THEIR contender is the most despicable villain since Senator Palpatine.
Or Adolf Hitler.
Lazy rationales, along with a reckless “us vs. them” mentality in modern debates assures that accusations of Nazi-level fascism is where most online arguments inevitably wind up. This effect is so common, it’s got its own theorem, “Godwin’s Law” (which allows for declaring the first troll to abuse this comparison the loser of a debate). In reality, virtually no modern candidate or officeholder has been malevolent enough to be properly considered a Nazi. When you contrast contemporary “evils” with the horrors inflicted against Jewish (and other) peoples by Germany 80 years ago, that quashes nearly any misuse of the term.
Every presidential election gets touted as “the most important of our lives!” That tactic is used to coerce anyone who can’t stomach either major-party candidate. Americans have a greater responsibility, though, to elect someone who represents what we believe is true, fair, or just. Otherwise, if our vote doesn’t represent our choice, we’re just going through the motions.
If you’ve ever engaged with any disenfranchised folk, you understand many can’t get behind Joe Biden’s Senate voting record, myself included. The reasons don’t matter now — just know I had no plans to support him, despite the added pressure of voting in a swing state. And, based on his history of capitulation to big money, I can’t trust any bones Joe throws to the left. Yet, Biden is no Nazi.
But there ARE Nazis in America today, gaining more power every day. That has my attention: I fight Nazis.
People can embrace symbols of hate just for the shock value, though. Those types aren’t Nazis. They may be fools, but if that was my benchmark, I’d never sleep.
People can believe Whites are the only true humans. Such people are racist. But not necessarily Nazis.
People can despise outsiders from “*$#!&hole* countries” sheltering here to escape the unspeakable circumstances they’ve fled, because THOSE people reproducing in this “once great nation” makes it less “like it USED to be.” Such people exude zero empathy (and appalling hypocrisy, given how many of our ancestors came to this place to escape terrifying situations elsewhere.) That’s hateful, but it doesn’t make them Nazis.
What does it take to label someone a Nazi? Nazis blatantly treat everyone who doesn’t meet their code as not just subhuman, but the enemy, befittingly tortured or killed. That’s a steep standard of evil. Even so, it grows among us. Let’s review the facts:
- In 2018, the last surviving Nuremberg prosecutor, Ben Ferencz, defined Trump’s policy of separating undocumented children from their parents as “a crime against humanity.”
- In 2019, top Trump adviser Stephen Miller was outed as a white nationalist in leaked emails, yet still continues to advise the president today.
- Trump has suggested to mostly white crowds at rallies that Whites are genetically superior.
- In Tuesday’s debate with Biden, Trump ordered known white supremacist group the “Proud Boys” to “stand back and stand by” in response to being asked to publicly disavow them.
These are textbook signs of fascism — enough to warrant the Nazi description of our leader by themselves. But it gets even worse…
- An ICE whistleblower complaint asserts captive immigrant women have been forcibly sterilized against their will while being concentrated in detention camps with inadequate facilities.*
*(Which, btw, meets the definitive classification of “concentration camp.”)
There’s only one step further into the Nazi playbook than that, so I have to do my part to make damn sure we never get there. Because, by any definition, the US President, IS a Nazi.
Most elections are showdowns, so voting third party is bringing a knife to a gunfight, thanks to the insufficient dual offerings of an ineffective two-party system. I have been at peace with brandishing that weapon when it represented the future I want for this nation. But right now, we have a Nazi to fight. There are only two guns in the current battleground that is the 2020 presidential election, and one of them is in the hands of a Nazi. I really don’t care anymore if the other gun is Biden. I have to pick it up and take my shot. Because I fight Nazis.
Published by Common Dreams, 10.06.2020, under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license.