Trump’s immigration order does not mark the second coming of Hitler
The Progressives on my real-me Facebook feed are having a collective mental collapse in response to President Trump’s new immigration order. Typically, their behavior is predicated, not upon actual facts, but upon media propaganda and their own factual and historic ignorance. This post will rebut the worst, most misleading of these arguments, which is the claim Jews and all other decent people must accept unlimited refugees from Muslim countries because Hitler.
My Facebook feed is being inundated with the fallacy holding that, unless we allow unlimited immigration from those seven terrorist-fomenting Muslim countries, we’re no better than America in the late 1930s, when it refused to allow in Jewish refugees, most of whom perished in the Holocaust.
Most especially, because I am a Jew, the Progressives insist I should be on the front-line in the war against the immigration order, screaming “Stop! Don’t take any of these people in the country.” This is a morally evil argument predicated upon ignorance and misrepresentation.
Before I rebut the argument, here’s a sampling of the “reductio ad Hitlerlum” garbage littering my Facebook feed in the wake of Trump’s immigration order. Let’s start with Dr. Seuss, shall we?
One can sum up the Progressives’ outlook in the following way:
And of course, if the above Progressive analogy is true, then this is also true:
Wrong, wrong, wrong — or, in more graphic terms:
We have to begin by remembering who the Jews were and what they were facing:
The Jews were a Europeanized people tied to the same Biblical morality and cultural tradition as America’s Christian majority. As was true for Americans, Jews abided by the Ten Commandments — unsurprising, given that it was Jews who introduced those same commandments to the Christians. As Dennis Prager has explained in his excellent Ten Commandments series of videos, these Commandments serve as the basis for a high functioning, safe, moral community.
The Jews were highly literate and the ones from Western Europe had advanced professional skills that meshed well with and, indeed, added to the American skill set. Many were as, if not more, sophisticated than the majority of Americans.
Most importantly, their grounding in Torah meant that they were exceptionally law-abiding. Not only do the vast majority play by general rules governing good citizenship, they never engaged in rape as a means of conquest, honor killing, genital mutilation, systemic discrimination, or genocidal ideology. Taking them into America would not have affected American values, nor would it have put American citizens at risk of mass rape, female mutilation, torture, or murder on the basis of race, color, creed, sex, or sexual orientation.
The Jews were also on the receiving end of an utterly unprecedented, completely aberrant, attempt in the modern era to destroy an entire race of people. Europe, of course, had always practiced a deadly antisemitism, but it was sort of like an endemic disease: It appeared randomly, it never killed everyone, and the disease’s victims (i.e., the Jews) had learned to adapt to it. They survived and, in Enlightenment Europe, they even thrived.
Hitler’s approach was entirely different. It wasn’t an endemic problem. It was, instead, a pandemic disease that had a 100% mortality rate for Jews. Even worse for those poor Jews, there were no contiguous nations immune to the disease. While righteous individuals in those nations took a stand, most of them eagerly embraced the sickness.
Another notable fact about the Jewish refugees was that they were women and children (think of the few thousand children whose lives were saved by the Kindertransport). Young men were not overly represented. Instead, applications involving older men came from intact families with men who were no longer of fighting age (rather like the highly cultured, peaceful family of Otto Frank, father to Anne).
Now let’s look at the Muslims who Progressives insist are analogous to the Jews:
Middle Eastern Muslims, especially the ones from the list of terrorist-promoting countries (a list Obama’s team compiled) are not people who share America’s Biblical morality and cultural traditions. Indeed, their mores are often the complete opposite of ours. As foolish Europeans have already discovered, the citizens from Muslim countries such as those on the Trump list come from cultures that aggressively advocate mass rape, pedophilia, honor killings, genital mutilation, the erasure of women through veils and sequestering, the slaughter of gays, and discrimination (often murderous) against other faiths, especially Judaism.
Regarding that last point, do remember that Muslims aren’t shy about their hatred for Jews. After the Jews refused to recognize Mohamed as their prophet he, in a remarkably un-saint-like way, got petty. He began by denigrating Jews and, as his wounded ego festered, began to demand their deaths.
Modern Muslims, even more “moderate” ones, take these genocidal demands very seriously. As just one example, in the Middle East Hamas doesn’t want to share Israel with the Jews; it wants to slaughter them. Here are a few pertinent, wildly antisemitic, genocidal quotations from the Hamas charter, which relies heavily upon Mohamed’s own words:
The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said:
“The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.” (related by al-Bukhari and Muslim).
[snip]
For a long time, the enemies [Jews] have been planning, skillfully and with precision, for the achievement of what they have attained. They took into consideration the causes affecting the current of events. They strived to amass great and substantive material wealth which they devoted to the realisation of their dream. With their money, they took control of the world media, news agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting stations, and others. With their money they stirred revolutions in various parts of the world with the purpose of achieving their interests and reaping the fruit therein. They were behind the French Revolution, the Communist revolution and most of the revolutions we heard and hear about, here and there. With their money they formed secret societies, such as Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, the Lions and others in different parts of the world for the purpose of sabotaging societies and achieving Zionist interests. With their money they were able to control imperialistic countries and instigate them to colonize many countries in order to enable them to exploit their resources and spread corruption there.
You may speak as much as you want about regional and world wars. They were behind World War I, when they were able to destroy the Islamic Caliphate, making financial gains and controlling resources. They obtained the Balfour Declaration, formed the League of Nations through which they could rule the world. They were behind World War II, through which they made huge financial gains by trading in armaments, and paved the way for the establishment of their state. It was they who instigated the replacement of the League of Nations with the United Nations and the Security Council to enable them to rule the world through them. There is no war going on anywhere, without having their finger in it.
[snip]
We should not forget to remind every Muslim that when the Jews conquered the Holy City in 1967, they stood on the threshold of the Aqsa Mosque and proclaimed that “Mohammed is dead, and his descendants are all women.”
Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Muslim people. “May the cowards never sleep.”
If one actually understands the values of Jews, Nazis, and Muslims, for modern Jews to welcome modern Muslims en masse into their countries is precisely the same as demanding that Jews in the 1930s and 1940s welcome Nazis into their homes.
Color me paranoid, but I’m not inclined to welcome with open arms people whose ideology mandates my death.
Here’s the core point: Unlike the Jews of WWII, the Muslims whom the Left insists we accept in the US aren’t the victims of a vast, aberrant genocidal upheaval, completely out of keeping with historical norms and, indeed, 19th century trends in humanism. Other than Syria, the other nations on the list (nations, incidentally, that the Obama administration classified as terrorism risks) are cultural and economic backwaters that have values in keeping with Nazi values. They’re on the move, not because of a one-off genocidal war, but because majority Muslim nations in the Middle East are dangerous, corrupt, hate-filled, and poverty-stricken.
That is Islam. I like how Roger L. Simon sums it up:
I have a question for you: what do we do about Islam?
You will note I say Islam and not some other euphemistic expression like radical Islam or Islamism or Islamofascism. Islam.
I know that disturbs you because chances are you live in a world where cultural relativism prevails and all religions — fusty old things that they are — are equal.
Well, it is so if you think so, but I will note again that at least one interested party — the current president of Egypt, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi — has declared bluntly that his religion is in dire need of a reformation. Chances are he knows more about Islam than you. He certainly does than me. Also, he lives in a hellacious region of the world dominated by that religion and its violent ideology.
How dangerous is that ideology? Ask yourself this: Why is it that since 9/11/2001 there he have been 30,209 terror attacks in the name of Allah? There have been 38 in the last six days alone, resulting in 425 killed and 419 injured. There were also nine suicide bombings during that time frame.
So I repeat, why is that? DNA? That would be racist. Poverty? But most of the terror masters are rich. How about an ideology that urges you to do these things, just as it always has since the seventh century? Could that be the reason — just possibly?
Islam’s rules marginalizing women, forbidding lending for reasonable interest (which is one of the engines of a growing economy), barring Jews and Christians, killing gays, and limiting knowledge to the Koran (which vast numbers of illiterates in the Middle East even cannot read) are perfect ingredients for a violent, degraded, economically stagnant community. Those countries that have some wealth (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, etc.) achieved their wealth, not through human potential, but for the West’s willingness to pay big bucks for black gold.
Oh, and speaking of those wealthy countries, they border the lands from which the refugees come, they share the refugees’ culture, and they have significant space and resources for handling refugees. In other words, unlike the Jews during the 1930s and 1940s, there are contiguous nations that ought to be perfect refuges for those suffering in Syria from the war, or those suffering elsewhere from the burden of their own culture.
It’s worth noting that all these wealthy Muslim countries refuse to touch with a ten-foot pole their Muslim compatriots from countries on the terror-sponsoring list. They know, as Europe is learning, that while Saudi Arab and Qatar and Kuwait have exerted some control on Islam’s worst impulses, the incoming refugees will wreak havoc with and destroy their fragile, wealth-driven stability. Put another way, people who are religiously wedded to hatred and ignorance, many of whom are illiterate as well, are not good immigrants, and that’s true even if they travel to countries that share with them a slightly more civilized (or at least tightly controlled) version of their culture.
Also, the mention of Syria is a reminder that most of these immigrants aren’t escaping war-torn Syria. Instead, as the broad list of countries under temporary ban shows, what they’re really escaping is the poverty their own system breeds. Worse, with their imperialist mindset, they’re coming here to have us support them while they work on imposing on us the same system that they Left behind.
Here’s another difference: Unlike the aberrant mass slaughter of Jews in Europe during the WWII era, the reality is that Muslims (sadly) routinely kill their co-religionists. What’s happening in Syria is a Sunni-Shia battle. During the 1980s, Iraq and Iran engaged in an epic Sunni-Shia battle. Saudi Arabia’s suddenly willingness to engage with Israel is because Saudi is Sunni and it fears a Shia Iran that, thanks in large part of Obama and Kerry, is newly flush with cash and continuing unabated its nuclear question. Lebanon, once a thriving, relatively sophisticated country, has been a battlefield for decades because of the Sunni-Shia schism. In Sudan, even without the Sunni-Shia schism, the killings were systematic: first the Christians, then the wrong kind of — the black kind of — Muslims.
Opening the door to a routinely violent people because we are witnessing the routine victim-hood isn’t a one-time humanitarian gesture. Instead, given Islamic culture, it means that we are committing ourselves to a continuing obligation to accept a people who are escaping violence there only to insist loudly and strongly and continuing to practice a belief system that virtually ensures that they’ll seen be fomenting violence here.
The accelerating rate of terrorist activities in America on Obama’s watch is significant. Progressives like to point out that, so far, Muslim immigrants haven’t killed that many people. Their argument is flawed in two ways. First, they keep discounting Islam’s role in various murders, whether it’s one grandmother in Oklahoma or it’s a roomful of gays in Orlando. Second, they’re not paying attention to the trend lines. These attacks are becoming more frequent, bigger, and more deadly. If the past predicts the future, things are going to get worse: there will be still more attacks and they will be more violent.
Paris is our future if we do as France has done, and take in too many Muslims. The reality is, always, that Muslims increase in violence as their numbers increase, right up until they take over:
Here is where it becomes interesting. Note throughout the exponential scale of Islamic influence as the percentage of Muslim population per country increases. Comments in square brackets are my corrective interjections.
United States: 1.0
Australia: 1.5
Canada: 1.9
China: 1.0-2.0
Italy: 1.5
Norway: 1.8“At 2% and 3% they [Muslims] begin to proselytize from other ethnic minorities and disaffected groups with major recruiting from the jails and among street gangs.”
Denmark: 2.0
Germany: 3.7
United Kingdom: 2.7
Spain: 4.0
Italy: 4.6“From 5% on they [Muslims] exercise an inordinate influence in proportion to their percentage of the population. They will push for the introduction of halal (“clean” by Islamic standards) food, thereby securing food preparation jobs for Muslims. They will increase pressure on supermarket chains to feature it on their shelves – along with threats for failure to comply (United States).”
France: 8.0
Philippines: 5.0
Sweden: 5.0
Switzerland: 4.3
The Netherlands: 5.5
Trinidad & Tobago: 5.8“At this point, they [Muslims] will work to get the ruling government to allow them to rule themselves under Sharia, or Islamic law. The ultimate goal of Islam is not to convert the world but to establish Sharia law over the entire world.
“When Muslims reach 10% of the population, they will increase lawlessness as a means of complaint about their conditions (Paris – car burning). Any non-Muslim action that offends Islam will result in uprisings and threats (Amsterdam, Denmark – Mohammed cartoons, murder of Theo van Gogh).”
Guyana: 10.0
India: 13.4
Israel: 16.0
Kenya: 10.0
Russia: 10.0-15.0The one anomaly in this set of statistics is Israel, which has not experienced uprisings and threats of violence. Its Arab or Muslim population enjoys equal political rights with Jewish Israelis. The suicide bombings and rocket attacks that have killed hundreds have been perpetrated by outsiders.
“After reaching 20% [of a population] expect hair-trigger rioting, Jihad militia formations, sporadic killings and church and synagogue burning:
Ethiopia: 32.8
“After 40% you will find widespread massacres, chronic terror attacks and ongoing militia warfare:”
Bosnia: 40.0
Chad: 53.1
Lebanon: 59.7“From 60% you may expect unfettered persecution of non-believers and other religions, sporadic ethnic cleansing (genocide), use of Sharia Law as a weapon and jizya, the tax placed on [conquered] infidels:”
Albania: 70.0
Malaysia: 60.4
Qatar: 77.5
Sudan: 70.0“After 80%, expect state-run ethnic cleansing and genocide:”
Bangladesh: 83.0
Egypt: 90.0
Gaza: 98.7
Indonesia: 86.1
Iran: 98.0
Iraq: 97.0
Jordan: 92.0
Morocco: 98.7
Pakistan: 97.0
Palestine: 99.0
Syria: 90.0
Tajikistan: 90.0
Turkey: 99.8
United Arab Emirates: 96.0
Another difference between the current Muslim refugees and the past Jewish refugees is that the Muslim refugees aren’t the expected women, children, and men who have no history of violence and are beyond military age. Instead, if the European experience is anything to go by, despite the pathetic children photographs Progressives love to post on Facebook, we will end up with a lot of Muslim men aged 16-30.
I can’t find the link now, but I’m willing to swear that around 70% of the Muslim refugees who swarmed Europe were military aged men. That’s a worrisome statistic. We can see just how worrisome by the massive increase in rapes across Europe — in Germany, in Sweden, in Norway. (And don’t forget the 1,600 children victimized in the Muslim-run pedophilia prostitution scandal in the North of England.)
The risk of an increase Muslim population, especially with Muslims for terrorist-sponsoring nations has also played out in terrorist attacks in France and, as will become more common, in other parts of Europe. Charles Hebdo, Bataclan, Nice, and Berlin, all have seen Muslim violence on a mass, deadly scale.
And yes, of course, the children will suffer. But the sad reality of the world is that the children always suffer. Every child growing up in the Muslim Middle East can be described as a victim. But I hope no one, not even the loopy Progressive crowd, is arguing that we have to drain the Middle East into the US to save the children. At least back in the WWII era, we understood that, if we were going to destroy the Nazis, young Germans would die — but that was still better and more humane than allowing the Nazis to continue.
The Muslim Middle East is a perpetually Nazi realm. We do ourselves and the Muslim/Nazi children no favor by inviting them into our homes and allowing them to continue their wicked ways. That ensures that the suffering of innocents, both Muslim and non-Muslim, that we currently see will extend into unknown numbers of generations, rather than ending as it should, here and now.
When your Progressive friends get all shrill and weepy about the fact that President Trump, using terrorist data from the Obama administration, has put a 90-day hold on the influx of dangerous people from a perpetually hate-filled, ignorant, misogynistic, homophobic, antisemitic, anti-Christian, anti-Hindu part of the world, in order to come up with immigration systems that can more readily separate the more violent immigrants from the ordinary lumpen mass of people steeped in medieval hatred, comfort yourself with the thought that Trump is on the side of morality and wisdom. A President’s first job is to protect Americans. This is not the same as shutting our eyes while people die abroad. This is a sober, compassionate evaluation that says we cannot save others if we cannot first save ourselves.
In contrast, the Progressives are, as always, completely ignorant. Moreover, as always, they unable to separate the more serious, substantive facts from their complete reliance on emotionally manipulative, extremely shallow, propaganda pictures and headlines. Getting our policy ideas from the Left is a sure recipe for national disaster.
Oh, one more thing: For a clear-eyed view of just how reasonable Trump’s policy is, and how consistent it is with American policy both before and during the Obama era, you must read David French’s analysis of the new policy. Keep in mind as you read it that French is not a Trump fan, so this is not a blind, slobbering love letter.
