Trump needs to be louder in condemning hatred
A few weeks ago, after I wrote an article about the futility and danger of comparing Donald Trump to Adolph Hitler, I got a slew of emails thanking me for stating what I had thought was obvious: Hyperbole of this nature only hurts the victims of real violence. They agreed with me that indiscriminately using a loaded slur like the one so many anti-Trumpers adopted to demonstrate their anger at the new administration diminished the real significance of the name. “Hitler,” at least to my way of thinking, conjures images of genocide.
But then I started getting different types of emails, mostly from Jewish readers who had personal experience with the Holocaust. One writer’s grandmother had died at Auschwitz, another’s father had lost his entire family at Buchenwald, another was married to a man who’d never known a single member of his mother’s side of the family because they had perished at Dachau. They were angry emails, and some were scolding, and some threatened to have me fired from my job for “hate speech” (which I thought was a bit ironic).
But the ones I listened to were the sad ones, the ones that told me that despite the passage of decades and regimes, the gashing wound to the soul of the Jewish people was still seeping. As a Catholic, I never pretended to be able to empathize with this historical act of horror. A former boyfriend’s mother was exiled from her Belgian home during the Holocaust, so I had a vague understanding of the hell, but not a personal connection. Still, as an immigration attorney who is spending an increasing amount of time in detention centers, filling out asylum applications, I have some understanding of the psychic pain caused by abuse.
Nonetheless, I believe that calling Trump and Steve Bannon and others in the administration “Hitler” does no justice to the real victims of Hitler. The argument that this subtle (and in some cases not-so-subtle) rise in hateful crimes against perceived minorities does give me reason to pause and think that while it’s wrong to conflate our president with a homicidal maniac, and that it’s wrong that I should even have to write those words because they are so ridiculous, there is a legitimate basis for apprehension and fear at this moment.
Personally, I see it in the immigrant communities that I deal with on a regular basis. The phone calls have increased, as has the tone of anxiety that creeps into every conversation I have about “how long is it going to take for my work permit to be approved?” and “should I make a power of attorney to take care of my kids in case, you know, something happens?” That “something” doesn’t need to be formally named between us.
But there are people who don’t want to hear about the plight of illegal immigrants, so I’ll save that for another column (and another, and another). The truth is that you don’t need to be worrying about border walls and ICE raids to have some apprehension that there is a rise in an intangible, untenable, deeply-felt anxiety among the masses. That anxiety isn’t called “Hitler” and it isn’t called “Trump,” but it does exist and although I disagree with readers about the source, I cannot deny that it is pressing down on our shoulders.
The other day, a Jewish cemetery was vandalized in St. Louis, Mo. Beautiful old headstones were desecrated, overturned, mangled. It isn’t the first time that this has happened, and it certainly isn’t the first administration that has seen this type of violence. I’m old enough to remember this sort of activity under every president since I could understand the concept of “I pledge allegiance, to the flag” and there was about as much bad blood flowing through our veins during Johnson and Nixon’s times, and during Carter and Reagan’s times, as there is now. Scapegoating this president is an exercise in partisanship, as I wrote before.
But there is a problem that I cannot dismiss with an attack on liberal hatred of this illiberal president. It is that he seems uncomfortable with coming out forcefully in condemning the sort of sentiments and under-the-skin motivations that lead to the destruction of Jewish cemeteries and the appearance of swastikas.
Donald Trump is not a racist, and anyone who tries to argue that point is someone whose agenda is stronger than his intellect. And still, he should be held accountable for not condemning in the strongest terms the crimes that are committed on his watch. I remember seeing him answer the question of a Jewish reporter during a recent press conference, and the petulance he showed was crude and unworthy of the office. His dismissiveness derived, I think, from a sense that he was being personally attacked. But who cares? That comes with the job.
Contrast that with the reaction from Mike Pence. Our vice president took a personal, unheralded trip to the cemetery in St. Louis, walked the grounds and then offered these words: We condemn this vile act of vandalism and those who perpetrate it in the strongest possible terms.” And then, referencing a recent trip to Dachau, Germany, he said, “We saw firsthand what happens when hatred runs rampant in a society.”
That is presidential. That is what a leader says. That is the sort of language that diffuses the hatred, angst and partisan hostility that arises from acts of violence. I believe that Trump is capable of saying these things, and making them sound sincere, but up to this point he’s refused to do more than offer platitudes. He said the following at the African-American Museum: “The anti-Semitic threats targeting our Jewish community and community centers are horrible and are painful and a very sad reminder of the work that still must be done to root out hate and prejudice and evil.”
Good words, and under normal circumstances quite eloquent. But the context is important, and there has been a context of push back and denial that anything really bad has been happening in the country. The steps that Mike Pence took this week around shattered headstones spoke louder than those few words.
Again, I think it is completely unfair to blame Donald Trump for the rise in hate crimes. It is not only unfair, it is political gamesmanship from those who oppose this man. Anyone who sees the marches and the protestors and the people at town halls drowning out their GOP representatives knows that the left is quite adept at playing these games. I am not blind to that, and no one else should be either.
But the president is not fluent in the language of compassion, and he speaks it with an awkward accent. It is good to have a native speaker like Mike Pence interpret for him, because the message gets through more quickly. But still, Donald Trump needs to be louder in condemning hatred in this society.
Because he’s not Hitler. Leave your comments online Use hashtag at