A Trump victory will destroy American democracy

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I cannot for the life of me comprehend how any Jew, let alone a Holocaust survivor or a descendant of a Holocaust victim or survivor, could vote for Donald Trump who espouses the fascist ideology that enabled the Holocaust to occur.

Menachem Rosensaft

I am not suggesting that Trump is a Nazi and I do not compare him to Adolf Hitler. As I have written elsewhere, however, he very much is a fascist in the mold of Benito Mussolini, and he “commented more than once” to his former chief of staff, General John F. Kelly, that, “You know, Hitler did some good things, too.”

How is it that even thinking, let alone saying, that Hitler had any redeeming qualities does not absolutely disqualify one from holding any public office, let alone the presidency of the United States?

How is it that any Jew, let alone a Holocaust survivor or a descendant of a Holocaust victim or survivor, could even think of supporting someone who believes that “Hitler did some good things”? Like what? Like discriminating against, oppressing, and persecuting Jews before murdering them? Like establishing concentration camps such as Dachau and Buchenwald where he could imprison and kill his political enemies?

But perhaps the misguided rationale of some of Trump’s Jewish supporters is that he is not attacking them but other minorities, that he will not turn on them.

If that is indeed the case, it reflects extremely negatively on them and their values. Bigotry is bigotry, regardless of which group is targeted.

At the same time, perhaps these supporters of the former president should think twice and actually listen to what he is telling them. While Trump boasts to Jewish audiences that the State of Israel and, presumably, the Jewish community “have a big protector in me,” he simultaneously and unsubtly threatens that if he were to lose the election, “the Jewish people would really have a lot to do with that.”

Anyone who ignores or downplays this type of antisemitic trope does so at their peril.

We are at the political equivalent of Ne’ila, the concluding service of Yom Kippur. The gates to the 2024 US presidential election are closing fast. With three days or less to go, we are about to find out whether the American democracy in which Jews and other minorities have thrived will endure.

I don’t know if anyone’s mind can be changed anymore. I don’t know if there remains anyone out there who is still undecided. But just in case someone who is still persuadable happens to stumble upon this article, here, for whatever they might be worth, are some final thoughts before the electoral gates slam shut on November 5.

Vice President Kamala Harris is in the democratic (small d) tradition of all U.S. presidents during my lifetime — Truman through Biden — except for Trump who wants to replace democracy with a crypto-fascism that threatens to destroy the essence of what the United States has come to represent for most of us and for much of the international community.

She is also a proven friend and ally of the Jewish community, a fierce opponent of any and all vestiges of antisemitism, and a stalwart supporter of the State of Israel.

I write as a first generation American, the son of two survivors of the Nazi death and concentration camps of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, who was born in the Displaced Persons camp of Bergen-Belsen three years after the end of World War II. My parents and I came to this country as immigrants and I became a naturalized U.S. citizen after being stateless for the first 14 years of my life. As such, I find Trump’s xenophobia and inherent racism, his repeated white supremacist dog whistles, and his blatant misogyny truly frightening.

Stephen Miller, the guru of Trump’s anti-immigrant and anti-immigration ideology and policies, declared at the recent MAGA rally in Madison Square Garden that “America is for Americans and Americans only.”

I would like someone to explain to me precisely how Miller’s world view differs from that of Gerhard Wilhelm Kunze, the national public relations director of the German American Bund, who told more than 20,000 supporters of Hitler’s Nazi ideology in the very same Madison Square Garden on February 20, 1939, that “The spirit which opened the West and built our country is the spirit of the militant white man,” and that it has “always been very much American to protect the Aryan character of this nation.”

In a Trump campaign ad, a Holocaust survivor and real estate entrepreneur named Jerry Wartski referred to Trump as “a mentsch,” that is to say, a fundamentally decent human being. I beg to differ.

I am far more inclined to believe General Kelly who says that Trump is incapable of empathy, one of the essential ingredients of being a mentsch.

I also urge anyone who has not yet voted to read – or reread – Abraham Foxman’s recent article in The Times of Israel entitled “Trump is bad for America and bad for the Jews” in which the highly respected former national director of the Anti-Defamation League, himself a Holocaust survivor, warned that “Trump is a demagogue and his presidency threatens American democracy.”

“Trump’s presidency — in spirit and in deed,” Foxman wrote, “has given succor to bigots, supremacists, and those seeking to divide our society. He and his administration dehumanize immigrants, demonize the most vulnerable, and undermine the civility and enlightened political culture that have allowed Jews to achieve what no Diaspora community outside Israel can claim in two millennia.”

As Americans choose the next U.S. president this Tuesday, I fervently hope that they take these words to heart and vote for Kamala Harris.

Menachem Z. Rosensaft is adjunct professor of law at Cornell Law School and lecturer-in-law at Columbia Law School. He is the author of the forthcoming Burning Psalms: Confronting Adonai after Auschwitz (Ben Yehuda Press, 2025).