Bookmark and Share
Printer Friendly

Bachmann Compares Debt to Holocaust on Day Before Holocaust Remembrance Day

NJDC — May 1, 2011 – 3:47 pm | Abusive Holocaust Rhetoric | Republicans Comments (2) Add a comment

The National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC) today condemned Rep. Michele Bachmann’s (R-MN) comments at a partisan gathering in New Hampshire yesterday—the day before Holocaust Remembrance Day—in which she astonishingly tied America’s debt to the killing of six million Jews in the Holocaust. According to Politico, Bachmann “invoked the Holocaust Saturday morning as she described the tax burden that America’s next generation will face unless action is taken to reduce federal spending and the national debt.” Politico added that Bachmann “tied the loss of ‘economic liberty’ that Americans face today to the systematic killing of six million European Jews. ‘We are seeing eclipsed in front of our eyes a similar death and a similar taking away,’ Bachmann said. ‘It is this disenfranchisement that I think we have to answer to.’”

“It is astonishing and offensive in the extreme that Representative Bachmann—on the very weekend that we pause to remember the Holocaust—would choose to diminish the memory of those who perished in the Holocaust through such a comparison,” said David A. Harris, President and CEO of the NJDC. “Invoking the Holocaust when discussing domestic U.S. policy of course diminishes the memory of the Holocaust, and there is just no place for it.

“As we have unfortunately been pressed to say time and time again, invoking the Holocaust to make a political point is never acceptable—period. It is even more painful on this weekend, as we pause to remember the Shoah. Representative Bachmann should apologize for this rhetoric and cease and desist from using it ever again.”

Through candidate pledges foreswearing abusive Holocaust rhetoric and media monitoring, the National Jewish Democratic Council has vigilantly worked to press candidates and elected officials to step away from abusive Holocaust rhetoric in civic discourse. More information about NJDC’s efforts can be found here.

Comments

mike | May 1, 2011 – 5:47 pm

Shes hoping to ignite a storm amongst her dwindling minions, to start some trifling debate to take the focus off the emerged corporate plutocracy so she can stuff her pockets with that yummy munny.

Jean-Pierre Fenyo | May 2, 2011 – 6:29 am

Outrageous! Not only is this political exploitation of The Holocaust an egregious injustice to the Victims, Survivors and sub-Survivors of The Holocaust, but it can also be taken as some kind of thinly veiled threat to Jews and other Progressives! There is absolutely no reason, at this point, to think that those who have hijacked the original Republican Party are ever going to respect our solemn requests not to trivialise and abuse our most painful past realities and our sacred memory of those many millions, Jews and non-Jews alike, who perished in the most utterly horrific, inhuman, and terrifying circumstances!!! We should stop issuing requests for retractions and apologies, and simply make clear-cut, unequivocal condemnations and take sensible public relations measures! These cannot possibly be simply ignorant defamatory rhetoric. These are nothing less than attempts to rob us of our very memory and thus our right to prevent efforts at repeating such horrors! I would state the same thing if it were about what happened under the directives of such sick people as Mehmed The Fifth and Enver Pasha, who were the key principals in the Armenian Genocide, or Cambodia’s Pol Pot, Uganda’s Idi Amin, Serbia’s Milosevic and the more recent atrocities whose names will yet be remembered in Infamy! If we simply continue to repeat our pleas the result will be that we will become unwitting accomplices to things that began with Mega-Malicious Words! Words matter everything! Words and the Ideas they are meant to convey are what separate us from the anti-Humanitarianists of History! And those who abuse Words and Ideas are the ones who have no qualms about Censorship and Burning Books, be those books sacred, non-sacred or of a sinister bent! The path to Fascism begins by using deliberately devised Short-Circuiting Phraseology!
For those who do not know what I mean by “deliberate Short-Circuiting Phraseology”: certain unscrupulous Advertisers and so-called “News” media, who tend to side with people like Bachmann, deliberately insert/inject certain totally insensible mundane and hardly noticeable jargon that is meant to cause our mind’s thought-processes to fail to function sufficiently alertly and critically! These are highly advanced Mass Psychological Manipulation Rhetorical methods, which were initially explored by extreme Racist and Right-wing groups/organisations in History.
PLEASE READ THIS AGAIN AND AGAIN A COUPLE OF TIMES AND THINK IT OVER VERY CAREFULLY! THANK YOU!

Add a Comment
Note: This form does not support AOL's browser. If you are currently using AOL's browser, please use a major browser, such as Firefox, Safari, Chrome, or Internet Explorer.