NAZIS IN AMERICA

Nazis in America. It doesn’t sound real. How could it be, when Nazism and America are concepts so far removed from one another? Indeed, how can it be that Nazis are allowed to freely roam the streets of America bearing American flags and swastikas in each hand and chanting hate? And they are not condemned. They are protected, they are reasoned with, they are empathized with by our President, by a man who is supposed to represent everything that America is. Is this what America is?
Jewish in America. For my family, this is a three-word memoir that has long been representative of our experience. Driven out of Germany in the ‘40s by the very same swastika that just last week was paraded through the streets of Charlottesville, they came to America, mourning their loved ones who were lost to the work camps, the medical experiments, and the crematorium. They came here on boats with nothing, and they built a life in the country that Germany never touched. That’s what they thought, anyway. The Nazis took everything from us, including lives. My great-grandfather was a good man. His son, who escaped, was a good man. My father is a good man. Why, then, was my great-grandfather killed? My late grandfather fought for this country, having grown up here after escaping the Nazis at 11. Why is his legacy worth less than Hitler’s? My father works for the state as a lawyer. He lives in fear more than the Nazi contingent residing in the same country as him.
Revolution in America. It’s time to decide where our values lie. Are they with our corrupt president, a Russian puppet and billionaire idiot, or are they with the people of America, the so-called melting pot that makes this country as great as it’s ever been? What the Trump supporters don’t realize is that America has never been great–but it has potential. A country has traditionally been a landmass within which the occupants hold the same beliefs and cultural values to be true. They are similar in their experience of the world, which is why America is not a country in the traditional sense. It hasn’t successfully transcended to the next level, but it could. Nazis hold us back. Hate holds us back. To truly make America great, we must eliminate hate and accept our reality: we are a huge country composed of thousands of different cultures, languages, religions, and beliefs. That can be our weakness, as many see it now, or we can make it our strength. If we accept the diversity that we have imposed upon ourselves, then and only then will America be great.
It begins with hate and it ends with hate. The Nazis must go, the KKK must go, and the weekend racists, sexists, and homophobes must go, because this is not just a conversation about Jews versus Nazis. It is a conversation about love versus hate, and everyone must embrace love for America to be cleansed. Not just person to person love, which many see as the end-all-and-be-all, but rather global love. Love everyone. Love them for their similarities to you, love them for their differences, and above all, love them for their humanity, because we are all human.