How
these go together: Donald Trump, Holocaust denial, Muslim bans and Japanese
internment camps
By
Dan Rather
There is a biting symmetry that Holocaust Remembrance Day, and
the failure of the Trump Administration to mention the Jewish people in its
statement, occurred at the same time the Administration was blowing up American
immigration policy in a way that harkened back to the years before World War
II.
For all the reverence in which President Franklin Roosevelt is
rightly held, one of the most lasting shames of his presidency was how his
government - our United States - turned away
boatloads of Jewish refugees fleeing Europe, most of whom returned to their
death.
Another lasting shame was
the scapegoating of patriotic Japanese Americans who were sent to internment
camps based solely on their ethnic heritage.
These twin stains on our national history see
fearsome echoes in our own time.
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| Racism against Japanese-Americans after Pearl Harbor |
Whitewashing history to the degree of removing
the Jewish people - the 6 million killed and the millions more with ruined
lives - from the story of the Holocaust?
Alienating people around the world today along
ethnic and religious lines?
And in so doing not only undermining our
morality but our national security?
Turning a blind eye to the desperate suffering
of others? This is not our national character. And these are not accidental
actions.
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| These are the people Donald Trump wants you to hate |
One must ask, who is this crowd playing to?
And with Steve Bannon as arguably President
Trump's chief advisor, and after all the rhetoric from the campaign, the burden
of proof is on the Administration to show that their impulses are not those of
unabashed racism.
So far, they are falling far short of that
burden.