John Wayne

Every now and then I get an angry message from a Jewish woman of a certain age, who mistakenly thinks I dangle a cross earring from my right lobe. It’s not a cross. It’s a dagger. I have always said that the pen is mightier than the sword. But in these times, I carry a sword too because I’m not quite sure words are enough.

I thought seriously about writing a piece tonight with definitions of things we take for granted (apparently). I was going to write a piece explaining what happened in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. I was going to write a piece about who Adolf Hitler was. And I was going to write a piece defining in true historical terms what constitutes a “Nazi rally”. (If you don’t know, MSNBC ran black-and-white clips of the Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden during the Trump event at Madison Square Garden this weekend.)

I doubt you’d have seen this at the Nazi rally at MSG in the 1930s.

My friend AJ Edelman, the American Israeli Olympian, wrote on his Twitter yesterday, in response to the Jewish Americans who have been participating in the “trRuMp iS bAsiCallY hiTler” mind virus:

I will always remember 2024 as the year a horrifying number of Jews cheapened the horrors of our ancestors and engaged enthusiastically in Holocaust inversion for the purpose of political gain. Encouraged by the most senior ever US Jewish politician, whose last public appearance was laughing it up with "basically Hitler" at a charity benefit. I'm so disgusted. This will irreparably move the goalposts. Shame.

What is wrong with our fellow Jews? Why can’t we all see now that regardless of who wins an election - the importance of which has been blown way out of proportion - we cannot afford to trust the politicians in our midst. And whoever they are, we must insist that we are heard. But there is no guarantee. If Harris wins then it is the duty of the good Jews who gatekeep her to let us inconvenient Jews in to present to her the full scope of the issue so she can act. Not yesterday, but now. We have more than earned our seat at that table.

Today Scooter Braun posted his endorsement for his “friend” Harris, and I responded:

I’m not convinced she will meet with Jews like us. Harris seems far more interested in pointing at Trump and saying that he is Hitler, than she does hearing an unabashedly honest Jewish perspective. And just to be clear, I’m coming down hard here because I demand better from what was once my natural political home. Every voting Democrat should be doing the same.

I found this nauseating, and I know I am not alone. The words “Never Again!” are not reserved for Americans going to the polling stations to cast a vote in the hope Donald J Trump won’t be President once more. The words “Never Again!” are reserved for the Jewish people, and us alone.

For shame.

Ignorance of the Holocaust is at a terrifying percentage among Generation Z. Nearly two-thirds of young Americans do not know that six million Jewish people were murdered in the Holocaust. That is a failure of US education. So I say to Madame Vice President Harris: as the would-be President of this country, please be responsible with your words. And to every academic and intellectual I ask you how you think we’re supposed to trust how you apply the history of our people to the modern day when you have so failed to teach entire generations of young Americans about how history applies to history! You can’t even apply it correctly to the 1930s. Maybe take a seat for once and let the Jewish people do the talking about who does and does not today constitute the leader of the Third Reich. There is one man in this world who could be tastefully likened to Hitler. His name is Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran. And he does not want a single Jew to roam the earth. But Trump? I don’t remember Jews being sent to death camps here in America between 2016 and 2020.

I tell these people who intellectualize the comparison: Pick any other fascist if you’re making a comparison. But they don’t pick any other fascist, because they want to keep making the Holocaust comparison. Why? The Holocaust is their litmus test for “most terrible things ever”. Their litmus test, at the expense of the constant erasure of the Jewish people from our own survivor’s story. They take what they want from us. Go on. Take our kidnappees posters down. Take our grief. Take our dignity. But don’t dare take our story. That is all we have to our names.

To liken Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler and his pre-election event at Madison Square Gardens to a “Nazi rally” is to insult every single Jew who perished at the hands of the Nazi regime. It is to insult the blood that runs through our veins in spite of the savages of the last century who tried to stop it forever. The Holocaust is not your toy. Our blood wasn’t spilled for you to close in on a swing state. This is a treacherous minimizing of the most documented crime in human history. It no longer has anything to do with who you want to win. This has nothing to do with your politic. This has to do with respecting the authority of history. It has to do with adhering to foundational principles of truth. You are doing nothing for anyone with these gross gauche comparisons. The only outcome of such inflammatory hysteria is harm. Harm to everyone, including the people you support.

Listen, I am not the nice or polite Jew. I’m not the elite Jew, nor am I the popular Jew. I’m not the apologetic Jew, and I’m not the Jew who eats shrimp. I’m not the Jew who thinks she’s white and I’m not the Jew who hates Netanyahu just so she can still be heard. I’m not the Jew who negotiates with the enemy. I’m not the Jew who weaponizes our own history to score political points. I’m not the Jew who keeps her head down and only makes a sound once someone else has said it’s safe to do so. I am not the Jew who is here to make friends or be liked. I am the Jew you can’t ignore.

I've been doing this work a lot longer than a lot of people. Yet I'm still not the right voice for the documentaries or the ADL or the good Jews, and I don't care. I never cared. I am not in the cool club. On Sunday, in London, we saw the dangerous ramifications of allowing progressives to go freely where we would NEVER let the far right go. Free Palestine protestors intimidated and harassed women, children and elderly on a Sunday morning outside a Jewish community centre (JW3), and the Metropolitan Police stood by and did nothing.

Keir Starmer, the leader of the British centre left, has failed the Jewish people.

In the same day, we saw more and more Holocaust inversion all over the American mainstream media as the mania around this farcicle election hits a fever pitch. I was outraged – and I continue to be outraged. Because there is no Adolf Hitler in America. But there are hundreds of thousands of terror supporters disrupting the streets every day in this country, tearing down America's most prestigious institutions, and the powers that be are doing NOTHING. In fact, instead of doing anything substantive, Harris continues on every occasion prompted to say that the protestors “have a point”, while she agrees with the accusation of “genocide” falsely noosed around Israel’s neck.

So no, you won't see me in the good Jew circles doing the good Jew things, trying to make friends and appease people who so clearly hate or don't give a care in the world about us. (And before I am “accused” for the thousandth time this week: this is NOT a political endorsement of ANYBODY.) But what you will see me doing again and again and again until you are so sick of the sight of me you can't stand it any more is saying this: wake up!

Because soon you will also find that like my friends in the UK, your children are being taught in schools by terrorists. It is already happening in California. It will spread to other states too. You soon too will find that you're no longer safe to go to your local community centers on the weekends. Like a Jewish man this past Saturday in Chicago. A Jewish man was shot in Chicago on Shabbat on his way to synagogue. Did you hear about this?

The media are hiding this Chicago story. An illegal immigrant shot him while screaming “Allahu Akbar”. Why isn’t this story circulating? Too close to the election?

And what are all of the Jewish leaders doing about this? Who are they working with? How are they making this the top priority for the establishment organizations they're continuing to apologize for? I say to them all: stop falling in whatever line you're falling into, and start actually drawing lines. Because believe you me, once they cross that line, there is no going back. America will be lost.

I’m not the disciplinarian for the behavior of other people, but the stuff I’m seeing online around this election is so below the belt, I am embarrassed of people I genuinely love. First of all, let me address many “liberal” men. Guys, you don’t get to dictate to women how to vote. Let me tell you something. Women live our entire lives having to minimize and mutate our femininity in order to accommodate you. We are constantly making the calculation of which aspects of ourselves we have to endanger in order to live in your world. So if some women are deciding that they can’t bring themselves to vote like you, then ask yourself why, not them. Don’t put it on women that they are self-sabotaging. Put it on yourselves and ask yourselves why some women are once again sacrificing themselves in order to do what they deem to be the best thing in this moment because your leaders have failed them.

You know, I grew up in the 1990s. Back then in schools we were taught that voter secrecy is a democratic principle. You can vote for anyone you want, and you and only you get to determine whether or not you share information about who you vote for. There was probably a reason for this principle but… Well to hell with democracy, I guess.

When I posted that John Wayne quote today, someone from the joy police immediately commented that John Wayne was a white supremacist and “we have to have these hard conversations”. I blocked this person immediately. Don’t invent problems where we have plenty. Focus on the task at hand. Girls and boys, it’s time to saddle up. We’re in for a bumpy ride.