No time to put our heads in the sand

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 05/02/2025 (416 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I’ve heard many people say lately that they can’t stomach the despairing news of the world anymore, particularly now that Donald Trump is dominating the news cycle again.

But just as old adages tell us we ignore history at our peril, and that those who don’t learn from the past are doomed to repeat it, it is equally true that turning away from what is happening right before our eyes is a dangerous game.

The Free Press coverage of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz on Jan. 28 underscored this point, with Holocaust survivors, political leaders and astute writers of letters to the editor expressing concerns that such an atrocity could happen again.

It’s a feeling I share as I watch what is unfolding to the south of us, as Trump lobs the first bombs of his trade war with his closest neighbours.

Even before Trump was re-elected as president, his rhetoric was taking on a darker, more hateful tone.

At a New Hampshire rally on Dec. 16, 2023, Trump likened undocumented migrants to germs or pollutants, posting on Truth Social that “illegal immigration is poisoning the blood of our nation. They’re coming from prisons, from mental institutions — from all over the world.”

Media outlets and Trump’s political rivals were quick to point to the similarity to remarks made by Adolf Hitler, who asserted in Mein Kampf that “All great cultures of the past perished only because the originally creative race died out from blood poisoning.”

In a piece for The New Yorker on April 23, 2018, How American Racism Influenced Hitler, Alex Ross maps the rise of Nazism, noting that “the kind of genocidal hatred that erupted in Germany had been seen before and has been seen since.”

I fear we are witnessing that sort of hatred now on many fronts, but it’s the sweeping measures by the self-styled despot to the south of us that perhaps loom largest in our consciousness.

Ross writes of Hitler’s facility for insinuating hateful rhetoric into the mainstream conversation, and we certainly hear echoes of that in Trump’s fascistic tirades.

In How to Spot a Fascist, Umberto Eco notes that the first appeal of a fascist movement “is a call against intruders.”

Trump’s railings about undesirable migrants certainly fit that description.

What is happening in the United States is extremely troubling and we must pay attention.

The hatred that culminated in the Holocaust was insidious. It started with a lust for greater political power, followed by persecution — treating certain citizens as subhuman — then ramped up to the deprivation of rights and freedoms and property, and escalated into torture and mass killings.

On Jan. 27, @AuschwitzMuseum posted on X: “Auschwitz was at the end of a long process. We must remember that it did not start from gas chambers. This hatred was gradually developed by humans. From ideas, words, stereotypes & prejudice through legal exclusion, dehumanization & escalating violence … to systematic and industrial murder. Auschwitz took time.”

In the U.S., we are already hearing of “crackdowns,” “expedited removals,” and “mass deportations,” as Trump makes good on his campaign promise to secure American borders and expel immigrants engaged in criminal activity. While there is widespread support for the actions of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — indeed, such deportations also occurred under Biden — there are reports that law-abiding immigrants are also being arrested and deported, often without due process. The ICE men cometh.

Trump’s anti-science and anti-gender-diversity stance has put Americans who do not identify as either male or female in the crosshairs as well, and he has already repealed measures meant to protect racial equity and LGBTTQ+ rights.

Meanwhile, Trump acolyte Elon Musk (or is it the other way around?) — the über-influential billionaire owner of X, Tesla and SpaceX — is exerting his own influence. Whether or not you believe that the straight-armed gesture he made at a post-inauguration event in Washington was a Nazi salute, there is no denying his admiration for Germany’s right-wing politics.

On Jan. 25, Musk appeared virtually at a German rally for the anti-immigrant Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party, telling the enthusiastic crowd that AfD is Germany’s “best hope” in this month’s election and urging members to move on from “past guilt” and to not get bogged down by “some kind of multiculturalism that dilutes everything.”

Letting go of debilitating baggage is one thing, but if “moving beyond” means forgetting the atrocities of the past and the hatred that incited them, then we are treading on dangerous ground.

On Jan. 27, the Free Press quoted Holocaust survivor Miriam Ziegler as saying, “I’m afraid that it can happen again.”

If she sees the potential, so should we all.

Putting our heads in the sand may block out some of the world’s unpleasantness. It also prevents us from hearing the truth.

Pam Frampton is a freelance writer and editor who lives in St. John’s. Email pamelajframpton@gmail.com X: pam_frampton | Bluesky: @pamframpton.bsky.social