Johnson, Weld should be wary of Holocaust analogies

By Donald H. Harrison

Donald H. Harrison
Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO – The Libertarian party, with two former Republican governors chosen Sunday to head its ticket, will be important to watch in the run-up to the November presidential election, because it may be a place where Republicans who are unhappy with Donald Trump can go and still feel good about their votes.

Such Republicans could solace themselves that they aren’t voting directly for Democrat Hillary Clinton, but nevertheless they could hurt Trump, especially in the battleground states.

The presidential nominee Gary Johnson is the former governor of New Mexico, and the vice presidential nominee is William Weld, the former governor of Massachusetts.

Johnson and Weld will need to be careful how they make references to the Holocaust if they don’t wish to inadvertently alienate important blocs of Jewish voters.

Before he won his party’s nomination, Johnson allowed himself to be trapped by an opponent, Austin Petersen, into making a wrongful Holocaust comparison. Debating Johnson’s support of laws requiring businesses to provide their services or products equally to gay and straight people, Petersen asked whether a Jewish baker should be forced to bake a Nazi cake.  Instead of rejecting the analogy—which was specious—Johnson said yes, the baker should be so forced.

This caused an outcry from some in the Jewish community that Johnson is insensitive to the true meaning of the Holocaust, notwithstanding the fact that Johnson had served five years as an appointee of U.S. President George W. Bush on the United States Holocaust Commission.

Johnson should have replied that to compare the LGBT community to Nazis libels the LGBT community, who are people with God-given rights, and most certainly are not mass murderers like the Nazis.  He further should have admonished Petersen for trivializing the Holocaust in an effort to win a debating point.

Weld faces a similar problem.  When he heard of Trump’s proposals to deport all illegal immigrants and to build a wall to keep others out, as well as his call for a ban on Muslim immigration to the United States, Weld said he could hear the glass of Kristallnacht shattering.

Kristallnacht was the organized pogrom by the German Nazis against Jews, their places of worship, and their homes the night and morning of November 8-9, 1938.  According to many historians, it marked the beginning of the Holocaust, which did not culminate until Adolf Hitler’s regime lay in ashes in 1945 at the end of World War II.

However bigoted Trump’s rhetoric may be, it thus far is talk, and not action.  The windows of Mexican and Muslim businesses are not being shattered, places of worship are not being burned, and neither Muslims nor Mexicans are being attacked in their homes. Neither Trump, nor any of his advisers, are calling for genocide against either Mexicans or Muslims.

So Weld’s analogy doesn’t hold up. When we say “never again” and “never forget,” we are calling for the Holocaust to be remembered for the immense evil that the Nazi Germans and their allies were able to perpetuate.  While we fear where nasty speech may lead, however despicable it is, it may or may not foreshadow horrible actions to come.

There are other ways to condemn Trump’s proposals without raising the specter of state-organized mass murder.

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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World.  He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com. Comments intended for publication in the space below MUST be accompanied by the letter writer’s first and last name and by his/ her city and state of residence (city and country for those outside the United States.)