By Michael E. Ginsberg October 29, 2024
After the year since October 7, 2023, that Jewish Americans have had, I vowed I would reject any effort by Democrats and progressives to concoct identity politics kerfuffles for electoral gain.
Well, here we are.
It seems that Democrats are fleeing to their fainting couches because of an off-color joke about Puerto Rico told by a comedian famous for his roasts at Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally while likening the MSG rally itself to a 1939 rally by pro-German elements in the US.
This is what Democrats expect us to get upset about?
After the Democratic Socialist party—the party of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib—held a rally in Times Square on October 8, 2023, celebrating and glorifying the October 7 attacks, complete with displays of swastikas by attendees?
It ain’t happening.
After Jewish Democrats had to hold events in undisclosed locations at the 2024 Democratic National Convention for security reasons?
t ain’t happening.
After Jewish students have spent a year being harassed on college campuses, denied access to college campus spaces, and forced to flee libraries and lecture halls through basements and attics to avoid braying mobs? With the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division uttering nary a peep?
It ain’t happening.
After a Jewish man was murdered by a pro-Palestinian while peacefully protesting in Los Angeles?
It ain’t happening.
After the Democrats in Pittsburgh issued a statement on the one-year anniversary of October 7 all-lives-matter’ing the barbaric events Hamas committed against Jews and other Israelis that day?
It ain’t happening.
After all this, Democrats want Jewish voters like me to get upset about an off-color joke?
Democrats can take that boy crying wolf elsewhere.
Despite a year’s worth of anti-Semitic vitriol from the progressive left, Democrats and their media and academic appendages are deluding themselves if they think they have any authority to equate Trump’s MSG rally with a pro-Nazi rally.
Democrats could have likened Trump’s MSG rally to the 1943 MSG “We Will Never Die” pageant held by Hollywood writer Ben Hecht and New York adman Peter Bergson to save European Jews, whose US tour featured stars like Frank Sinatra and Burgess Meredith. Or the 1933 MSG protest to protect Jews in Europe, demanding President Roosevelt permit greater Jewish immigration to the US.
They couldn’t do it. Democrats had to equate it to a Nazi rally. Even though the rally included Jews safely and proudly wearing their kippahs, displaying Israeli flags, and wrapping tefillin.
But I understand Democrats’ impulse to equate Trump’s rally with a Nazi rally. It has two components, one spiritual and one practical.
Spiritually, Democrats’ self-image is bound up in the belief that they are the good guys, the morally superior set, standing up for civil rights. Republicans have to be Nazis and racists for Democrats’ worldview, their very conception of themselves, to sustain itself.
Practically, Democrats understand that the only way to elect hectoring progressive candidates like Kamala Harris and enact their unpopular progressive agenda is to disqualify the other side as Nazis and racists.
My guess: that ain’t happening, either.
Michael E. Ginsberg is the Former Chairman of the Republican Party of Virginia’s 11th Congressional District Committee and member of the RPV’s Executive Committee.