The Holocaust started with hate speech that set out to divide people and make them intolerant of those who weren’t them. Hitler and his sycophants believed a group of people were inferior to them and used hate speech to convince others to think the same. He used exaggeration and false information to deceive nearly an entire country (and plenty of other people in other countries) into believing mass deportation, internment camps, and genocide were the answer to their problems—problems caused chiefly by Germany’s part in WWI and the Great Depression, not a race of people.
Yesterday was Holocaust Remembrance Day, and I posted an image that reminded people how the Holocaust started. The image stated basically what I said above: that the Holocaust “didn’t start with gas chambers. […] It started with politicians dividing the people with ‘us vs. them.’ It started with intolerance and hate speech and when people stopped caring became desensitized and turned a blind eye.”
In the comments of that post, someone said they were glad Harris didn’t win the 2024 election because they thought that’s (the Holocaust) where we were heading if she did. I found that comment curious. Everyone who’s visited my page knows I’m not a fan of Trump. However, I wasn’t in love with Harris, either. I found everything about Biden trying to run for a second term and Harris being the nominee after he finally stepped down suspicious. I also felt the same way about Trump. I found it highly unlikely that the average citizen wanted either for president. Having said that, I tried to remember Harris saying anything racist about a minority group that made me fear for the lives of that group, but Trump, in my opinion, did, so I did a little research.
First, I researched Hitler and what he said about Jewish people, considering the post was about the Holocaust and hate speech. I wanted a refresher on what kind of hate speech Hitler used to convince his people to assist in the murder of millions of people. Here’s what I found:
According to the Holocaust Encyclopedia, “In the statement, he defined the Jews as a race and not a religious community, characterized the effect of a Jewish presence as a “race-tuberculosis of the peoples,” and identified the initial goal of a German government to be discriminatory legislation against Jews. The “ultimate goal must definitely be the removal of the Jews altogether.”
Also, according to the Holocaust Encyclopedia, “Hitler and the Nazis claimed that the “Jewish race” was especially dangerous. It supposedly exploited and harmed other races. Thus, the Nazis referred to Jews as a “parasitic race.” In particular, they believed that Jews were parasites that were destroying the Aryan race. This false and prejudiced belief was why the Nazis persecuted Jewish people. They wanted to separate Jews and Aryan Germans. They tried to force Jews to leave Germany.
Next, the Museum of Tolerance said, Hitler said, “The value of the nation is no longer to be measured in terms of the sum of its moral and spiritual forces, but solely on the basis of the wealth of its material goods. From this feeling emerges that concern and striving for money and for the power which can protect it which makes the Jew unscrupulous in his choice of means, ruthless in his use of them to achieve this aim. In an autocratically governed state he whines for the favor of the ‘Majesty’ of the prince and abuses it to batten on his subjects like a leech. In a democracy he courts the favor of the masses, crawls before the ‘majesty of the people’ and yet knows only the majesty of money.”
They also claim Hitler said, “And this has the following result: Antisemitism stemming from purely emotive reasons will always find its expression in the form of pogroms. But antisemitism based on reason must lead to the systematic legal combating and removal of the rights of the Jew, which he alone of the foreigners living among us possesses (legislation to make them aliens). Its final aim, however, must be the uncompromising removal of the Jews altogether. Both are possible only under a government of national strength, never under a government of national impotence.”
The World Holocaust Remembrance Center shares these excerpts from Mein Kampf: “With satanic joy in his face, the black-haired Jewish youth lurks in wait for the unsuspecting girl whom he defiles with his blood, thus stealing her from her people. With every means he tries to destroy the racial foundations of the people he has set out to subjugate. Just as he himself systematically ruins women and girls, he does not shrink back from pulling down the blood barriers for others, even on a large scale. It was and it is Jews who bring the Negroes into the Rhineland, always with the same secret thought and clear aim of ruining the hated white race by the necessarily resulting bastardization, throwing it down from its cultural and political height, and himself rising to be its master.”
I investigated Harris and Trump next since they were the 2024 presidential candidates. Of the two, I wanted to see which or if both used hate speech to incite intolerance of a group of people. I needed to know why the person found one more likely to bring about a Holocaust than the other or if both were just as likely and the person was going with the lesser of two evils. I’m leaving my findings about her for later in this post for reasons I hope you’ll understand as you read. Here’s what Trump had to say about immigrants and people of color:
According to Politico, Trump said, “You know now a murder, I believe this, it’s in their genes. And we got a lot of bad genes in our country right now.”
NBC quotes Trump saying, “They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists, and some, I assume, are good people. But I speak to border guards and they’re telling us what we’re getting,” and “They’re poisoning the blood of our country,” and “The Democrats say, ‘Please don’t call them animals. They’re humans.’ I said, ‘No, they’re not humans, they’re not humans. They’re animals, ’” and “At this very moment, large well-organized caravans of migrants are marching towards our southern border. Some people call it an invasion. … These are tough people in many cases; a lot of young men, strong men and a lot of men that maybe we don’t want in our country. … This isn’t an innocent group of people. It’s a large number of people that are tough. They have injured, they have attacked,” and ““They’re coming in from China — 31, 32,000 over the last few months — and they’re all military age and they mostly are men. And it sounds like to me, are they trying to build a little army in our country? Is that what they’re trying to do?”
I could go on and on with examples of what Trump has said about anyone who isn’t white, but that was enough. I also won’t get into statistics that show the falsehood or truth behind what Trump or Hitler said about the people they were spreading hatred. That’s not what this post is about. I’m simply looking at what each of these individuals said to see which person, Trump or Harris, during the 2024 campaign sounded most likely to take us down the path Hitler took that led to the Holocaust. However, if you want to know more about what Trump said and see if his claims are true or false, click the NBC link.
Now, on to Kamala Harris. Here are all the derogatory things Kamala Harris has said about immigrants or any other minority sect of people.
Nothing.
I found nothing. I’m not saying it isn’t out there, but I couldn’t find it. I tried various keywords in Google but found nothing. Time magazine said, Harris said, “It can take years for asylum claims to be decided,” Harris said in September while campaigning in Douglas, Ariz. “Well, this is a problem we can solve, including by hiring more asylum officers and expanding processing centers in people’s home countries.” […] “I will work with Congress to create, at long last, a pathway to citizenship for hardworking immigrants who have been here for years, for years, and deserve to have a system that works,” Harris said in Arizona in September.” Most of what I found on her was along these same lines.
I also found a debunked rumor that Harris said, “If he’s white, he’s going to be racist.” According to Reuters, the headline was not said by Harris but by Jeremy Bird, who was Barack Obama’s campaign national field director in 2012. The full Bird quote reads, “It would be a real disservice to the country for Democrats to run on this false notion that we have to nominate a white candidate because Donald Trump is racist. He’s still going to be racist if it’s a white nominee. You saw that in 2016.”
After reviewing my findings, I have to say it’s clear to me who used hate speech in a way that could potentially lead to a Holocaust, and it isn’t Harris. I’m not saying Harris wouldn’t have flipped and done something crazy. I don’t know her, and since she didn’t win, we won’t know what she would or wouldn’t have done, but anything is possible. That being said, Trump’s been in office a week, and things don’t look good for the minorities in this country, legal or illegal. Now, I can’t predict the future. However, I can look at the past and compare, which is what we should do. The past should show us what to look for in horrible leaders so we can avoid them, but that’s not always the case. I can see similarities and common rhetoric between Trump and a good number of tyrannical leaders, and I’m worried for our future. I’m not saying my fears will come true. I hope and pray they don’t. If it does, we’re the only ones that can stop it. First, we must keep the divisive, intolerant, and desensitizing rhetoric being used by our government from causing us to see our fellow human beings as inhuman.
I’ve asked the commenter to explain how they concluded that Harris was that person.
