It’s an odd time to see a very moving, thought-provoking play about antisemitism, the LCCT’s excellent production of The Diary of Anne Frank (Oct. 4-20 at 313 North Main). The original version won the 1955 Pulitzer Prize plus Tony and Drama Critics award as best play.
These times display both renewed antisemitism and Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu’s human rights abuses against Arabs. The antisemitism comes from not only the usual right-wing “Nationalists,” such as Nick Fuentes, but also apolitical or leftist folks appalled both by Hamas’s October 7 massacre and by Israel’s predictable overreaction, which Hamas had hoped to trigger.
In such times, maintaining fairness, tolerance, and human decency is both harder and more urgent. We should not punish or discriminate against Muslims or Jews in this country based on what other countries and groups are doing elsewhere. All ethnic prejudice, against Jews, Christians or Muslims, Blacks or Hispanics, Irish or Italians, or gays or political opponents, is stupid, hurtful, and wrong. Hamas leaders and Netanyahu are bad actors with understandable reasons. Protesting either’s conduct shouldn’t cause harassment of Jews or Palestinians. But sometimes it does.
Soon after Trump invited Fuentes for supper, Trump ally Tucker Carlson gave a holocaust denying anti-Semite a two-hour platform. As a journalist I might talk with a Nazi apologist, but I’d ask tough questions and sure wouldn’t call him “the best and most honest popular historian in the U.S.” That Carlson thinks that, and J.D. Vance holds a campaign rally with Carlson, sure says something about whom Mr. Vance hopes to appeal to.
Less obviously dangerous are Mr. Trump’s recent statements that a Trump defeat will be “on the Jews,” or “the fault of the Jews.” He shouldn’t lump all Jews together. In a world where Trump’s words were followed by an invasion of the Capitol, and his lies about election chicanery led to threats and harassment of election workers, it should occur to him that some follower might attack Jews for costing Trump the election – even if, as I assume, Trump doesn’t intend that Jews be harmed or harassed. (Followers are threatening Springfield schools with shootings and bombs because Trump claims Springfield residents from Haiti eat people’s pets)
“The Jewish people would have a lot to do with a loss.” As their “betrayal” cost Germany World War I? Until decades after Hitler, the Catholic Church still taught that the Jews were responsible for killing Jesus.
This ain’t important just for Jews. History teaches that if you let governments unlawfully mistreat segments of the population, those governments will use the same illegal means to persecute others, or just eliminate political opponents or persons of conscience who stand up for fairness and justice.
I applaud director Norman Lewis for spraying this excellent show on the “dormant noxious weed [antisemitism] needing only a drop of encouragement to burst into full bloom.”
Watching is tough, at times. As we leave the theater, I feel grateful for the experience, impressed by the production – and troubled by vicious ethnic abuse surrounding us. Folks should see it. This production is well-crafted and more than moving. ([For info and tickets: https://www.lcctnm.org/ .) Like any good play, it takes you out of your life into another world; but this world contains important information we all ought to have, maybe an inoculation against ethnic hatred. An election-season reminder of where that can lead, and that some political conduct is just not even decent.
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[This column appeared Sunday, 6 October, 2024, in the Las Cruces Sun-News
and on the newspaper's website and will shortly be up on KRWG’s website, under Local Viewpoints. A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM, streaming at www.lccommunityradio.org/). For further information on the topic of this column, please go to my blog, https://soledadcanyon.blogspot.com/ .]
[It’s a good play, well done. And timely. (Five years ago, we got to meet in Las Cruces Holocaust survivor Eva Schloss, a childhood friend of Anne’s in Amsterdam, right before the events depicted in the play.) Let me stress that by point out the antisemitism of Trump’s allies and himself I do NOT mean to equate Mr. Trump with Adolph Hitler. Trump has no such sense of mission, little concern with government policy, and lacks Hitler’s drive, and, so far as I can tell, harbors no desire to destroy any ethnic group. He’s a garden-variety somewhat racist and antisemitic product of our times. (He was born in 1946, almost six months before I was, and in Queens rather than Brooklyn.) Managers of his casino used to have to try to get black dealers off the floor when he visited; and his comment on Jews, that he liked his accountants to be Jewish, while antisemitic, isn’t vicious. He grew up liking money and with a deeper need than most of us to keep proving he’s okay. And now political convenience has aligned him with folks who are more actively antisemitic and racist.) So he’s no Hitler. But his lack of compassion for those who are different from him is concerning. And since he’s demonstrated that callousness with regard to Mexicans, immigrants, Muslims, U.S. veterans and prisoners-of-war, handicapped journalists, and quite a few others, maybe in that previous sentence I shouldn’t have limited the statement with the words “those who are different from him. Shit, he ain’t even compassionate toward his wives.]
