The headline in The Washington Post read this way: “Film about American Nazis aims to send message to Trump voters with local ad during Sean Hannity’s Fox News show.”
Beneath the headline was a photo of a smiling Sean Hannity.
The story, in part, read this way, bold print for emphasis mine:
“Some viewers of Fox News Channel’s “Hannity” on Monday night will get a jolting image: scenes from a rally of American Nazis in New York.
The images are meant not as promotion but as a warning: They will come as part of a 30-second spot for “A Night at the Garden,” a new Oscar-nominated documentary short about the rally of the German Bund at New York’s Madison Square Garden in 1939. It was directed by the liberal-minded filmmaker Marshall Curry.
…The short looks at the rally that attracted 22,000 people to cheer on Fritz Kuhn and other leaders of the American Nazi Party. Filmmakers have bought time during the Fox show in the hope of drawing comparisons to what they say are similar tactics by President Trump.
‘It just seemed like the biggest Trump supporter on television is Sean Hannity, and many members of his audience are falling for some of the same tricks Bund leaders used in 1939 without understanding the significance of them,” Curry said in an interview. “So we decided to try to remind them that when they see leaders who attack the press and minorities and wrap it in American symbols of patriotism, it yields horrible results, to suggest that people should be vigilant about demagogues.’
He added, ‘The point of the spot is less about rallying people who are already worried and reaching people who don’t realize how dangerous this tactic is.'”
Well. Where to begin?
I have seen the film, found here. It begins with scenes of a crowd surging around the outside of the Garden on the night of February 20, 1939, surrounded by horse-mounted New York City police, the announcement on the marquis outside advertising a “Pro-American Rally.” Next we see people marching into the Garden, amidst a crowd that history records as in the 20,000 range, with the marchers carrying American flags. On stage is a huge portrait of George Washington - flanked by the Nazi swastika.
Right about there the similarity between Trump rallies and this disgraceful long ago outpouring of anti-Semitism from the Nazi-loving German American Bund comes to a screeching halt.
The film shows Kuhn beginning his speech by complaining about the “Jewish controlled press.” Where do Americans hear eerily similar anti-Semitic thoughts about the control of powerful Jews in America today?
This very week they heard that distinctly anti-Semitic poison of Jewish control from the new far-left Democrat in the U.S. House - Minnesota’s Ilhan Omar. Omar accused her Republican colleagues of being controlled by AIPAC - the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee. “It’s all about the Benjamins, baby” she tweeted, with a second tweet simply saying: “AIPAC.” This is the same Omar who was quoted back in 2012: “Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.”
Omar was slammed by House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy and even House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Then there’s Michigan freshman House Democrat Rashida Tlaib. Here is the headline from Fox News: “Rashida Tlaib wrote column for Louis Farrakhan publication in 2006.”
Yes, that would be the very same infamously anti-Semitic Louis Farrakhan who happily said this: “The Jews don’t like Farrakhan, so they call me Hitler. Well, that’s a good name. Hitler was a very great man.”
The Hitler-loving Fritz Kuhn would have loved the Hitler-loving Louis Farrakhan, the latter also on the record as saying, “I'm not an anti-Semite. I’m anti-Termite.”
Not to be overlooked either was Congresswoman Tlaib’s recent accusation warning of her colleagues's dual loyalty. The New York Post headlined: “Rashida Tlaib casually dives into anti-Semitism.”
The Post story began:
“Freshman Rep. Rashida Tlaib may take great pains to deny she is anti-Semitic, but she’s just launched her congressional career by resorting to one of the oldest and most blatantly anti-Jewish canards.
At issue is a bill that aims to limit the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign. Tlaib, the first Palestinian-American in Congress, accused the measure’s supporters of dual loyalty.
‘They forgot what country they represent,’ the Michigan Democrat and unapologetic BDS supporter tweeted.”
All of this, with leftist groups and organizations as varied as the leaders of the “Women’s March” and various college campuses across the nation exhibiting flagrant anti-Semitism and this Oscar nominated filmmaker and the Washington Post effectively slime President Trump and his supporters, not to mention Sean Hannity and his audience with the suggestion that they are all a bunch of Nazis.
So what do we have here? What we have is a leftist filmmaker getting an Oscar nomination for trying to suggest that the President of the United States, his supporters, Sean Hannity and his Fox audience are somehow, in someway, just like Fritz Kuhn and all those anti-Semites that filled Madison Square Garden way back there in February of 1939. With the Washington Post disgracefully headlining the film to hint at the same thing.
Is it disgraceful? Of course. But the ultimate irony here is that it shines a spotlight on the anti-Semitism problem of today’s American left.
