Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid.
Until last week, I never thought I’d be siding with a German politician in a debate with the Vice President of the United States. But there it was: J.D. Vance telling German Chancellor Olaf Scholz that his and other mainstream parties should accept far-right extremist parties into their government, and Scholz responding with the German equivalent of “get lost.”
Make no mistake about it. This wasn’t one of Vance’s infamous gaffes that have made him the punchline of numerous party jokes. This was 100 percent Donald Trump. The party he championed, Alternative for Germany (AfD), calls for the immediate lifting of sanctions against Russia and opposes weapons deliveries to Ukraine. It set off a wave of protests last year by reports that it was meeting with other right-wing parties to plan the deportation of millions of immigrants, including some with German citizenship. Alice Weidel, its first candidate for chancellor, uses the term “remigration” as a slogan for the large-scale deportations. She has vowed to “make Germany great again.” Sound familiar?! Elon Musk appeared live by video link at an AfD campaign rally and declared that “only the AfD can save Germany. That, too, should sound familiar.
Trump and his people have said and done so many bizarre things during his presidential career that it’s tempting to toss all of them into a single basket labeled “Trumpisms,” ignoring how dangerous some of them really are. But let’s take a little time to examine this one.
The policy Vance attacked has been a mainstream of Germany’s political system since World War 2. It stands as a firewall against a repetition of a would-be dictator emulating Hitler by exploiting democratic institutions to gain absolute power. Why would an American president want to demolish this firewall, sending his vice president to abuse the privileges of a state visit by telling citizens of a country not his own how to vote? Violating diplomatic protocol may not rank high on the list of Trumpian sins. But it should make you ask why?
The answer is monstrously clear. What Trump is doing to democracy here in the United States is only the first step in creating an international network of autocracies that rule the world. He’s already buddies with Vladimir Putin and Hungary’s Viktor Orban. He wants to establish American control of Greenland, and maybe Panama. Gaza? Along the way, he’ll seek to destroy the world order America and its allies built over the past eight decades.
It sounds unreal. But it’s very real. To take a line from an old movie: “Be afraid. Be very afraid”
Rabbi Ira Youdovin is executive director emeritus of Chicago Board of Rabbis. He lives in Montecito