100,000.
That’s the approximate number of shirts ordered from Kanye “Ye” West’s Super Bowl ad stunt, according to TMZ. For those unaware: West purchased an ad directing people to his Yeezy fashion website and then about an hour after it ran, removed everything on that site except for one item: A plain white t-shirt emblazoned with a Nazi swastika, priced at $20.
In the ensuing hours, amidst a barrage of steady, barely readable, unhinged, all-capped, antisemitic posts on X where West proclaimed he is a “Nazi;” professed admiration for Adolf Hitler; encouraged violence against Jews; recommended enslaving Jews; reiterated his previous assertion that historical African-American chattel slavery was a “choice;” body shamed women; demanded Sean “P. Diddy” Combs be freed from jail as he awaits his trial for racketeering, sex-trafficking, and other charges; lobbed slurs against the LGTBQ+ community; spouted ableist slurs; and so much more (here’s a pretty comprehensive archive), 100,000 people appear to have shelled out the $20 to add this genocidal symbology to their wardrobe for a total of $2 million in revenue.
That’s more than the total estimated number of Jews living in the entire state of Colorado. It’s more than the total populations of Longmont, or Castle Rock, or Broomfield, or Parker, or dozens of other cities across the Centennial State.
And only after three full days and hundreds of thousands of re-posts was his account taken offline—not by X owner Elon Musk, but apparently by West’s own hand. Given Musk’s flirtations with neo-Nazi culture and extremely far-right political parties, that shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. If one thing has become clear since President Donald Trump took office, his new “Chancellor” certainly seems to enjoy the swirl of chaos, hate and discord that encompasses his daily routines, such as changing his name to “Harry Bōlz” briefly on X just to “own the libs” over at CNN or something. Because that’s apparently where we are now in hallowed halls of United States history.
As descents into fascism go—this one is bar-none the absolute stupidest in world history.
Meanwhile, antisemitism continues to infest every continent at deeply alarming levels. And as that continues, Trump is attempting to parade himself out front as an ally to our cause, planting a flag with his Jan. 30 Executive Order to Combat Antisemitism.
In it, Trump vowed to crack down on “pro-Hamas vandalism and intimidation, investigate and punish anti-Jewish racism in leftist, anti-American colleges and universities,” and a pledge that, “With your vote, I will be your defender, your protector, and I will be the best friend Jewish Americans have ever had in the White House.”
Judging Trump’s performance from a Jewish lens isn’t an entirely binary exercise, to be fair. The Abraham Accords—architected by Trump’s son-in-law and first-term “senior advisor” appointee Jared Kushner and signed first on Sept. 15, 2020—heralded a new era of normaliztion in the Middle East between Israel, United Arab Emirites and Bahrain. It was expanded shortly thereafter to Sudan and Morocco, and signalled the most significant shift in the Arab-Israeli relations since the Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty of 1994. Far from perfect, the Accords were still a remarkable step forward that seems to have managed to endure the Israel-Gaza war.
(And yet, as only about 15% of American Jews might say — Israel has little to do with being an American Jew. Sure, the rest of us clearly disagree with that stance, but debate and disagreement within the Jewish community is certainly nothing new, and is in fact an important part of our culture.)
Meanwhile, it is also fair to say that most American Jews certainly don’t feel any safer today than they did when the Abraham Accords were signed. A year after the Hamas terror attack that sparked the Israel-Gaza war on Oct. 7, 2023, the Anti-Defamation League surveyed students at more than 125 higher education institutions in the U.S. The results were deeply troubling and the stats were eye-popping:
- 83.2% of Jewish college students reported experiencing or witnessing firsthand acts of antisemitism
- More than 25% said they witness acts of antisemitism from faculty
- 66% said they were not confident in the ability of their university to prevent antisemitic incidents
- 13% of Jewish students have withdrawn from campus or social activities (compared to only 2% of non-Jewish students)
To that end, it would seem Trump’s executive order might be a welcomed one for our community. However, much like everything Trump does, his order comes laden with disclaimers and such a collection of fascist baggage that it’s nothing short of insanity for American Jews to trust it.
First off, there’s that important qualifying clause in his order above, “With your vote…” Right out of the gate, Trump reminds all of us that his allyship is conditional, and entirely dependent on fealty. “Bend the knee, kiss the ring, and I will be your shield,” is the implication. Trump is not POTUS for every American citizen. Trump is POTUS only for those who vote for him (and even then, there are myriad other requirements that clearly need to be met, starting with having millions in your bank account).
It’s clear that Trump harbors no love for Islam, and we can see that on display throughout his political career, all the way back to his “Muslim Ban” in Executive Order 13769, “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States,” signed only one week after he took office in 2017. The ban blocked entry into the U.S. from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, and Syria, including the hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing the civil war in Syria. That didn’t occur in a vacuum, however – Trump’s long record of anti-Muslim animas is verifiable going back to his debunked claims about watching Muslim-Americans “celebrate” the terror attacks of 9/11, which he repeated during his candidacy for President in 2015.
To be clear Islam is not the “enemy” of Jews, but Islamism is a contravention to everything Western liberalism stands for, and encompasses the action of all jihandist terror organizations. At its absolute most cursory glance, it would appear that the Trump administration’s hatred of Islam, which doesn’t appear to recognize any difference between Islam and Islamism, plants him in the old, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” axiom.
But history’s warnings to us could not be more clear.
Since its ratification in 1788, the Constitution of the United States has stood as the supreme law of the land, designed to create tension between the three branches of government that resulted in a system of checks and balances crafted expressly to prevent the assumption of power in one branch — most specifically, the Executive. Preventing a totalitarian seat of power under a despot’s whims was one thing the Founding Fathers largely agreed upon. But that also depends upon everyone following the rules set within the document, and the Constitution is still only a piece of parchment. It has no magic powers, and it relies upon our existing institutions to uphold it.
In 1918, after the end of WWI, the German Reich — also known as the Weimar Republic — became the first Constitutional Republic in the history of Germany. Their Constitution was a critical step dowards preserving democracy, and yet it was doomed nearly from the start thanks to a deluge of external factors, such as extreme hyperinflation, acrimonius diplomatic relations with other world powers and swirling discord from various extremist groups within greater Germany. Even so, for a brief period in the later 1920s, Germany was able to flourish and quell many of its biggest problems—at least until the Great Depression. The resulting unemployment and economic strife created the fissures needed for a despot to pull the right levers and pulleys that created the greatest evil of the 20th Century.
On Jan. 30, 1933, German President Paul von Hindenburg appointed a new Chancellor who, working within the confines of the established government at the time, embarked on a political campaign that has historically come to be known as the Gleichschaltung era. Gleichschaltung is German for “bringing into line” or “synchronization.” This was the legal framework Adolf Hitler enacted to bring all of Germany’s institutions — social, political, economic and cultural — into line with his vision for the future of Germany. This included:
- Reichstag Fire Decree — Suspended habeas corpus and torched the freedom of the press, rights to due process, and privacy in communications, to name a few.
- Provisional Law and Second Law on the Coordination of the States with the Reich — Effectively centralized all power under the banner of Federal government, removing it from the 11 German state parliaments. This also kneecapped any power of competing political parties at the same time.
- Law for the Restoration of a Professional Civil Service — Codified the alignment of all bureaucracies under the German federal government, including teachers, college professors and all judges, while purging these professions of Jews and political opposition parties.
- Law on the Trustees of Labour — Dismantled all trade unions and consolidated employment contracts under the German federal government.
- Law Against the Formation of Parties — Declared the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, (better known as the Nazi party) to be the official, and only, political party allowed in Germany.
- Law to Secure the Unity of Party and State — Consolidated all courts, prosecutors and police under the German federal government, including all investigative, reporting, and data collection machinery therein.
- Law on the Reconstruction of the Reich — Codified Germany as a completely unitarian state, effectively dismantling the Federal Republic while converting the previous state legislative bodies into administrative branches of the federal government.
- Law Concerning the Head of State of the German Reich — Rewrote the laws of succession of power, consolidating the offices of President and Chancellor, and removing the last legal check against Hitler’s total assumption of power in Germany.
For the last decade, public discourse regarding Trump’s affinity for power, his authoritarian designs, and shirking of even basic norms in government have often drifted into comparisons to Nazi Germany, and historians have often driven that comparison. Backlash from Jews and gentiles alike often accompanies these comparisons; we tend to bristle at anything that we perceive to water down the horrors perpetrated by the Third Reich, and it’s an understandable reaction to anything resembling hyperbole where the Holocaust is concerned.
But in our efforts to preserve this sacrosanct perspective, we simultaneously run aground in our efforts to prevent such a thing from ever occuring again. And it’s high time we look at the actions of this administration through the lens of history. Today, we are faced with an administration that bears more than a passing resemblance to the lessons we should have learned from the Holocaust.
Today, the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, an appointed, unvetted populist masquerading as a technocrat, has thrust himself upon the American public. His stated goal: tearing apart American institutions. He acts unilaterally, with no Congressional oversight, pillaging his way through our bureaucracy, empowered solely by the President of the United States, and dares anyone to stop him. He has wormed his way into myriad data systems at every level of government, despite laws on the books to prevent that access. Some federal justices have ruled against him. Others have supported him. He has worked with Trump’s administration to block the disbursement of Congressionally appropriated funds while torpedoing multiple Inspectors General whose entire jobs are to ensure ethics rules are upheld. He’s firing federal employees at breakneck pace, often without any actual understanding — or care — as to what it is they do.
Meanwhile, Musk’s flirtations with far-right organizations and political parties continue to pile up. NBC dug into his recent actions: “Billionaire tech executive Elon Musk has encouraged right-wing political movements, policies and administrations in at least 18 countries in a global push to slash immigration and curtail regulation of business, according to an NBC News review of his political activity over the past two years.”
These include an appearance at a rally for the very far-right AfD party in Germany, where he said, “it’s good to be proud of German culture and German values, and not to lose that in some sort of multiculturalism that dilutes everything,” and then in reference to the Holocaust: “frankly too much of a focus on past guilt and we need to move beyond that.” This happened just two days prior to International Holocaust Rememberance Day.
Lest we forget, that Musk was only too happy to perform a Nazi salute — twice — at Trump’s inauguration festivities. Or that he thinks Nazi jokes are funny. Or that his grandfather was reportedly a Hitler supporter who also “was fanatical about (supporting) apartheid” in South Africa.
Trump’s jovial friendship with Kanye West has been well-documented, as was his choice to have West and neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes as his guests at Mar-a-Lago for dinner. Longtime Trump associate and advisor Steve Bannon has allegedly had plenty to say about his distaste for Jews.
This is but the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the legions of Jew-haters who have found a home in the MAGA community. And yet, there’s a nuance between today’s right-wing antisemites and those of Nazi Germany. During the Holocaust, hating Jews was the rally cry to embracing Nationalism. Today, embracing nationalism is the rally cry that galvanizes Jew-haters.
That’s the distinction Trump loyalists hang their red hats on. “Jared Kushner is Jewish!” they exclaim, as though it’s somehow a complete defense of Trump’s political and personal bedfellows. “How could he hate Jews when his son-in-law and grandchildren are Jewish!?”
It’s easy. Nationalism is a deeply toxic brew that demands fealty, and nearly 80% of American Jews voted for Kamala Harris according to exit polls. You’d be hard-pressed to find a subject that more of us actually agree on. And that act alone puts us firmly on Trump’s long list of “political enemies.”
As we continue this descent into a new era of fascism that should alarm every American — Jew and gentile alike — two things should be plainly obvious to us all: Islamism is an enemy to our way of life in the United States.
And so is Donald Trump.
