Springtime for Hitler ... It’s No Time for Tolerance

by Rebecca Schoenkopf

In the Holocaust, 1.5 million Jewish children were murdered. I know this because I am Jewish, and we tend to hold on to these things, and also because I took my son to the Museum of Tolerance this weekend. You know what murdering 1.5 million Jewish children is not the same as? Broadening access to health insurance. I promise, it’s not the same thing at all!

We went because Jimmy had a school assignment—five paragraphs on “whether the world can afford to ignore tolerance,” and I can hear Pat Buchanan’s head exploding from here—and because despite being a Catholic and a Jew, I have completely neglected my son’s religious education. He was 12 before he knew how Jesus died; now he’s 15 and until this weekend probably knew “Hitler” only as the guy you’re supposed to go back and kill should you ever take possession of a time machine. Well, he sure as hell knows him now. Score one for the godless LAUSD!

I’d always wanted to go to the Museum of Tolerance, but never quite found myself there. I’d read about the Whisper Gallery, where you walk through a dark tunnel while assaulted by a variety of epithets, but it’s long gone now. The pretty teenage volunteers manning the info table hadn’t heard of it, but suspected it might have been taken out because it was “too intense.” They said the Holocaust exhibit itself had been reworked for less intensity; for instance, you’re no longer trapped in a gas chamber at the end. I am all for extra-intensity, and all against airbrushing life, but the Museum of Tolerance is probably just-right-intense as it is.

Spending a long, teary day with the Nazis—and their descendants, talk radio hate spewers (the Museum of Tolerance is explicit about the genealogy, while their clips of Hitler propaganda film The Eternal Jew, which compared Jews to diseased rats, seemed a quick step to the oeuvre of Lou Dobbs)—made me want nothing so much as to go to the cinema and see some Inglourious Basterds kick Hitler’s ass. But the boy had his paper to write, and I had dinner to cook, and all these days later Tarantino’s vengeful Jews are still waiting for my attendance and my $13.50. I will go, and there will be blood, and I will be happy to see it. I do not feel like turning the other cheek.

They call it “Godwin’s Law,” the glib assertion that whichever side calls its opponents “Nazis” first automatically loses. (See here for an explanation of how this is a misuse of Godwin.) At least, that’s what they called it when antiwar Democrats were pointing out some disturbing characteristics of the Bush Administration, its propaganda push, and its stifling of dissent. Now that mean old ladies are screaming “Heil Hitler” at Israelis who come to town halls and demand better VA care for soldiers, well, now they call it “passion.” (Of course, just two weeks before then, when Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi pointed out that people were coming to rallies with pictures of Hitler, everyone on the Right called her a liar. They like to call Nancy Pelosi a liar a lot, and just ignore as “nuance” every time she’s proved right. They’re Al Goring her, and they’re awful. Like Adolf Hitler and George W. Bush.)

Most of the crazy seems to have died down, but give it two days and check back. With the death this week of Ted Kennedy, they’re going to Wellstone anyone who points out that health care was his “passion”—and he didn’t even need a picture of Hitler or an AR-15. You want to know what they did to Wellstone? Read Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, and be ready to weep.

I’ve already read it, so I’m all wept out. (Add my trip to the museum in, and I might not cry again ’til Christmas.) I have no more patience—no more tolerance—for these sniveling toadies and their shitty lies. I have no more patience—no more tolerance—for enemies of justice. I have no more patience for their push polls and their Goebbels-like spin. They think Obama’s Hitler? For trying (lame and centristly, but having voted for Nader and come to regret it by January 21, 2001, I remind myself I’m okay with mushy-middle) to get people better insurance?

Let them go online and see what 1.5 million dead children look like. Let them have a gander at starved concentration camp bodies. Let’s see if they can call Obama “Hitler” while they call for revolution then. Probably so. Comprehension (and compassion) ain’t their strong suit. But while they do, let’s put up a goddamn fight.

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