This may have been a pronouncement from a long dead Viennese mayor, Karl Luger, who allegedly said this in response to a question about why he had Jewish friends if they were so undesirable. It was 1895, and the eugenics movement was beginning to take off, supported on the continent of Europe, spilling over to Great Britain, and given gravitas by "experts" in culture in the United States who delighted in the othering of freed slaves as a means to create the infamous Jim Crow laws following Reconstruction. Later it would be repeated by nonother than Hitler and high-ranking German Nazis.
What it translates to in English? In effect, "I decide who is Jewish." (This meant to the mayor that he could just declare anyone he wanted to fraternize with as not a Jew, never mind they were Jewish.)
Why does this matter 130 long years later?
Well, yesterday, March 12th, 2025, sitting alongside the newly elected Irish Taoiseach (Prime MInister), Micheal Martin, Trump pronounced that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is no longer a Jew. He is now a Palestinian. Thus in a few sentences, Trump has now turned this deceased mayor's declaration on its head. To wit, Trump is saying, I don't want anything to do with Schumer because he is a Palestinian. As he is now declaring Schumer not a Jew, he has erased his culture, his religious beliefs, and his existence as a Jew whose own ancestors perished in Nazi death camps--and this is anti-Semitism on steroids with a twist.
This is incredibly dangerous coming out of the mouth of the most powerful human being on the planet--he is setting the stage to simply "disappear" anyone who disagrees with him by first redefining them, and then, in the case of Mahmoud Khalil, the young graduate student from Columbia University, who is not by coincidence, a Palestinian, the attempt is ongoing to deport him for taking part in peaceful demonstrations, which we all know is guaranteed by our Constitution, specifically the First Amendment's free speech clause.
This young man is not here illegally; he holds a green card, which guarantees him most of the same rights as Americans have. Among these of course, to protest. So far, it is being explored in terms of what if any laws he violated and so far, there is no evidence he has done any such thing. It cannot be simply in the mind of the accuser, in this case Trump, that he doesn't like Khalil's beliefs and can deport him--and it is very likely that an immigration judge will hold this view and end the deportation threat.
Trump doesn't agree with Schumer and then redefines him entirely. He doesn't agree with peaceful protests if any group taking part is one towards which he holds animus and then labels individual participants of this group as terrorists. Further, he has with Musk's help, already redefined American government workers as not effective, not good at their jobs, DEI hires, and the beat goes on.
Redefining individuals or entire groups of people using inflammatory language, rhetoric meant to diminish, otherize and then fully marginalize them, or even in the case of the violently anti-Semitic mayor of Vienna, Luger, taking away their identity to make them palatable, is the worst of the slippery slopes possible because if you think about it for just a minute or two, there is no bottom, no end to the iterations possible. Shoot, label someone a Palestinian and deport them under the flimsiest of excuses. Call someone a socialist, and in defaming them, ruin their career, and maybe even their life. Call government workers not worth it, not skilled, useless, and even on the take, and then fire them by the hundreds and even thousands. Again, the beat goes on.
And attached to all of this is of course the famous quote by Reverend Niemoller:
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
—Martin Niemöller
