Actress Gina Carano has been fired by Disney for purportedly controversial remarks she made in social media comparing the treatment of conservatives by progressives to how in its beginning years the Nazis mistreated Jews. No doubt the oppression against Jews during the 1930s was of a much higher degree and based on a pronounced bigotry exclusively against Jews.

Nonetheless, there are some lessons and warnings from that time period that deserve consideration. To wit: the danger of negatively generalizing about a particular group and consequently using the media, corporations, social organizations, and the urgings of political office holders to begin denying the targeted group their freedom of speech and assembly, as well as dismissing them from jobs based on who they are, their views, and associations.

Furthermore, what began as denying Trump supporters the basic courtesy of eating in restaurants, as was the case with Sarah Huckabee, has degenerated into harassing conservatives; punching them out at public events and while walking on the street; pounding on the doors of their private residences; demands for their firings at places of work; denying them financial credit;  shooting at them while playing ball; and a general knee-jerk maligning of them by the media and opinion-shaping institutions.  There have even been calls by powerful political activists to “get rid of their kind” and make sure “they never rise again.”

Many understand the harmful and malicious goals of those who speak of “their kind” and making sure “they never rise again.”  And though the German mischaracterization and cancellation against Jews during the 1930s was an unmatched, horrific category in and of itself, what we are witnessing in America from progressives against tens of millions of Trump supporters and conservatives is one of the most dangerous and un-American phenomena in American history. This deserves discussion.  And while progressives may claim that their agenda against conservatives is not based on bigotry but what is good for the country, this refrain has been expressed many times before in history by those intent on destroying their opponents.

Allow me to say something about those “opponents.”  The overwhelming, vast majority of people whom I met at Trump gatherings prior to the election were family people, with children, pleasant, courteous, and imbued with joyful and positive attitudes about America and their fellow countrymen.  I never heard a word of racism or anti-Semitism from any of them. On the contrary, it seems to me that many of today’s “tolerant progressives” were raised with preconceived bigotries or negative attitudes towards conservative and religious Americans.

Disney claimed that what Ms. Carano said was an affront to a cultural and religious group.  I assume thereby Disney mean Jews. However, what she said is not offensive to any Jew whose sense of fairness and justice is appalled by the new McCarthyism being directed at political conservatives. 

We suspect, however, that those who wish to continue the disenfranchisement of conservatives and Trump supporters will remain oblivious and “offended” by remarks that should otherwise give pause to the zealous pursuit against conservatives being enjoyed by those flexing their progressive power.  History teaches that the intentional maligning of a particular group, imputing all evils to them not borne in reality, is the first stage in dehumanizing them so that mistreatment of them comes easy and evokes in the perpetrator no misgivings. Worse, it engenders in the attacker a sense of virtue and even mockery of those accosted.  We are today witnessing such mockery and enjoyment from members of the “progressive” class, eerily similar to the pictures we remember of Nazis smiling while degrading Jews.  Ironically, those who in their self-righteousness constantly accuse others of Nazism are blind to how they themselves are now behaving.”

Photo credit: Xploitme CC BY-2.0 license

Rabbi Spero is president of Conference of Jewish Affairs author of Push Back: The Battle to Save Our American Judeo-Christian Heritage, and an advisor to public office holders.