Gary Willig is a veteran member of the Arutz Sheva news staff.
Two stories out of America highlighted how the rise of the Democratic Socialists of America is bringing the US closer and closer to the Germany of the late 1930s.
Earlier this week, the NYPD released its hate crimes statistics for July, showing that in the first summer of DSA golden boy Zohran Mamdani’s mayoralty, antisemitic hate crimes are up more than 50 percent compared to the same time last year. Moreover, in a city where Jews make up just 12 percent of the population, anti-Jewish hate crimes accounted for 70 percent of all hate crimes, meaning they more than double the total hates crimes committed against all other ethnicities put together.
Mamdani has used his bully pulpit primarily to foment hate since taking office, most recently by threatening to break the very laws he swore to uphold in order to arrest the leader of the world’s only Jewish state and then going on a lie-filled rant designed to appeal to the most bloodthirsty Jew-haters when it became apparent that he does not yet live in 1938 Germany and that the law currently does not allow him to arrest any Jew he doesn’t like.
But while the law does not yet allow for a repeat of Kristalnacht, Mamdani and his fellow DSA members are doing everything in their power to change that. The mayor of New York has railed against the supposed “monsters" of AIPAC, a direct attack on Jews for having the temerity to think of acting in their own interests or opposing genocidal Hamas supporters who want to see their beloved terrorists finish the job Hitler started.
While Mamdani’s policies and rhetoric threaten the safety of New York’s Jewish residents, the results of this week’s Democratic primaries for the Michigan Senate seat could threaten the safety of Jews throughout the country.
Abdul El-Sayed won a narrow victory over Rep. Haley Stevens in Tuesday’s primary. The vote was much closer than the blowout polls had suggested, but that is scant comfort when Democratic voters chose a man who has been described as the “most antisemitic US Senate candidate in America" by the Republican Jewish Coalition.
El-Sayed may not be a member of the DSA, but he fully embraces their anti-Jew and pro-jihadist agenda and has the support of many of their members. He has equated Israel with the genocidal maniacs of Hamas, endorsed the genocidal position that there should not be a Jewish state, said that he could not praise the elimination of the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a man with the blood of countless innocents and many thousands of Americans on his hands, and expressed empathy and understanding for a man who tried to blow up a preschool full of Jewish toddlers.
When the brother of a Hezbollah terrorist drove a car full of explosives into a synagogue which housed a preschool in West Bloomfield, Michigan, El-Sayed’s condemnation of the attempted slaughter of four-year-olds for the crime of being born Jewish included the message of understanding for the would-be-killer that “hurt people hurt people," as if the death of his brother, a Hezbollah terrorist commander in Lebanon, could in any way explain or justify the attempted mass murder of Jewish toddlers in Michigan thousands of miles away.
Hitler did the same thing after his ascension to power in 1933, condemning “"violence by individuals" after the first anti-Jewish riots began while stressing that the Jewish community must “understand" the sources of German anger against Jews, such as the response by Jewish communities outside of Germany to Hitler’s rise. Condemnations of violence against Jews that include attempts to blame the Jews for the violence perpetrated against them are never sincere. They are tactical. And they are the sign of a politician who at best does not give a whit about preventing the murder of Jews.
El-Sayed’s extreme tolerance for antisemitism was on full display when he campaigned with Hasan Piker, a man who has called religious Jews “inbred" and supports Hamas and Hezbollah.
The Democratic party, as it falls further and further under the control of the DSA, is becoming more and more a party that tolerates and endorses outright Nazis. Graham Platner’s Nazi tattoos, his support for Hamas and its genocidal ambitions against Jews, and his violence against women were perfectly fine with the Democrats until it was revealed that one of his victims was on the left side of the political spectrum. Like Mamdani and El-Sayed, Platner made attacking AIPAC a central pillar of his platform, by which they seek to disenfranchise American Jews and leave them defenseless against those who seek their harm. Being a Nazi was not enough to be disqualifying, as Democrats rush to support any antisemite who looks like he has a chance of winning.
Rep. Stevens, who correctly called El-Sayed an antisemite during the primary campaign, has already said she will support him in the general election, showing that electing a Democrat takes precedence over fighting bigotry or keeping Jewish children safe.
Chuck Schumer, the most cowardly Senator in US history, has completed his villain arc from being a self-declared “shomer (protector) of Israel to a guardian and supporter of antisemites, saying that “Abdul El-Sayed has run an energetic campaign that inspired thousands of Michiganders across the state, with a clear focus on lowering costs and standing up for working families." There is apparently no Jewish child Schumer would not sacrifice if it meant defeating a Republican candidate.
If the DSA succeeds in getting candidates like El-Sayed elected to office as high as the Senate, then America will have taken a giant step closer to becoming the country Germany was in the late 1930s. One of the two major parties will be dominated by an extremist group which is already seeking to disenfranchise Jews and empower those who seek to murder Jews at home and abroad, an extremist group dedicated to the support of modern day Nazi movements that actively seek to commit a second Holocaust. To have people in the highest legislature who seek to contextualize the attempted mass murder of Jewish toddlers, who express the genocidal position that there should be no Jewish State, would be a disaster for the safety of Jews in every corner of the United States.
The rise of the Democratic Socialists of America is the rise of a truly Hitlerian America.