As the grandchild of four now-passed beautiful, loving, sweet Holocaust survivors, it’s hard to describe how painful it is for me to hear, read or type the name Adolf Hitler.
He is the monster that brutally murdered most of my family. And no one has ever come closer to completely wiping the Jewish people off of the face of the earth.
Nevertheless, I summon the strength to say his name here, very specifically to address those who find it all too easy to yell “Hitler!” for callously hyper-partisan reasons.
Such casual use of Hitler’s name and imagery is a despicable insult to the memories of my gassed-to-death great-grandparents, my many great uncles and aunts, and to all 6 million victims of this fiend’s incomparable genocidal brutality.
It is nothing short of psychotic to compare the architect of those atrocities to Donald Trump.
But it’s exactly what Eric Orts, a University of Pennsylvania law professor and former Paul, Weiss attorney, did on LinkedIn last week.
Orts, who specializes in ethics, posted a now-deleted image of Trump and Hitler side by side, followed by a shockingly absurd and unsupported demand that we can only avoid a Hitleresque scenario in the United States by voting in Kamala Harris.
I shudder to think how Orts might address students in his classroom who might dare to disagree with his rhetoric and believe — along with half of the country — that Trump is the better candidate.
After all, Orts has already used a comparison to Hitler to make his point.
If I were a 20-year-old, I’d probably be too scared to say anything that my professor had already declared would make me a fascist pariah.
But then, shutting down opposing views before they can even begin to sprout is the whole point, isn’t it? Any means to an end.
Even if it means spewing the most vicious hyperbole imaginable to terrify people into agreeing with you.
Well, I will not sit idly by when anyone uses my family’s murders at the hand of the actual Adolf Hitler to score political points.
You mock my family, and the memory of 6 million Jewish souls, when you compare that grotesquely unparalleled genocide to the actions of any American politician.
This slander did not begin with Donald Trump, of course: Casually and recklessly throwing around Hitler’s name has long been a leftist pastime.
But it has now become ubiquitous — and increasingly dangerous.
Vice President Kamala Harris has repeatedly likened Trump to Hitler and fascists. Early Sunday, Tim Walz compared Trump’s campaign rally at Madison Square Garden to a Nazi rally held at the venue in 1939.
Hilary Clinton did the same, and MSNBC even spliced clips from that long-ago event into its coverage.
Yet thousands of Jewish New Yorkers attended the rally. Israeli flags proudly flew both inside and outside the arena, and Hasidic Chabad volunteers were there to beautifully wrap tefillin (Jewish prayer garb) around the arms of rally attendees.
A Nazi rally with Israeli flags flying peacefully and Jews openly praying?
Still, media hack Catherine Rampell of The Washington Post recently warned her readers: “Don’t scoff at the Hitler comparisons, Trump’s rhetoric is that bad.” CNN has ubiquitously shared the trope. The Guardian followed suit.
It goes on and on.
This spring an honors student thesis entitled “An Exploration of Trump’s and Hitler’s Rise to Power” was accepted by Gardner-Webb University and published in an academic journal.
Ridiculously, the thesis argued that “Trump and Hitler ascended to power in very similar ways,” and repulsively compared Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” to Trump’s 2020 State of the Union Address.
Shame on the academic advisers — Professor Elizabeth Amato and Dr. Wilson Hawkins — who oversaw and encouraged this hideous project and elevated it to “scholarship” status that is now widely distributed in academic circles.
It shocks the conscience that we actually do live in a world where people like the rapists, baby burners and genocidal mass murderers of Hamas really do hold an ideology comparable to Hitler’s.
That Americans are comparing their political adversaries, and not terror groups like Hamas, to a monster like Hitler is outrageous and deeply deflating.
Jewish people have had an extremely rough couple of years. Trump has nearly been assassinated — twice.
The rhetoric must change.
We must stop comparing our political opponents to a man who wiped out nearly half of the Jews in the world.
Not only is it dishonest and downright revolting to all decent people, it’s also deeply offensive to the victims of Hitler and their families — and dangerous to those who run for office.
Jeffrey Lax, a professor of law and chair of the business department at CUNY, is co-founder of S.A.F.E. Campus.