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Hi Steve,
Testifying before a U.S. Senate committee in 2005, Newt Gingrich said that Iran’s threat to wipe Israel off the map “calls to mind the reported response of a Holocaust survivor. When asked what lesson he had drawn from the experience, he answered, ‘When someone tells you he wants to kill you — believe him.'”
Maybe it’s time to start holding Republicans to the same standard we hold the Iranian government. That shouldn’t be such a high bar, should it? We warned for years that given the chance, Republicans would overturn Roe v. Wade and ban abortion with no exceptions for rape, incest, or the life of the mother. Why? Because that's what Republicans told us they'd do. That, we said, is why elections matter. But our warnings sounded like hyperbole and election-year rhetoric.
After all, overturning Roe v. Wade would require the president not only to nominate people with no respect or understanding of judicial precedent and the willingness–for the first time in history–to take away rights from the American people, but a Senate willing to confirm such people. It happened. Women will die because of this decision. How many? That depends on how successful Republicans are in the November elections at the state and federal level.
Voting Republican means voting for fascism. Just as you could split hairs and argue that by “wiping Israel off the map,” Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was simply expressing a wish that “someday, somehow, the Israeli government will collapse under its own weight,” so too you could argue that if given the chance, Republicans won’t really overturn a presidential election. The difference is that Iran never tried so we can’t be sure. Republicans did try–Trump incited a violent riot on January 6 and 147 Republicans voted to overturn the election. All they need to be successful is more Republicans.
One hallmark of fascism is a judiciary subservient not to the law or to democracy but to its leaders. It is happening here: We saw it in Bush v Gore and we saw it in Judge Aileen Cannon's attempt to delay a criminal investigation of Donald Trump's theft of secret documents. We’ll see more of it if Republicans win more elections. We are numb to warnings that this is “the most important election of our lifetime” because we hear it every two years. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.
Israel has long held that unlike its Arab neighbors, it cannot afford to lose even one war because the first war it loses will be the last war it fights–there will be no more Israel. The same is true of democracy. Previous elections were about policy issues. Important policy issues, but policies that could be reversed. We’ve known since at least 2012 that, as political scientists Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein wrote, the Republican Party "is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition."
That was reason enough to vote against them, but no one thought that John McCain or Mitt Romney would refuse to concede defeat or attempt to subvert an election. Today’s Republican Party is different. Democracy contains the seeds of its own destruction. All it takes is for fascists to win one election, and then that’s the last election. No second chance. As long as the Republican Party remains dominated by election deniers, every election will be the most important election of our lifetime. Get used to it.
We saw it in Germany in the 1930s and we are seeing it today. No one is arguing that Republicans plan to launch a campaign of genocide. But we cannot ignore the parallels. If every comparison to Hitler or Nazis is inappropriate, then “never again” means nothing because by definition, it can never happen again. Can we make these comparisons only if the candidate in question has a Charlie Chaplin
mustache and speaks German? The Holocaust was unique, but we insult the memory of those who perished if we do not apply its lessons to the challenges we face today.
Republican rallies increasingly resemble Nazi rallies. Major Republican politicians unapologetically feature prominent antisemites and work with them.
Jennifer Rubin recalled the ad that the Jewish Democratic Council of America ran in 2020 comparing the MAGA movement and Nazism. She noted that Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt said at the time that “the key to acceptable Holocaust comparisons is precision and nuance.”
Rubin writes that “identifying the MAGA movement as ‘fascist’ or ‘semi-fascist’...is not to accuse it of planning genocide, but rather to point to its playbook as reminiscent of those that authoritarian movements and leaders have deployed across the globe. Moreover, the bracing term ‘fascism’ reminds us not to take buffoonish characters lightly. We cannot normalize abhorrent conduct or discount the insidious nature of notions such as ‘replacement theory.’ And we cannot ignore the threats to a democratic, pluralistic society. That’s the lesson of Trump and of [Ken Burns’s] spellbinding Holocaust documentary.”
But maybe the Republicans don’t mean it. Maybe they are kidding when they say they want to make America a Christian nation. Maybe the Iranian government doesn’t mean it either. And maybe Charlie Chaplin Hitler was just joking around. As Judd Legum proves, "mainstream" Republicans are not on the November ballot: "Among elected officials and those seeking office, however, there is only one Republican Party. Advancing Trump's lies about election fraud — or supporting those that do — is what it takes to remain in good standing."
If you disagree, don’t send an altiloquent email telling me I’m divisive because I'm calling out fascism. What is the alternative? Looking the other way? We’ve seen how that works out. If you disagree with me, tell me what I’ve said that you think is wrong. In the meantime, if you don’t think the GOP is a fascist cult, watch this (the music is from the rally, not added).
More Republican narishkeit on Iran. The latest Republican attempt to sabotage JCPOA negotiations is a proposal to block Biden from lifting Iran sanctions (which Biden would not do unless we reentered the JCPOA). The bill is called the Preventing Underhanded and Nefarious Iranian Supported Homicides (PUNISH) Act.
How clever–get it? Punish? As if a homicide could be underhanded but not nefarious. Or maybe they are okay with homicides that are nefarious as long as they aren’t underhanded. But they needed words that began with "u" and "n," and by golly, they got their acronym.
Even Democrats who are skeptical of the Iran Deal will see this for what it is and will not cosponsor it. It’s a publicity stunt that is going nowhere in this Congress. If you think Iran wants to "wipe Israel off the map," why would you give it the tools to do so? Yet that's what Republicans are doing by attempting to sabotage JCPOA negotiations. The JCPOA remains the best path to preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. If Republicans have a better plan, they've yet to share it with us.
Moving from the kids' table to the adults in the room, in response to the tragic and brutal death of Mahsa Amini and other human rights violations in Iran, the State Department imposed sanctions on Iran’s "Morality Police" and senior Iranian security officials who have engaged in serious human rights abuses.
L’Shana Tovah u’Metukah. Rosh HaShanah begins tonight. I hope that 5783 is better for all of us and for everyone than 5782, which was a very hard year, and that through prayer, repentence, and tzedakah we can reflect during the High Holiday season on how we can make it so. A good and sweet year to you, Steve.
Last week's newsletter.
ICYMI. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer's Eight Questions for Kevin McCarthy and We took for granted our living in an age of enlightenment, by JDCA Vice Chair Barbara Goldberg Goldman.
Tweet of the Week. Bergsauce fka klaus_kinski.
Twitter Threads of the Week. Mark Jacob and Ron Kampeas.
Video Clip of the Week. If you missed JDCA's Path to Victory rally last week, you missed this incredible exchange between Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) and Brian Tyler Cohen.
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