Please go and watch the 2001 film Focus, directed by Neal Slavin and starring William H. Macy and Laura Dern. It is based on the great playwright Arthur Miller‘s novel of the same name. The film takes place in the waning months of WW2 when a man and his new wife are mistakenly identified as Jews by their anti Semitic Brooklyn, NYC neighbors. They soon become victims of religious and racial persecution.
Many of us may not realize just how bad things were for Jews and Blacks during the WW2 years. We have this illusion that ‘All for one and one for all’ was the motto of the day, as America fought off the German and Japanese threat of world domination.
Well, as the movie revealed, even in Northern cities Jews were ‘Restricted’ from many jobs, housing and places for vacation. The employers of businesses and owners of housing and hotels actually used the word ‘Restricted’ in advertisements and billboards. For blacks up north just their color was enough to have them ‘Restricted’ from employment or housing… let alone a hotel accommodation. Jim Crow and Jim Cohen was not only in the south.
Many will state, and perhaps rightly so, that we have come a long way since the 40s, 50s and 60s. Yet, the hate is still there, engrained in the minds of white Christian Americans… or should I say Amerikans. It stays hidden from public view, reserved for private home conversations or whispered invectives and not so funny jokes.
Why? Well, our government has always taken the ‘high road’ officially and publically to condemn such behavior, even if not doing enough to stop it.. until now!
What transpired in Charlottesville, Virginia in August 2017 let the proverbial ‘Neo Nazi horse’ out of the barn of tolerance. Those mostly young men (some women too) who marched with the Nazi like torches that night in Charlottesville chanting “Jews won’t replace us” when factored in with Donald Trump saying later that some of them were ‘Nice people’ were the warning sign to alert us.
Mix in the virtual silence from the Israeli regime of Netanyahu and that of many Jewish members of the Trump cabinet and administration and of course those Jewish folks who support him, and we all better start worrying. Quite candidly, the Fourth Reich is upon us. Of course, when Trump and many of his lowly evolved followers (well educated or not) expressed their disdain for the Mexican and Central American undocumented, many decent thinking white fellow Americans thought of it as foolish rhetoric. When they pointed fingers at Muslims living or travelling here, we again shook our heads at such folly. But now…
We have seen the so called ‘Alt Right’ finally goes beyond the pale. Now, the hatred is front and center, using Anti Semitism as the focal point. This new Neo Nazi mindset came ‘out of the closet’ and had the POTUS to legitimatize it. Folks, it’s just not simply about Donald Trump. No, it is much bigger than that. This resurgence of the Alt Right (which has always been with us) is leading the way to much more heinous acts and justifications for such thought. Focus on that if you would
PA Farruggio
Revival…actually noticeable increase in anti Semitism…What else is to be expected? This is reaping what has been so assiduously sowed for decades. ZIONAZIS is what I call them. Repercussions will last a very long time.
Vera is correct… as usual. As a 12.5% Jewish man and lifelong student of the Holocaust I cannot believe how so many Jewish folks forget that the Israeli gov’t and the disgraceful settler movement there are behaving as the Germans did to Europe’s Jews.
My poem on a wooden plaque , ‘ Never Again’ is part of the archives of the Wiesenthal Holocaust museum in LA.
I have to agree with Vera’s apt commentary on reaping what has been sown by “Zionazis” in Israel’s right wing. Yet, NOTHING justifies the barbarity of Hamas’ reprisal.
Phil: I liked your characterization of what is before us as the “Fourth Reich.” Also, you never gave the title of the movie!
The Fourth Reich is what we are seeing as I speak here in Amerika.
The film I mentioned was entitled ‘Focus’ from a play written by Arthur Miller.
Thanks for your comments. More American Jewish folks need to stand up to the right wing fascist Israeli government. Sad how so many forget that the socialist Kibbutz movement was so prominent in Israel decades ago. There are still many Israeli Jews who oppose what their gov’t is doing, just as so many Americans of all creeds have opposed our overseas actions for decades.