My mother remembers WWII. Her family died in the Warsaw ghetto and in Auschwitz. Growing up poor and Jewish in rural Illinois in the 1930s and 1940s, she knows anti-semitism. Even today, in rural Pennsylvania, she has to listen to neighbors and friends complaining about someone, "trying to Jew me down," on the price of something.
So when she saw that Occupy Wall Street was being accused of anti-semitism by the GOP, she really exploded! ....
If my mother was angry before, she's livid now. And she also scared. Very scared. Because she remembers Joseph Goebels. Mom knows her history. She's the author of Women of the West, a seminal work that challenged historians' assumptions about the roll of women on the western frontier and changed the field of women's studies and American studies. But more than that, she remembers. She remembers the letters back and forth from the family that was still in Poland. I know that we here get very touchy when someone starts comparing anyone to Nazis on the left or the right. Nevertheless, after reading the latest from my mother, I'm starting to get a little worried myself. Please take a look at the whole thing and note the eight rules that she lists from history. She sees history beginning to repeat itself.
What do you think:
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2011
It Takes An Old Jew to Recognize Today's Nazis
I began blogging to encourage hope in our future. But history cannot be denied, nor can we ignore the facts of today.
My father's family died in the Warsaw ghetto and the Nazi gas chambers.
Throughout my life I have suffered prejudice from my fellow Americans, the ones who despise Jews or Catholics. Seven decades of scorn.
So don't tell me who are today's bigots and nascent Nazis. I'll tell you!
It's NOT the Occupy Wall Street people. The GOP are now accusing the Occupy movement of anti-semitism. And what does anti-semitism eternally evoke? The Nazis! But the Occupy group has none of the indicia of the Nazis. Nor are they the "mob" that Eric Cantor has labeled them.
Please read the rest. This is scary stuff. Mom has eight techniques that Goebels pioneered that are being employed today.
I don't think my mother is really accusing anyone on the extreme right of being an actual Nazi. But the Southern Poverty Law Center has issued warnings about hate group activities which mention the Tea Party movement and specific groups that are part of the religious right:
Many influential Religious Right groups found themselves placed upon the SPLC's updated list, including the Family Research Council, American Family Association, Concerned Women for American, National Organization for Marriage, and Liberty Counsel. And to say that they are not happy about it would be a massive understatement.
This is scary stuff and a scary time for my mom.