Republicans are Not Nazis and Trump is Not Hitler

This rhetoric is dangerous, as we’ve already seen

WWI Memorial to the Jews that Fought, the Ghost series, by Carrie Zeidman

As expected, there has been a lot of political discourse on Facebook the last few days. That in and of itself is not unusual, however it’s spilled over onto my personal feed and a lot of it has been pretty disturbing. I feel the need to put in my two cents on several topics that have been offered up. Actually, it’s going to be more like two dollars, so you may want to grab a cup of coffee and make yourselves comfortable while you read it because I have a lot to say.

First up, school shootings and gun laws. We all agree that school shootings, church shootings, synagogue shootings, gang violence, etc. are horrific. Where we disagree is in our reaction to these incidents. When a shooting occurs, the go-to phrase by the media is “gun violence,” as if the gun just jumped up all by itself and shot all those people. I have to say, I’ve had guns for many years and not once has one of my guns done anything I didn’t make it do. I control the gun, not the other way around. However, the media and Democrats only focus on the gun. In all the calls to ban guns, pass more laws, limit ownership, etc., no one puts the focus where it should be, on the person that thought it was OK to pick up a gun and kill people. Our focus should be on mental health, not the tools used by the mentally ill shooter. People use cars to mow down crowds at parades, get behind the wheel drunk and leave dead people all over our highways, nobody calls for the banning of cars. The focus is where it should be, on the driver of the car. The same should be done with guns. Millions of law-abiding citizens own guns. It is our right. We don’t have to justify why we have them or what we want to use them for, be it hunting, or self-defense, target practice, or defense against an out-of-control government. The focus should be on why these predominantly young people think that killing fellow students, or politicians they don’t like is the solution to their problems, not banning the tool they use to do it.

“Book banning” I put this in quotes because it’s an outrageous term that the Left is using to stir up images of Nazi Germany and other totalitarian regimes. There is no “book banning” going on. What is happening is simply backlash from parents and others who don’t think that pornography or books on how Jane can become Jack belong in an elementary school library. Books about how boys can have anal sex with each other, or that girls can have sex with other girls, or books about sex at all do not belong in school libraries. Period. Nobody is stopping parents from buying these same books on Amazon and giving them to little Johnny themselves if they so wish. These types of books have never been appropriate for a school library. That is not “banning” them. But if you want to talk about actual book banning, let’s discuss the efforts to cancel Conservative books. That is an actual real thing. School libraries carry several books by Progressive writers, but few to none by Conservative writers. This gives schoolchildren a very skewed choice of reading material and doesn’t allow them to get a full spectrum education.

The infamous “Bloodbath” comment. This is another talking point that came out of a clip taken out of context and echoed around the mainstream media to mislead people and make a false point. Trump was talking about the auto industry. He talks about how well they will do under his plans, then he says that that can only happen if he’s reelected. If he’s not elected, that it will be a bloodbath [for the auto industry.] This is inflammatory journalism. Look up the whole clip and you’ll see what I say is correct. By repeating this lie, you do a disservice to all those citizens that are too lazy to look it up themselves and are willing to believe and spread any lie they are fed.

January 6, 2021. While I don’t condone what happened on January 6, I do hold a lot of anger over the way it was handled by the government, the press, and the Left. This “insurrection” came on the heels of months and months of gun toting thugs taking over whole sections of American cities, vandalizing, burning whole blocks of mostly minority owned businesses, looting millions of dollars’ worth of merchandise, again, from mostly minority owned businesses. The Left’s response was to cheer them on and even post bail money for those few who were arrested for the worst offenses. The media’s response was perfectly represented by what looked like a skit out of SNL of a reporter standing in front of a block of buildings literally on fire and calling it a “mostly peaceful protest.” Fast forward to January 6. A group of right leaning citizens gather in Washington DC to protest the election results. The scene gets heated, and people move to the Capitol Building. Some force their way in, others enter through the open doors. Some windows were broken. No guns were used, nothing was set on fire. Despite some propaganda of the Left, only one person was killed and that was a protestor shot by a Capitol Police officer. It was handled by the DC police and was over within a few hours. Those people that were identified as having been there have had their lives turned upside down. Some are still sitting in prison over four years later. Some have been charged with crimes, some have not. As I said, I don’t condone what they did, but compare what happened on January 6^th with the riots that went on for months, and compare the treatment received by the perpetrators in both instances by the government and the media. Nowhere near even-handed.

National abortion ban under Trump. The Supreme Court under Trump overturned Roe v. Wade. They sent the matter back to the states where it belongs. This is another hysterical talking point by those who want to make it legal to kill a baby up to the time of birth with no restrictions at all. This is not what most people in this country want. There is a loud vocal minority that want to have this “right” without any responsibility. The states can make their own laws based on what the people in that state want. The way it should be.

Trump is Hitler. I saved this one for last because it’s the one that disturbs me the most. I think this is one of the most vile and dangerous talking points that the Left has come up with. I get it, you don’t like Trump. I’m actually not crazy about him either but comparing him to someone that tortured and murdered six-million Jews and a couple million other “undesirables” is giving permission for exactly the type of violence we saw a few days ago. After all, anyone that takes out a potential Hitler would be a hero, right? I am Jewish, and as a Jew, I find comparing anyone to Hitler disgusting and offensive, but this is also personal for me. Bob’s entire extended family, with the exception of one distant cousin, was killed in the Holocaust under Hitler’s evil regime. As the family genealogist, I have had to enter the info “died at Auschwitz” or “died at Treblinka” into the family tree way too many times. Dozens of aunts, uncles, and cousins whose lives were snuffed out under Hitler. Seeing anyone using Hitler to make a political point about how much they dislike someone else literally makes me sick to my stomach. It’s an extremely offensive and irresponsible thing to do and will only lead to more violence in this country. We need to stop adding gasoline to the fire when it comes to politics. A former president and current presidential candidate were nearly assassinated by a crazy person. A man was killed, and two others critically injured because they came to a political rally on a beautiful summer day. This is not how we handle our political differences in this country. We need to stop the lies, distortions, and vitriol that lead to this sort of violence.

About the Author

Carrie Zeidman is a digital artist and photographer whose passions are photography, art, travel, and history, all of which are found in her artwork. Carrie’s series of artwork, “Ghosts” was conceived during a trip to Poland and Israel in the spring of 2008. While visiting the death camps in Poland she was struck by the overlapping of the past and present in her view of the camps. She spent two years working on transferring those images in her mind to the canvas, coming together in her first book of art and history, Ghosts: Images of War, containing the original Holocaust images along with images from the Revolutionary War, Civil War, WWI, and WWII.