Antisemitism and the lessons of the Holocaust are taking a front row in the raging public discourse by politicians on both sides in the wake of the insurrection on the US Capitol last week.
President-elect Joe Biden cited anti-Semitic expressions by rioters in the U.S. Capitol, at a Press Conference last week, saying that his Justice Department should prosecute them.
When asked by a reporter if his Justice Department would prosecute the insurrectionists his response was “Yes. they should be treated as a bunch of thugs, insurrectionists, anti-Semites.”
Biden invoked the memory of the Holocaust, saying that senators Hawley and Cruz – who objected to his certification as President – were “part of the big lie” and shared an anecdote about Nazi minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, exaggerating the number of people killed in the firebombing of Dresden and the papers printed it.
“They’re part of the big lie,” he said at the press conference. “We’re told that Goebbels and the great lie: you keep repeating the lie, repeating the lie.”
The reference wasn’t received well on the other side of the aisle. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) – who is blamed by many as complicit – took to Twitter to push back on Biden’s remarks. “Really sad. At a time of deep national division, President-elect Biden’s choice to call his political opponents literal Nazis does nothing to bring us together or promote healing” Cruz Tweeted.
Cruz’s Tweet led to a fiery exchange between him and Congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio Cortez in which they both accused each other of being oblivious to the rising threat of antisemitism. “They wore Auschwitz shirts, erected gallows, and tried to hang the Vice President.Your continued excusal and denial of Wednesday’s Neo-Nazi presence is abhorrent and dangerous” The congresswoman wrote, to which Cruz responded with another Tweet, comparing his pro-Israel record to that of Cortez as proof of his stance on Antisemitism.
“Unless they are genocidal, calling your political opponents Nazis is atrocious,” Cruz wrote in his Tweet, which received a lot of pushback from Jewish groups stating that he is minimizing the threat posed to Jews by far-right hate groups.
Another caparison to the darkest chapter in human history was made by former Republican Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger. in a widely circulated Video message, hecompared the insurrection to Kristallnacht, the Nazi attack on Jews that is considered the beginning of the Holocaust.
“Wednesday was the day of Broken Glass right here in the United States,” Schwarzenegger said. “The broken glass was in the windows of the United States Capitol.”
Schwarzenegger also recalled disturbing memories from his Austrian childhood that stemmed from the Nazi era. He spoke about growing up in post-war Austria surrounded by “broken men” driven to drink by guilt at having enabled the Nazis. He described his drunk father terrorizing his family with verbal and physical abuse.
“It all started with lies, and lies and lies, and intolerance,” Schwarzenegger said in the video, describing the Nazi era.
