[Philadelphia Inquirer] Many people find it offensive to use the Holocaust as a yardstick for the political excesses of the last four years that culminated in the storming of Washington on Jan. 6. They believe that to mention Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler in the same breath, as Spike Lee did on Sunday in an awards speech, disrespects the millions of innocent victims and survivors, diminishing the enormity of the Nazis’ crimes.As a son of Holocaust survivors and a grandson of four murdered Jews, I might be expected to agree. But I do not.
I think Trump’s ability to incite followers under the banner of white nationalism has enabled us to better understand Hitler’s sway over the Germans, connecting us to the real people in the old black-and-white photo images and newsreels that show the masses with arms outstretched toward their fuhrer.
Hitler blamed the Jews for Germany’s economic woes; the gas chambers and ovens followed. Trump blamed immigrants for making us unsafe; child migrants in cages, Muslims banned from entering the U.S., and a new wall on our Mexican border followed. Trump figuratively drove busloads of angry Americans to Washington this month and egged them on after they got there.