85 years ago, as Hitler was completing the construction of the 6th concentration camp to exterminate his “enemies”, the American Nazis held a hate-filled rally at Madison Square Garden, NYC.
(Rare footage from the 2017 Documentary entitled “A Night at the Garden,” by Marshall Curry, about the 1939 German American Bund Rally at NYC’s Madison Square Garden, supporting Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.)
Donald Trump’s MAGA rally scheduled for Sunday night, October 27, 2024, at Madison Square Garden, NYC, is no coincidence.
Just as the hate-filled, anti-government Trump campaign selected Waco, Texas, as a launchpad for his latest Presidential campaign, MAGA extremists are gathering at The Garden for Trump’s closing campaign statement of 2024 — explicitly to remind hard-core Trump supporters that the last extreme right wing hate group to assemble there was the American Nazi Party, in 1939.
The Nazis met at NYC’s Madison Square Garden at precisely the same time Adolf Hitler finished construction of his sixth concentration camp to exterminate Jews, and Hitler’s other “enemies,” seven months before he started World War II by invading Poland.
The Pro-Hitler rally, was attended by 20,000 hard-core Fascists while 100,000 anti-Nazi protestors demonstrated outside the Garden carrying signs which read: “Drive the Nazis Out of NY.”
Inside, the Garden was decorated with a huge portrait of George Washington, surrounded by Swastika flags on each side. It was billed as a “Pro-American” rally, and supported by the German American Bund Movement, The Christian Front, and the Friends of the New Germany (also known as, “The Hitler Club.”)
Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally comes nine days before the 2024 Presidential election, when two of Trumps own former high ranking generals — Mark Milley and John Kelly — have referred to him as a “Fascist” determined to destroy our democracy and rule like a dictator. Kelly told the New York Times that Trump often expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler.
The American Fuhrer Fritz Kuhn address the Nazi crowd in 1939, and referred to President Franklin D. Roosevelt as “President Rosenfeld,” and then-NYC Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia as “Fiorello ‘Jew Lumpen’ LaGuardia.
His speech called for a “White Gentile-controlled US,” and to kick all “Jews & Marxists” out of American Labor Unions.
Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally is also happening on the sixth anniversary of the Pittsburg Tree of Life Synagogue Massacre, where a virulent anti-immigrant, Jew-hating Trump supporter assassinated 11 Synagogue members who were attending religious services. The mass-murderer targeted the Tree of Life Synagogue because of its support of HIAS — the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society — an historic social services agency founded to help Jews escape pogroms and extermination efforts around the world — which had been singled out for punishment by extremist Right Wing media.
It is urgent to remember the names of the 11 innocent hate-crime victims of the October 27, 2018, Tree of Life Synagogue Massacre on this day and everyday, especially since extreme fascist anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic, anti-democratic elements of American society are rallying once again in Madison Square Garden, the site America’s largest pro-Nazi, pro-fascist rally, 85 years ago:
JD Vance was right: “Donald Trump IS America’s Hitler.” “Poisoning the Blood,” Blood Sacrifices,” and “Blaming the Jews” are no offhand remarks. They are the essence of “Mein Kampf” and of “MAGA.”
(The cover of 14th Sentry Edition of Mein Kampf, published by the Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, Mass; originally in 1943, with copyright renewal in 1971. Translated by Ralph Manheim. All quotes of Hitler’s writings, are taken verbatim from this edition, with pages indicated. Hitler wrote the hateful, anti-Semitic screed 100 years ago, and it was published in 1925—the forerunner to MAGA’s PROJECT 2025.)
Donald Trump is celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the publication of Adolf Hitler’s “ Mein Kampf” by plagiarizing Hitler’s hate-filled, violence-inciting screeds, written by the deranged sociopath and mass murderer, while the Nazi leader served time in Landsberg Am Lech Fortress Prison in Germany, for attempting to overthrow the government of Germany. Trump’s repeated uses of Hitler’s phrases “poisoning the blood” and “vermin,” are directly from the propaganda playbook of the most evil enemy the United States has ever faced, responsible for slaughtering six million Jews, killing hundreds of thousands of US soldiers, and encouraging violent acts against millions more, from 1933-1945, through Europe and around the world.
Within the closing weeks of the 2024 Presidential Campaign, during which Trump has directly expressed his desire to become a dictator, jettison the US Constitution and use the US Military against his “enemies within,” former head of the military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley has called Trump a “Fascist to the core,” and Trump’s former Chief of Staff General John Kelly told the New York Times that Trump “fits the definition of a Fascist.”
Just this past week (October 22, 2024), The Atlantic, in an article entitled “Trump: I Need the Kind of Generals that Hitler Had,” General Kelly is quoted as saying that Trump said:
‘Well, but Hitler did some good things,’” Kelly recalled Trump said. “I said, ‘Well, what?’ And he said, ‘Well, (Hitler) rebuilt the economy.’ But what did he do with that rebuilt economy? He turned it against his own people and against the world.” Kelly admonished Trump: “I said, ‘Sir, you can never say anything good about the guy. Nothing.’”
However, Trump continues to use every canard created by Hitler, “blaming the Jews” who don’t vote for him, if he loses the 2024 Election, and repeatedly vowing to use the American military to hunt down and punish his enemies, just as Hitler did against the Jews and his other perceived “enemies” in Germany.
Later this month, Trump is scheduled to hold a rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden, where, in 1939, the pro-Nazi German American Bund movement held a rally of some 20,000 Swastika-waving fanatics “to proclaim the rights of white gentiles,” whom they declared to be the “true patriots.” According to the Holocaust Encyclopedia, “the crowd consistently booed President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and chanted the Nazi salutation ‘Heil Hitler.”
Here, I’ve juxtoposed Hitler’s direct quotes from Mein Kampf, with Trump’s quotes from speeches, interviews and articles from June, 2015 to the present day:
From Page 327, Mein Kampf, by Adolf Hitler:
“ In heedlessly ignoring the question of the preservation of the racial foundations of our nation, the old Reich disregarded the sole right which gives life in this world. People which (sic) bastardize themselves, or let themselves be bastardized, sin against the will of eternal Providence, and when their ruin is encompassed by a stronger enemy, it is not an injustice done to them, but only a restoration of justice. If a people no longer want to respect the Nature-given qualities of its being which root is in its blood, it has no further right to complain over the loss of its’ earthly existence….A new spiritual rebirth can come, AS LONG AS THE BLOOD IS PRESERVED PURE.”
September 27, 2023, Donald Trump in a video interview posted on the conservative website National Pulse:
“Nobody has any idea where these people are coming from, and we know they come from prisons. We know they come from mental institutions and insane asylums. We know they’re terrorists. Nobody has ever seen anything like we’re witnessing right now. It is a very sad thing for our country. It’s poisoning the blood of our country. It’s so bad, and people are coming in with disease. People are coming in with every possible thing that you could have .”
From page 289, Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler, on “Blood Poisoning:”
“All great cultures from the past perished only because the originally creative race died out from blood poisoning.”
December 16, 2023, Whittemore Center Arena, Durham, New Hampshire, Donald Trump on “Blood Poisoning.”
“They let — I think the real number is 15, 16 million people into our country. When they do that, we got a lot of work to do. They’re poisoning the blood of our country,” That’s what they’ve done. They poison mental institutions and prisons all over the world, not just in South America, not just to three or four countries that we think about, but all over the world. They’re coming into our country from Africa, from Asia, all over the world.”
From page 286, Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler, on mixed-race “defilement of the blood.”
“Historical experience offers countless proofs of this. It shows with terrifying clarity that in every mingling of Aryan blood with that of lower peoples the result was the end of the cultured people. North America, whose population consists in by far the largest part of Germanic elements who mixed but little with the lower colored peoples, shows a different humanity and culture from Central and South America, where the predominantly Latin immigrants often mixed with the aborigines of a large scale. By this one example, we can clearly and distinctly recognize the effect of racial mixture. The Germanic inhabitant of the American continent, who has remained racially pure and unmixed, rose to be master of the continent; he will remain the master as long as he does not fall a victim to the defilement of the blood.”
November 12, 2023, Veterans Day Speech, Claremont, NH, Donald Trump on “vermin:”
“We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections.”
Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, on dehumanizing Jews:
“ All who are not of good race in this world are chaff.” (pg. 296);
“If the Jews were alone in this world, they would stifle in filth and offal.” (pg. 302)
“He (the Jew) is and remains the typical parasite, a sponge who like a noxious bacillus, keeps spreading as soon as a favorable medium invites him.” (pg. 305)
“ He (The Jew) is the “scourge of God. In the course of a few centuries they have come to know him , and now they feel that the mere fact of his (the Jew’s ) existence is as bad as the plague.” They are “eternal blood suckers.” (pg. 310)
“The Jew poisons the blood of others, but preserves his own.” (pg. 316)
June 16, 2015, Announcement of Candidacy Speech for President, Donald Trump, after descending his Golden Escalator at Trump Tower in NYC:
“When Mexico sends its’ people, they’re not sending their best; they’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing their problems with us. They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists…And, its coming from more than Mexico. It’s coming from all over South and Latin America, and from the Middle East…”
From page 562, “Mein Kampf,” Adolf Hitler on “Jews as Black parasites:”
“Bear in mind the devastations which Jewish bastardization visits on our nation each day, and consider that this BLOOD POISONING can be removed from our national body only after centuries, if at all. Consider further how racial disintegration drags down and often destroys the last Aryan values of our German people…THIS CONTAMINATION OF OUR BLOOD, BLINDLY IGNORED BY THOUSANDS OF OUR PEOPLE IS CARRIED OUT SYSTEMATICALLY BY THE JEW TODAY. SYSTEMATICALLY, THESE BLACK PARASITES OF THE NATION DEFILE OUR INEXPERIENCED YOUNG BLOND GIRLS AND THEREBY DESTROY SOMETHING WHICH CAN NO LONGER BE REPLACED IN THIS WORLD.”
January 11, 2018, Donald Trump in Oval Office Meeting discussing immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador and African countries: (as reported in Washington Post, by Josh Dawsey):
“Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here? Why do we need more Haitians? Take them out.”
Six years, later, during the only Presidential debate with Democratic Presidential nominee Kamala Harris, Trump spread pernicious lies about Haitians living in Springfield, Ohio, that they were : “eating the cats, eating the dogs, eating the pets.”
From page 325, Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler on Blacks and Jews defiling Germany:
“With Satanic joy in his face, the black-haired Jewish youth lurks in the wait for the unsuspecting girl whom he defiles with his blood, thus stealing her from her people. With every means he tries to destroy the racial foundations of the people he has set out to subjugate. Just as he himself systematically ruins women and girls, he does not shrink back from pulling down the blood barrier for others, even on a large scale. It was and is Jews who bring the Negroes to the Rhineland, always with the same secret thought and clear aim of RUINING THE HATED WHITE RACE by the necessarily resulting bastardization, throwing it down from its’ cultural and political height, and himself rising to be its’ master…And so, he tries systematically to lower the racial level by a continuous poisoning of individuals.”
Similarly, in his Veterans Day speech delivered in New Hampshire last year—supposedly honoring thousands of American Veterans who sacrificed their lives fighting Hitler, and Fascism—Trump targeted many groups long tagged by tyrants like Hitler, Mussolini and Joseph McCarthy as “fellow travelers” of Jews: “radical leftists,” “sinister, dangerous forces from within,” “communists,” “Marxists” and, “thugs.” In every major speech over the past year, Trump has repeated his mantra calling his enemies “communists, socialists, leftists and Marxists.”
In Mein Kampf, Hitler’s deranged diatribe against the Jews and “liberal” society, the Fascist mass-murderer explodes with the same kind of vitriol that Trump and his MAGA-Nazis use against many of their imagined contemporary enemies. Sounding much like Trump, Hitler rants:
“…all at once the Jew also becomes liberal and begins to rave about the progress of mankind…Slowly, he makes himself the spokesman for a new era…To strengthen his political position he tries to tear down the racial and civil barriers…To this end, he fights with all the tenacity innate to the Jew, for religious tolerance; …another weapon in service to the Jews is the Press; the Jew talks of ‘enlightenment,’ ‘progress’, ‘freedom,’ ‘humanity’…and of the equality of all men without regard to race and color. He (The Jew) poisons the blood of others, but preserves his own.” (From, section of Mein Kampfentitled “Development of Jewry”)
Michael Tomasky, writing in The New Republic on November 12, 2023, is right to point out the difference in Trump’s Veterans Day version of “Mein Kampf,” :
“Trump, let us clarify, does not mention the Jews. He means SOME Jews—the ones who aren’t for him, which, come to think of it, is most (American) Jews.”
And at an event dedicated to combatting Anti-Semitism held in Washington just one month ago (September, 2024) Trump whined that he was “not treated right by Jewish voters,” stating:
“I’m not going to call this a prediction, but in my opinion, the Jewish People would have a lot to do with a loss if I’m at 40%.”
Adolf Hitler couldn’t have articulated it any more clearly than his Apprentice did.
An entire public career of denying the existence of Climate Change, finally catches up with former Florida Governor and present US Senator Rick Scott, in the unforgiving form of Hurricane Milton.
(Voldemort, a Rick Scott look-a-like; Florida residents protesting Senator Scott’s long record of Climate Denial (photo from the Florida Phoenix, Sept. 30, 2024)
Think of the vilest villains
Who have disfigured the faces
Of nightmarish graphic novels, movie screens,
Or other such rot. Than, think of Rick Scott.
If Lex Luthor & Voldemort
Mixed their twisted sperm into a test-tube,
And steamed it in a fetid Florida swamp for
Many months or years, or what,
The end result would be…Rick Scott.
His glowing orb, fresh from the Dark Lagoon,
Sucked life from ailing humans far too soon,
Hissing his seductive tune of health care savings each day,
Killing them harshly, through Columbia HCA.
A mere warm-up for the spawn of Voldemort & Lex,
His deprivation of care, sheer insanity.
How easily Scott shilled his heinous hex,
Manipulating it, Mengele-like, against humanity.
Crazed Eyes, ablaze with dollar signs,
Gleefully pulling the plug on yours and mine.
Then, foraging for more to defraud, or scare,
Scott’s ghoulish-gaze grabbed Medicare.
With Frankensteinian flare,
He raped and pillaged taxpayers bare.
His scandalous fraud hit the multi-billion $$ scale,
So Scott “5th” away the truth 75 times, cheating jail.
Fueled by money from Big Oil & Gas,
And his own crooked, thieving past,
Scott sucked up Fossil Fuel funds,
While the Gulf overheated, very fast.
The soul-less son of Slytherin,
Slimed the idea of “Climate Change;”
Wiping it out of State Regs, and
Erasing it from students’ brains.
Slithering into his Naples Mansion,
Giving Floridians a middle-fingered jilten’,
Scott gets spit-out, dervish-like, from the boiling Gulf,
Stripped bare by the wrath of his creation, Hurricane Milton.
From Tampa Bay to Key West,
Scott’s Climate Change denials roared on shore,
His pathological scientific whitewash,
Was now a killer storm–Category 5 or 4.
Scott force-fed the State a pipeline—
One of 3 from which he sucked out cash;
Addicting Florida, fentanyl-like, to Fossil fuels,
Setting it up for a crippling, tidal surge crash.
“I’m not a scientist,” Scott once bragged,
Such willful blindness leaving Floridians sandbagged.
Now, he tells CNN “something’s clearly changing,”
As the waters his actions heated, wipes out people, raging…
Israel’s Netanyahu is waging a Regional War in the Middle East to keep his grasp on power, and, potentially, stay out of prison.
(Photo from the New York Times)
Every since I converted to Judaism 44 years ago, I’ve always loved Rosh Hashanah.
I am always humbled by the Jewish New Year’s 10-day focus on introspection and contemplation, rather than the brainless and ritual inebriation of the other New Year’s celebration.
Sure, it’s a time to raise a glass of wine or two and be grateful for surviving another year of life, but Rosh Hashanah was always more of a gentle invitation to a quiet retreat from that life. To me, the High Holy Days always been a special, sacred time to reflect on where our lives, our humanity and our souls have been over the past year, and where we would like them to be.
This year, the sounding of the Shofar, a modern day trumpet, which Maimonides and other Jewish scholars have interpreted as a “wake-up-call” for personal introspection and self-improvement, or as “a means of asking God to remember man” (Pentateuch), appears on the brink of being thrust back centuries to an ancient role of heralding war, the way it was used when Joshua waged war against Jericho.
In Hayyim Schauss’ book, The Jewish Festivals: History & Observance, (1938; 12th Printing 1978, Union of American Hebrew Congregations, Schocken Books, NY), the author writes that:
“In the old days, the shofar was used as a musical instrument by Jews at various religious ceremonies, but its’ most important use was to intimidate the enemy, to declare war, and in general, to make proclamations of the people.”
Apparently, the Netanyahu government is choosing to use the shofar this Rosh Hashanah to sound a clarion call for widespread war, in the increasingly questionable claim of Israel’s self-defense.
Netanyahu and his extremist Ultra Nationalist government has chosen to respond to the October 7, 2023, massacre by Hamas of more than 1200 Israeli citizens and the forced kidnapping of hundreds of hostages, by grinding Gaza into the dust, and killing more than 40,000 Palestinian non-combatants, most of whom are women and children.
Gone is any semblance of the Israeli Defense Force’s (IDF), Code of Ethics for the IDF, which previously—before Netanyahu came to power– commanded the IDF to adhere to specific rules of combat.
That Code of Ethics, required as part of basic training for IDF soldiers, consists of four essential principles:
· NECESSITY: “to apply force only for the sake of the mission;”
· DISTINCTION: “aim your fire at those who pose a threat, NOT at combatants indiscriminately;
· RESPONSIBILITY: “since you know there will be collateral harm of civilians, you have to do whatever you can to MINIMIZE the expected collateral harm.”
· PROPORTIONALITY: “Is the expected collateral harm proportionate to the military achievement?”
All of that moral and ethical guidance for Israel’s soldiers was tossed out when Netatanyu and his megalomaniacal cabinet seized power, declaring war on anyone not sufficiently Jewish, according to their own extremely narrow perspective. Unarmed Palestinian women and children—either in Gaza or the West Bank—were considered sub-human by the Ultra Nationalists controlling the Israeli government and its’ armed forces.
Instead of abiding by the IDF’s historic ethical code, Bibi and his unbridled band of extremists have justified dropping 2,000 pound bombs—provided by the UnitedStates—on civilian populations by claiming, often suspiciously, that Hamas or Hezbollah combatants had hidden themselves underneath non-combatant populations and structures, like hospitals, schools, day-care centers, or apartment buildings. By its’ own actions, the Netanyahu government has single-handedly undermined the credibility of any statements or videos coming from the IDF.
Under that spurious “self-defense” definition, any civilian population in any country in which anti-Israel terrorists may be hiding is fair game for any indiscriminate—and non-proportional— IDF attack. National borders, international law, or individual state sovereignty do not matter under this new formulation of “self-defense” by the Netanyahu government.
Netanyahu and the Ultra Nationalists ruling Israel, using the “self-defense” trap to ensnare the US and other allies in its military actions, have now expanded it’s unending crusade for revenge for the murders of October 7, 2023, well-beyond retribution against Hamas, or the boundaries of Gaza and the West Bank.
Bibi has launched a Regional “Ring of Fire” War not just against the terrorist groups Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, but has dangerously expanded the war, just this week, across the national borders of Lebanon, Yemen & Syria, and is poised to attack any number of sites in Iran, to retaliate for Iranian missiles being launched into Israel. Iran’s missile attack was done in response to Israel’s attack on Hezbollah strong holds in Southern Lebanon, the killing of Hezbollah and Iranian leaders, and the maiming of thousands of Hezbollah operatives and Lebanese citizens with exploding personal communications devices—an act on Israel’s part, considered by some, to constitute terrorism against the nation of Lebanon and its people.
On the eve of Rosh Hashanah, 5785 (2024), the Jewish publication The Forward outlined several military options Israel may take against Iran, which would shatter any hopes for a ceasefire, any chance of peace in the MidEast, and destabilize democratic nations and economies around the world:
· “A tactical strike on Iran: A more substantial response could involve direct military action against Iranian assets, such as oil facilities or military installations. This would aim to inflict real damage on Iran’s infrastructure, forcing it to reconsider further provocations.
An attack on an oil installation, for instance, could disrupt Iran’s economic lifelines and send the clear message that Israel will not tolerate continued missile strikes. The goal here would be to create enough pain for Iran to deter future actions, without pushing the region into a full-scale war.”
· “A strategic overhaul of the region’s balance of power: This option is far more ambitious, and fraught with risk, but could reshape the Middle East. It would involve Israel somehow pushing the West to lay down the law with Iran, demanding not just an end to its missile strikes, but a full dismantling of its nuclear program and an end to its sponsorship of proxy forces across the region”.
The Forward goes on to point out that the most extreme option poses a serious, not hypothetical, risk of starting World War III:
“If Iran responds forcefully, the U.S. would almost certainly be drawn into the conflict to protect Israel. This could trigger a chain reaction, with Russia and China, both of whom have strategic relationships with Iran, seeing an opportunity to exploit the chaos. China could use the distraction to finally make a long-threatened move on Taiwan, while Russian President Vladimir Putin might take the opportunity to expand his war in Ukraine, or press into neighboring countries.
The global balance of power would be thrown into disarray, with potentially catastrophic consequences.”
At the end of our High Holy Days, our Days of Awe, we Jews say a profound prayer during Yom Kippur:
“On Rosh Hashanah it is written,
On Yom Kippur it is sealed:
How many shall pass on, how many shall come to be;
Who shall live and who shall die;
Who shall see ripe age, and who shall not;
Who shall perish by fire, and who by water;
Who by sword and who by beast;
Who by hunger and who by thirst;
Who by earthquake and who by plague;
Who by strangling and who by stoning;
Who shall be secure and who shall be driven;
Who shall be tranquil and who shall be troubled;
Who shall be poor and who shall be rich;
Who shall be humbled and who exalted;
But REPENTANCE, PRAYER, and CHARITY
Temper judgement’s severe decree.”
It’s in the spirit of that prayer, of this somber and reflective period, and of this immensely important moment in each of our lives that I question the tragic circle of firing squads that Netanyahu and the Ultra-nationalist Israeli government have built encircling Israel and threatening to plunge the world into full-scale war.
During this time of questioning, we need answers to a few critical questions.
1. What about the 100+ hostages in Gaza? Has BiBi given up on them?
2. Did the Netanyahu government turn its attention to Hezbollah because it was losing the public opinion and political war in Gaza, and saw no hope of getting the hostages out alive?
3. Does the IDF already know the hostages are dead, and is using a wider war as a distraction from that horror?
4. Did Bibi carefully calculate that with only a month out from the US Presidential Election few, if any, American politicians would oppose any military action taken by Israel, as long as it was shrouded in the words, “self-defense?”
5. Was the booby trapping of personal electronic devices—and interdicting the supply chain to do it—an act of international terrorism? Does it open up a new and dangerous vein of “permissible” terrorist activities, now that Israel has done it? Has it raised the possibility of terrorists interdicting and arming I-Phones headed for the consumer market in the US or Western Europe?
6. Were those hand-held explosives an act of war vs. Hezbollah, or against Lebanon? Iran?
7. Can Israel do anything in the region—or in pursuing terrorists around the world—as long as it declares it: an act of Israel’s self-defense?
8. Has Bibi and Israel’s Nationalist government intentionally ratcheted up his “Circle of Fire” strategy and shooting war across several sovereign state borders to justify bombing Iran’s oil and Nuclear production facilities?
9. Is this Netanyahu’s “October Surprise” for Donald Trump in the 2024 US Presidential Election to continue the US’ unquestioning support for any Bibism?
10. Was this Netanyahu’s long-term plan since sabotaging Barack Obama’s Nuclear agreement with Iran in 2014? Did he always want to take out Iran’s capacity to make nuclear weapons himself, militarily, and not allow it to happen under a global peace agreement?
The stakes here, at this very instant in human history, are extraordinary, and not just for the future existence of Israel, but for all of us.
Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak told Katy Tur of NBC news that, while he wanted to “guarantee security for Israel,” he believed that Netanyahu was “creating the danger because he doesn’t want a two-State solution.”
Jordan’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi, an US educated member of the Jordanian Druse community—Israel’s long-time allies—urgently pleaded that “The Arab states around Israel can guarantee its’ security.”
Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin, in his final speech delivered at the Peace Rally where he was assassinated by an Ultra Nationalist Jewish extremist on November 4, 1995, stated clearly one of the fundamental principles upon which the State of Israel was built:
“The path of peace is preferable to the path of war. I say this as a military man…and see the pain of the families of the IDF soldiers. For them, for our children, in my case for our grandchildren, I want this Government to exhaust every opening, every possibility to promote and achieve a comprehensive peace.”
Just as Bibi campaigned against every peace initiative put forth by Rabin going back 30 years–especially regarding a Two-State solution—he has repeatedly scuttled American cease-fire efforts in Gaza over the past several months to free any remaining hostages, or entertain any exit plan from Gaza and the West Bank that involves Palestinian self-determination, or contradicts the fever dreams of the Ultra Nationalist coalition keeping Netanyahu in power, and out of prison.
That terrible and troubling track record compounds an already towering tragedy, and this Rosh Hashanah, it appears the Netanyahu wants to use the Shofar as an instrument of war and revenge, and acquire for himself the awful power to determine “who shall live, and who shall die.”
A “Black Libel,” against Haitians, has been added to the ancient arsenal of White Supremacists and Anti-Semites: The “Blood Libel” against, and scapegoating of, the Jews.
(Fascist publications like ‘Der Sturmer’ (above) were responsible for fanning the flames of the centuries old “Blood Libel” that Jews were killing Christian babies and using their blood for ritualistic purposes—lies that resulted in the scapegoating of, and the mass murder of millions of Jews. For more than 200 years, Haitians have been the target of a “Black Libel,” falsely accusing them of everything from voodoo and animal sacrifice, to the spread of AIDS. (below).
Donald Trump, JD Vance, and their blood-thirsty, bigoted white supremacist sic(sic)-o-phants expose their full-throated, fundamentalist hatreds each time they open their mouths: Blacks & Jews, they howl, should be blamed for our evils.
The misogynistic MAGA monsters also can’t stand strong, independent women—who refuse to be humble handmaidens of their hate–have repeatedly demonstrated over decades of pushing policies aimed at keeping women subservient, pregnant & poor, particularly in the area of women’s health and reproductive rights why Kamala Harris’ candidacy drives them crazy: she refuses to be shackled by the white, male supremacists’ centuries long campaigns of shame & subjugation.
Yet, the real red flag of Harris’ candidacy to these bigoted bullies, is not just that she’s a woman, but that she’s multi-racial, with one of her parents being from the Caribbean—an exotic, erotic place of mystery and Black independence history– and is happily married to a successful & confident white Jewish man. In one single sweep, a charismatic new American persona–Kamala Harris–represents all of the crazed, conspiracies these haters have harbored, and acted upon, going back centuries. Despite—or perhaps because of– her obvious joy, likeability, and deep professionalism, Harris is the worst nightmare of White Supremacists, sexual oppressors, and anti-Semites.
Their virulent attacks by Trump, Laura Loomer, JD Vance, Mark Robinson, and other Far Right extremists, against American Jews who don’t support authoritarianism, and upon the Haitians of Springfield, Ohio, and Charleroi, Pennsylvania, are only the latest eruptions of their dangerous bile, hate speech and group libel. In the past, such relentless campaigns of hate and dehumanization against Jews and non-Whites, have yielded deadly results.
Jews of every political persuasion have been subjected to “Blood Libels” against them going back to the 12th Century, according to “A History of the Jewish People,” an 1100-page encyclopedic work edited by H.H. Ben Sasson, and published by Harvard University Press in 1976. That “Blood Libel,” first surfaced in England, when the Jews of Norwich, were “accused of having murdered a Christian child.” It’s get subtly resurrected each time a Christian Nationalist, or proponent of Project 2025, refers to the United States as a “Christian Nation.”
The anti-Semitic “Blood Libel & Ritual Murder” is defined by early Jew-haters, as, “once the Jews had crucified Christ (a lie), they thirsted for pure and innocent blood (another lie.)Since the formerly incarnate God was now in “heaven,” the grotesque lie continued that, “the Jews aspired to the blood of the most innocent believers, i.e., the children, the tender Christians.” (Page 482, History of the Jewish People).
Dangerously, millions of Christians believed those early “blood libels” to be true, resulting in large numbers of Jews being burned at the stake. A full century after the Jews had been expelled from England, Geoffrey Chaucer, the English poet, wrote The Canterbury Tales in 1387. In the “Prioress’ Tale”, “an innocent Christian child was walking through the ‘Street of the Jews’ singing songs in praise of Mary, mother of Jesus. The Jews seized and murdered him. The crime was miraculously revealed, and the whole community of Jews was put to death.” (Page 483, History of the Jewish People.)
Jewish history is replete with such repulsive smears and crusades against an entire people from the murderous lies and 15th century treachery of John of Capistrano (latter canonized into Sainthood by the Catholic Church), and the Libel of Trent (1475) where Franciscan monks preached that Jews in that German town were responsible for the disappearance of a 2-year old boy. Without any evidence at all, the entire Jewish community was arrested, tortured, and expelled from the region.
Nearly 500 years—and the murders of millions of Jews–later (1965), the Catholic Church officially “acknowledged that a judicial error had been committed against the Jews of Trent…” (Page 580,History of the Jewish People).
Sadly, the Jew Haters were just beginning to hone their horrific lies. During the Spanish Inquisition, witchcraft and crucifixion were added to the fictional charges of “blood libel” and “ritual murder,” against the Jews, along with the utterly insane charge that Jews used the heart and blood of a crucified boy to “spread rabies among all Christians.” Despite there being no factual foundation for any of the charges, all Jews merely accused of the crime were burned at the stake, with Christians ready to believe any evil of anyone who was Jewish.
In the 16th Century, the founder of Lutheranism, the German conservative Martin Luther, was savagely anti-Semitic, spelling out detailed methods of how to destroy the Jewish population, many of which were updated and perniciously put into practice by Adolf Hitler 400 years later, resulting in the torture and annihilation of six million Jews, one million of whom were children.
But, Hitler was not alone. At the same time Hitler and the embryonic Nazi movement were rising in Germany, the KKK was at the peak of its power in the United States, getting 30,000 of its robed followers to March on Washington in 1925—the same year “Mein Kampf” was published. The year before, the KKK was instrumental in crafting the virulent anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant Immigration Act of 1924—the basis for the present day Trump/Stephen Miller immigration policy.
Such actions “normalized” how the KKK operated. Teaming up with other White Supremacists across the US, the KKK—while continuing to lynch thousands of Black Americans for the sole “crime” of being Black– passed Jim Crow laws in some 30 American states. Those Jim Crow Laws, according to Princeton Professor and legal scholar James Q. Whitman, Hitler’s American Model, served as the basis for Nazi lawyers in drafting the Nuremberg Laws against the Jews, forever linking legislated hatred and state-sponsored discrimination against Blacks, with legislated hatred, discrimination and state-sponsored murder against the Jews. (See https://open.substack.com/pub/villano/p/dictating-hate-jim-crow-white-supremacy?r=cveu&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web).
In fact, it was during the tumultuous, anti-immigrant 1920’s in the United States, when not only were Italian immigrants Sacco & Vanzetti executed (1927) for a murder that was not proven they committed, but, the following year, a well-documented case of “Blood Libel” against Jews occurred in Massena, New York, a small town in St. Lawrence County, just across from the Canadian border.
In his book, The Accusation: Blood Libel in an American Town, NYU History professor Edward Berenson—a native of Massena, N.Y.—documents a “Blood Libel” against local Jews in an upstate N.Y. town at a time (1928) when anti-immigrant fervor was at a fever pitch in the United States, the KKK was at the peak of its political power, and the first Catholic candidate—New York’s Governor Al Smith, with Irish and Italian ancestors—was running for President of the United States.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) described this “modern blood libel” as:
“When a four-year-old girl went missing from her home, and a rumor spread that local Jews had kidnapped and killed her. Crowds gathered outside Massena’s police station, where the town’s rabbi had been summoned. A state trooper questioned the rabbi, and asked him whether Jews offered human sacrifices or used blood in rituals. The girl was eventually found alive and unharmed.”
In the Massena case, the young girl, named Barbara, had gotten lost in the local woods—very dense around that North Country community—and returned home the next day, unharmed. However, despite the direct evidence of Barbara’s safety, the accusations of “Jewish rituals” persisted in the local and national press for weeks.
The ADL, in its’ Global Anti-Semitism resource material from 2016, goes on to detail the wild stories and lies of blood libels against Jews throughout 1,000 years of history, resulting in the massacres of entire Jewish communities:
“Some Christians believed that the four cups of wine that Jews drink at the Passover Seder celebrations were actually blood, or that Jews mixed blood into hamantaschen, sweet pastries eaten on the Jewish holiday of Purim. Others claimed that Jews used Christian blood as a medicine or even as an aphrodisiac.”
Professor Berenson told the New York University News’ in September, 2019, that he believed the Massena “Blood Libel” occurred during the cultural backdrop of:
“…mass immigration, which by the 1920s was three and a half decades old. Before that… the United States was overwhelmingly a Protestant country; after the 1880s, you had a huge influx of Catholics and Jews, and it really changed the country…
So in the 1920s—and this will have echoes for the present—there were an awful lot of people who were not so happy about this new demographic situation, and one of the main organizations that opposed it was a revived Ku Klux Klan. There’s some evidence that there were several members of the volunteer fire company in Massena who were members of the Klan. And there were essentially no African Americans who lived up there, so most of the Klan’s hostility was directed against Catholics and Jews, and people who were seen to be connected to immigration in one way or the other.”
Professor Berenson went on to point out in his interview with NYU News:
“Religious venom surrounded this campaign (of 1928). There was horrible hostility to Catholics because Al Smith was the first Catholic candidate ever for the presidency. And some of Al Smith’s top advisors were Jews, and everybody knew that they were Jewish. So this election kind of brought together all of these themes that were percolating in the 1920s.”
Fast forward to today, nearly 100 years later, to the Presidential Election of 2024, when the candidate of one major party, Donald Trump, has a well-documented record of racism toward Blacks, deep anti-immigrant animus upon which he has campaigned and enacted policy, and Jew-blaming, when it suits his purposes, as it did recently when a purported address on “Anti-Semitism” by Trump turned into an all out attack on Jews who don’t support him, whom he preemptively blamed for his defeat, should he lose the election to Kamala Harris. Multiple news sources and commentators noted Trump’s new “Blame the Jews” strategy of scapegoating the very people who have been similarly scapegoated for centuries, with horrific consequences. To Trump and many of his supporters, the perverse and dangerous irony of scapegoating Jewsat a conference on Anti-Semitism, meant nothing.
Vice President Harris, for her part, is the first US Presidential candidate in American history who is a female, mixed race daughter of immigrants—one of whom is a Caribbean Black—and who is married to a Jew. In one highly qualified and enormously charismatic candidate, White Supremacists, Anti-Semites and Xenophobes have been blinded by their own rage— the same effect the Democratic, Catholic son of immigrants Al Smith had upon the KKK and other bigots in 1928.
With immigration as a similar lightening rod political issue today as it was in 1924 & 1928–it was inevitable that at least one particular group of immigrants would be targeted for discrimination and vilification during the 2024 election. What was also not surprising was that the group targeted by Trump and his supporters—would not be Latino, as they were for Trump’s entire political career—but Haitian legal immigrants, a persistent target of White Supremacists going back over 200 years, at precisely the same time when the Democrats nominated a Black woman with ancestors from the Caribbean. Had the Haitians become Trump’s Willie Horton?
Even with local public officials and the Governors of each state pointing out how much Haitian immigrants have helped build the local economies of Springfield, Ohio and Charleroi, Pennsylvania, Trump has doubled down on the blatant blanket of lies and hate spread by himself and his running mate JD Vance– by telling 67 million Americans during a Presidential debate that the Haitians of Springfield, Ohio, were “eating the dogs, the people that came in; they’re eating the cats; they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”
Before the Democratic Presidential candidate was a women with Caribbean ancestry, Trump’s running mate Vance—A US Senator from Ohio for the past two years—never once identified any reports of pet eating by anyone in the Ohio city of approximately 60,000 people, despite an in-migration of some 20,000 Haitians to Springfield over the past 4 years. Was this “Black Libel” created out of thin air specifically because a Black woman was now running against Trump?
The fact thatthisgroup of immigrants were Haitian was irresistible for vitriolic attacks from White Supremacist, anti-immigrant extremists. After all, it was Haitians who were falsely accused of another “Black Libel” 40 years ago– of being the source of the HIV/AIDS epidemic during the early 1980’s, despite evidence that the disease was brought to Port-O-Prince, Haiti, by white American, non-Haitian tourists. The brilliant infectious disease doctor and medical anthropologist Dr. Paul Farmer—who spent years delivering health care services to Haiti–wrote a meticulously researched book entitled AIDS and Accusation: Haiti and the Geography of Blame, smashing the negative stereotypes against Haitians.
Even in New York City, Haitians were targeted for HIV-related hate crimes in the 1980’s where Farmer writes, “ In Brooklyn, walls on the margins of a predominantly Caribbean neighborhood were spray-painted with the words “Haitians=N_____S withAIDS.” This followed a classification by the CDC during the Reagan Administration of Haitians as a “high risk group.” Subsequently, Haitian children in Brooklyn were beaten up and shot; Haitian store owners in Brooklyn went bankrupt and Haitian families in Brooklyn were evicted from their homes, regardless of whether they tested negative for HIV. Let that sink in, in light of the newest “Black Libel” being pedaled today by Trump and JD Vance, of Haitians eating household pets. Vance continued to spread the lie even after being presented with clear evidence that it was not true, simply to spread anti-immigrantfears and the newest Black Libel.
In AIDS and Accusations, Paul Farmer wrote: “A social service organization in South Florida reported that, following the inclusion of Haitians on the CDC listing, it was unable to find job placements for a majority of its clients. That same organization also received hate mail which conveyed such slogans as, ‘ Hire a Haitian—Help Spread AIDS,” and, “There were (sic) no AIDS in the USA until the illegal Haitian Dogs came.”
Farmer noted that the effect of these wild speculations and lies about Haitians were disastrous: “The burden of the new syndrome (HIV/AIDS) was not apparent before 1983—after all, 40 AIDS cases did not add up to much against a background of tuberculosis, typhoid, malaria, malnutrition and political repression. But the effect of AIDS-related discrimination would be instantly palpable.”
Over the past 40 years of baseless accusations against them of spreading disease, or practicing voodoo, or witchcraft, or ritual sacrifices or divination—similar to what Jews have been historically accused of–White Supremacist, Haitian haters have moved from accusing legal Haitian immigrants of being “illegal Haitian Dogs,” to spreading lies that Haitians were actually eating dogs.
While not the same as the historic and genocidal “blood libel” against the Jews, dating back over 1,000 years, the “Black Libel” against Haitians almost always involved blood (HIV/AIDS in the bloodstream) or the eating of animal blood, and their skin color—all carefully chosen attacks designed to rhetorically and racially herd Haitians back centuries to a primitive status, before Haiti became the first country in the New World to eliminate slavery, some 60 years before the United States did.
The wealthy, white slaveholders of the Confederacy were terrified that the success of the “free the slaves” movement in Haiti, while the US was in its infancy—and within the Constitution’s 10-year timetable for reconsidering Slavery which expired in 1808– would spread to the United States, only 700 miles away, and destroy their profitable “slave economy” of the US.
Now, the very same forces of White Supremacy and human oppression are terrified of an organic “Democracy movement” in the United States today, personified, not by a Haitian, but by an immigrant daughter of the Caribbean, married to a proud Jew. These fanatic voices of viciousness and hate, have demonstrated they will resurrect any baseless “Blood Libel” or “Black Libel” from the past, along with any racist, or anti-Semitic slurs or conspiracy theories they can concoct, to preserve inequality and choke off any semblance of social or political change.
And, if they fail to hold back the future, as they will, they’ve already lined up some familiar scapegoats to blame for their own failures.
We’ve seen the danger of these dehumanizing Trump tropes of racism, anti-Semitism, and anti-immigrant lies before, with deadly results.
The Jim Crow Laws in 30 States formed the basis for Hitler’s Nuremberg Laws.
Ever wonder where Adolf Hitler got some of his inspiration for the Nuremberg Laws and his cult of racial hatred responsible for the mass murder of six million Jews?
Well, stop wondering: we’ve met one of the enemies of humanity, and it’s us — the good ole’ USA was one of his inspirations, specifically the 30 States which enacted and enforced Jim Crow laws against Black Americans after Reconstruction.
And, for added depravity, throw in the passage of the US Immigration Act of 1924 — Donald Trump & Stephen Miller’s favorite law — which classified entire ethnic groups of people — Italians, Jews, Asians — as expendable. That law was created by KKK-backed Members of Congress, and signed into law by a Republican President, at the peak of the Klan’s power in the US, when they marched 30,000 strong in the streets of Washington, DC.
Hitler couldn’t believe his good fortune when Nazi lawyers ( Hitler’s own Bill Barrs) presented him, after his election in 1933, with the documentary evidence that even a “great” democracy like the United States of America, believed in racial purity. We helped create the monster who dehumanized and then slaughtered six million Jews during a 12-year long racial jihad, and was responsible for the death of more than 400,000 American soldiers during World War II.
A meticulously documented book by Yale Law School Comparative Law professor James Q. Whitman, “Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law,” (Princeton University Press, 2017; Princeton, NJ.)spells all of this out in horrifying detail, including Hitler’s lavish words of praise for the way White Americans massacred Native Americans and institutionalized racism against Black Americans. Hitler used our example of White Supremacy as a rational for mass murder against Jews.
Whitman’s astonishing and terrifying book carefully documents — through never before published material and verbatim transcripts — how the Nazis, as early as the 1920s, were inspired by the U.S’s Jim Crow laws — racist laws in 30 American States, and America’s increasingly xenophobic anti-immigrant laws. The Nazis were so inspired by these American laws reflecting our “racial madness” that they based the Nuremberg Laws upon them — “laws” which resulted in systematic dehumanization and eventual annihilation of 6 million Jews. The Nazi’s model for “Systemic Racism”, was none other than State and federal laws of the United States, a nation founded upon racial inequality and segregation, which built hundreds of monuments to the defenders of that pernicious system.
I read “Hitler’s American Model” while traveling through Maryland, a border state which once had statutory penalties of up to 10 years in prison, if a white person married a black person. That was Maryland, not Mississippi.
Legal documents uncovered by Professor Whitman of debates among Nazi lawyers drafting early versions of the Nuremberg Laws, reveal that even the most radical Nazis thought that America’s anti-miscegenation laws “went too far.” Let that sink in for a moment: the Nazis, believed that Maryland went too far in it’s “race madness,” by criminalizing interracial marriage. Until, of course, the Nazis went off the deep end.
I finished Whitman’s book while staying in a hotel in Fredericksburg, VA, off of Jefferson Davis Highway, a major interstate named for the President of the Confederacy, a violent militia of White Supremacists, who committed armed treason against the government of the United States, resulting in the deaths of more than 365,000 official U.S. Army troops, under the Confederate Flag of racial hatred.
That death toll almost equaled the 400,000 American troops killed by the Nazis in WWII. That’s a total of some 3/4 of a million patriotic, democracy-loving Americans slaughtered by the unhinged, hate-blinded crusaders for racism, at home and abroad.
Fredericksburg is, as many local residents are proud to tell you, the area of several key battles in the Civil War, including the Battle of Fredericksburg, where Confederate Troops — fighting to preserve slavery and keep institutionalized racism — slaughtered thousands of Union Troops who left their families and gave up their lives to set people free. The General who commanded the slaughter of American troops was Robert E. Lee, whose statue was finally removed from Richmond, Virginia’s Monument Avenue — some 155 years after the formal end of the American shooting war for racial equality.
The continuing “racial madness” of the Confederacy — including the fighting of a civil war which killed more than 600,000 northerners and southerners — served as one of the inspirations to the Nazis when they crafted the Nuremberg Laws. Look closely at the Confederate Flag; it’s bold color scheme featuring a shocking blood red, heavily influenced the Nazi’s Swastika symbol of racial hatred. Notably, the black and red color of those two flags, are repeated in much of the branding of Donald Trump’s campaigns for President, and the MAGA movement.
But the U.S. Civil War, and America’s racist Jim Crow laws, weren’t the only inspirations for the Nazis that were made in the USA.
Adolf Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf — (100 years ago this year) how thrilled he was by the United States willingness to commit genocide against Native Americans in order to achieve America’s “Manifest Destiny” and acquire new territory. The Nazi’s would later use America’s “gunning down of redskins” (Hitler’s own words), the racist slaughter and aerial bombing of hundreds of Black Americans in Tulsa, Oklahoma’s Greenwood Neighborhood (“Black Wall Street) in 1921, and the blatantly racist Immigration Act of 1924 that discriminated against any but those from Nordic nations, as justification for murdering 6 million Jews and many others.
America prides itself on being a beacon of hope and democracy for people around the world. For Adolph Hitler and his Nazi followers, systemic racism in the United States, the institutional violence enshrined in Jim Crow laws, lynchings and the brutalization of Black Americans — proudly symbolized by a Confederate swastika — served as an inspiration for genocide.
It’s THAT heritage of hate all Americans must reject in 2024, especially when the choice is so clear.
