Another Constituency Thrown Overboard

The incendiary Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez started a firestorm this week when she compared the detention centers that are holding immigrants awaiting hearings to concentration camps and followed up with a reference to “never again” in her Instagram broadcast. 

After a backlash led principally by conservatives and Jews, AOC fell back to explaining that the “consensus among academics” is that these detention facilities meet the technical definition of “concentration camp.”  The MSM leapt to her defense and Bloomberg and even pollster Frank Luntz supported her word parsing.   Getting your defenders to defend you by technical hairsplitting is a standard New Left/Clintonesque tactic.  Unfortunately, it didn’t work for me.  AOC clearly used the words “Never Again” to draw the unmistakable comparison. 

Ilhan Omar jumped in, saying that these were camps and there were concentrations of people so they are concentration camps.

Conservatives blistered AOC and as usual, going after her for her lack of intelligence and education on the matter.

Polish lawmaker Dominic Tarczynski even invited her to Poland to educate her on “real” concentration camps (https://twitter.com/D_Tarczynski/status/1141704905436160001)

Most of what the Right gets wrong about AOC is that she is stupid.  She knows EXACTLY what she is doing and exactly what she is saying, and why she is saying it. This entire controversy was carefully designed.

The message about the concentration camp is merely a sideshow. 

The message is, and has always been, “TRUMP IS HITLER, “ supported by “See, we even have concentration camps.”  This is the overarching message.   And she was successful.  She was able to get people caught up in the semantics of the term. The MSM leapt to her defense.  Even some Jews nodded in agreement. 

Perhaps because I personally am indebted to so many Jews that have enriched my life in so many ways, that I am appalled by AOC’s false comparison.  My education owes itself to many Jews.  Jews taught me how to study.  I dated some wonderful, smart, studious and funny Jewish girls in college and afterwards.  A Jew gave me my first job opportunity. 

It is this long history and connection that lead me to spend a fair amount of time over the past five years studying the Holocaust in books and in film to try to get my head around what happened and why.  And I’ve written several blog posts on the topic—some of my most widely read posts. 

The detention centers for illegals are NOTHING like the systematic destruction of a peoples that was perpetrated by the Third Reich.  Not even close.  AOC and her two partners would do well to view Memory of the Camps (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xy_xWKJubuY)—the actual narrated film put together by Alfred Hitchcock that was taken after liberation.  Of course, there was Schindler’s List, but Son of Saul was also a very good film that I reviewed a couple of years ago.  And, while there are many books on the Holocaust, with Night by Elie Wiesel as an indispensable work, The Holocaust: A New History by Laurence Rees is very, very good.  A sampling of any of these books or films would destroy her grotesque distortion.  ICE acts nothing like the SS—nothing like it.  To suggest such is an absolute falsehood.

This latest hand grenade by AOC (with her supportive accomplice, Ilhan Omar) has convinced me that AOC is NOT an idiot bartender.  She is either very smart and/or is being managed very carefully and deliberately.  Even Daniel Pipes, who I have a high regard for, gets AOC wrong.  He (along with other conservatives) believe that if conservatives would stop responding to her, she would diminish in importance.  That’s simply not true.  She is a creation of the media and has some very dark forces behind her.  You don’t go from bartender to media star overnight without a lot of money and people in the right places behind you.  She is smart.  She is dark.  And she is very, very dangerous.

This latest message was too well orchestrated.  It accomplishes three things that the New Left seeks to persuade Americans to believe.  First, Trump is Hitler.  Second, it minimizes or even denies (see comments by Alan Dershowitz (https://www.dailywire.com/news/48765/holocaust-denier-dershowitz-slams-ocasio-cortez-ryan-saavedra) the Holocaust.  And finally, most convincingly,  and what will be most difficult to accept by my Jewish brothers and sisters---the New Left has made it clear that you are not part of the Democratic party.  It refused to censure Omar for her anti-Semitic comments (and rationalized them).  Democrats refuse to categorically isolate themselves from Louis Farrakhan.   And by not speaking out against AOC’s outrageous analogy and her use of  the phrase “never again,” she is telling Jews that they are the new Deplorables; they are no longer welcome in the Democratic party.  Face it, my Jewish brothers and sisters-- they’re just not that into you anymore.

Do not underestimate AOC.  She has been chosen.  She is the messenger of the New Left and she (and her sisters) will set the agenda for the Democratic Party for the next couple of decades.  And the message is very clear—just as the white working class was jettisoned, its reliable Jewish constituency has been told where it stands.