Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at Madison Square Garden, in New York on Oct. 27.Brendan McDermid/Reuters
If not for the non-stop shockers of the Donald Trump era – which seem to have acclimatized civil society to way-below-the-belt politics – the scene on Sunday would be almost unbelievable, as a Trump rally skidded off the rails (or perhaps hummed right along, depending on your perspective) into a six-hour circus.
You may have heard the lowlights by now, delivered by a variety of speakers. Kamala Harris is the “Antichrist” with “pimp handlers”; Hillary Clinton is a “sick son of a bitch.” Disgraced former Fox News host (and Danielle Smith stage-sharer) Tucker Carlson called Ms. Harris a “Samoan-Malaysian, low-I.Q. former California prosecutor” – a made-up racist depiction of the Vice-President’s mixed-race background.
And there was the “comedy” routine, which referred to Jews as cheap, Palestinians as violent, and portrayed Latinos as birth-control-avoidant multipliers in the crudest terms. And now, famously, the description of Puerto Rico as “a floating island of garbage.”
The MAGAs loved it, trash punchline and all.
It was a horror show – scarier than anything you’ll see this Halloween.
Some, including high-level Democrats, quickly made the comparison between this event and another notorious political rally at the same venue, more than 85 years ago. On Feb. 20, 1939, the German American Bund hosted a self-billed “Mass Demonstration for True Americanism” at Madison Square Garden, tying it to a celebration of George Washington’s birthday two days later. The New York Times reported at the time that 22,000 people attended.
The speakers were actual Nazis, spewing racist rhetoric that would help spur a genocide, already in motion across the Atlantic. There were stormtrooper uniforms and swastikas (and American flags) framing Washington’s image.
As the 2017 documentary A Night at the Garden captures, the men and women in the crowd, dressed up in their finest on a Monday night (some sporting their own Nazi armbands), responded with cheers and one-armed salutes.
Speakers that night railed against a “Jewish cabal,” the “Jewish-controlled press,” and characterized Jews as parasites “swarming” the U.S. They warned against “slimy conspirators” changing the country and Jewish teachers corrupting Aryan children, and they called for the “preservation of our own race.”
It was chilling. As was the Trump event. But the comparison is unnecessary – and, in fact, unhelpful. Sunday’s rally was horrifying on its own, offering its own special brand of “Americanism” with its own unique batch of sycophants.
By trying to find parallels to 1939, well-meaning critics invite accusations of hyperbole, overreach, hysteria. Case in point: Mr. Trump on Monday claimed that Ms. Harris has said anyone who doesn’t vote for her is a Nazi (she has not said that).
Jewish attendees of the Trump event, including a Holocaust survivor, have dismissed the accusations as ridiculous. The term “Nazi” is indeed a distraction in this instance, even for those of us who believe Mr. Trump could fairly be called a fascist, as his former chief of staff John Kelly has stated. (Mr. Kelly also said that Mr. Trump has commented, more than once, that “Hitler did some good things, too.”) Still, the word “Nazi” shifts focus away from what we should be talking about: the fascist threat right before us.
It’s all a sideshow, a red herring, a distraction – a way to sidestep, with the wave of a dismissive hand, the real concerns illustrated by Sunday’s event, which include racism and misogyny.
While comparisons are unhelpful, the lessons of that Nazi rally should be heeded. As A Night at the Garden filmmaker Marshall Curry said, the 1939 rally “made clear how the tactics of demagogues have been the same throughout the ages. They attack the press, using sarcasm and humour. They tell their followers that they are the true Americans … And they encourage their followers to “take their country back” from whatever minority group is ruining it.” Sound familiar?
Even if it was unsurprising by MAGA standards, perhaps this rally will turn out to be the October surprise that pundits have been waiting for – a last-minute event that has a big effect on the election result. Perhaps some voters can still be swayed from Mr. Trump’s odious message, even if he and his ever-changing team have shown us again and again who and what they are. What happened on Sunday should matter.
The former wrestler Hulk Hogan, one of the esteemed speakers at the Trump event, looked out at the crowd and declared “I don’t see no stinkin’ Nazis.”
Call them what you will (or won’t), but the stench is palpable. A little, one might say, like foul, reeking garbage.