My Thoughts on Recent Comments by JD Vance & Tim Walz About The Holocaust

Both Vice-President JD Vance and his 2024 opponent in the U.S. presidential race, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, made remarks concerning the Holocaust over the past week which warrant some examination.

First, I will focus on Vance's statement on International Holocaust Remembrance Day last Tuesday:

Today we remember the millions of lives lost during the Holocaust, the millions of stories of individual bravery and heroism, and one of the enduring lessons of one of the darkest chapters in human history: that while humans create beautiful things and are full of compassion, we’re also capable of unspeakable brutality. And we promise never again to go down the darkest path.

Vance makes no mention of Jews or the anti-Semitic ideology of Nazis who sought to exterminate Jews from the face of the Earth. Sadly, this should come as no surprise as Vance has repeatedly sought fit dismiss and minimize the surge of anti-Semitism in the United States since October 7th. Now Vance is hardly the first elected official to omit mentioning the Jews on International Holocaust Remembrance Day. President Trump himself did so in 2017. Former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau did the same in 2016.

In Vance's case, he has a demonstrated history of dismissing and minimizing anti-Semitism while tolerating those who express anti-Semitic views within MAGA namely his mentor Tucker Carlson and turning a blind eye to his willingness to give Nick Fuentes legitimacy dismissing such concerns as "self-defeating purity tests."

Simply put, there is no way Vance is Trump's running mate without Carlson's blessing. And if he wants to keep Carlson's blessing he cannot condemn either anti-Semitism or Nazis. 

Now let me turn my attention to Vance's 2024 VP rival, Tim Walz. A week ago, following the execution of Alex Pretti, the Minnesota Governor invoked Anne Frank when discussing the ICE surge in his state:

We have got children in Minnesota hiding in their houses, afraid to go outside. Many of us grew up reading that story of Anne Frank.

Somebody’s going to write that children’s story about Minnesota.

Walz's comment drew a rebuke from the U.S. Holocaust Museum:

Anne Frank was targeted and murdered solely because she was Jewish. Leaders making false equivalencies to her experience for political purposes is never acceptable. Despite tensions in Minneapolis, exploiting the Holocaust is deeply offensive, especially as antisemitism surges.

While I am generally inclined to agree that casual comparisons to the Holocaust are wildly inappropriate, let us consider the statement Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun, recently appointed by President Trump as his administration's new envoy on anti-Semitism. Kaploun stated, “Anne Frank was in Amsterdam legally and abided by Dutch law.” 

This is rubbish. Jews had virtually no legal status in the Netherlands by the time Anne Frank and her family went into hiding in the summer 1942. Under Nazi control, Jews were forced to turn in their radios and telephones, were prohibited from nearly all employment and public places with their movements severely restricted. The Frank family went into hiding after Anne's older sister Margot was summoned to report to a German labor camp which meant certain death.

If Governor Walz's comments are out of line, then why have Holocaust survivors living in a Florida retirement home offered to hide their Haitian caregivers from ICE? Why are immigrant families in Minnesota now in hiding? And why exactly are both the White House and DHS using a neo-Nazi song to recruit ICE agents?

Let me put this way. If ICE and Border Patrol agents are prepared to execute U.S. citizens in broad daylight, is it really a stretch of the imagination that they wouldn't do the same to the people they round up to be deported whether they are here legally or not?

This isn't to say the United States is now a modern-day Nazi Germany let alone a totalitarian state. Our democratic institutions (i.e. courts and the press) still have enough strength to free a father and a 5-year-old boy from their unjust detention. But will that still be the case in a year from now? Two years? After the 2028 election, if there is one?

While I am uneasy with Walz's comments, I am uneasy not because I believe he is trivializing the Holocaust. I am uneasy with Walz's comments because he might be proven right. That is unless, ICE leaves Minneapolis and its present form abolished and replaced by a new agency which doesn't wantonly ask people for their papers and execute those who get in their way.