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Saturday, May 14, 2016

The First New York Times Article About Hitler Dismissed His Anti-Semiticism As Posturing

New York Times mention of Hitler in 1922
The first New York Times article about Hitler serves as a reminder about the ill advisability of downplaying hateful rhetoric.
Jen Hayden
This November 1922 article about Hitler in the New York Times should be a stark reminder just how dangerous rhetoric can be:
But, several reliable, well-informed sources confirmed the idea that Hitler’s anti-Semitism was not so genuine or violent as it sounded, and that he was merely using anti-Semitic propaganda as bait to catch messes of followers, and keep them aroused, enthusiastic and in line for the time when his organization is perfected and sufficiently powerful to be employed effectively for political purposes. 
A sophisticated politician credited Hitler with peculiar political cleverness for laying emphasis and over emphasis on anti-Semitism, saying: “You can’t expect the masses to understand or appreciate your finer real aims. You must feed the masses with cruder morsels and ideas like anti-Semitism. It would be politically all wrong to tell  them the truth about where you really are leading them.”
I’m not saying a Trump presidency would lead to mass genocide on the scale of the Holocaust. But, his rhetoric is already dangerous. Watch as his supporters shove and scream at a young black woman at a Trump rally in Louisville, Kentucky on Tuesday night, while Trump himself can be heard yelling “Get out!”:
At a Trump rally in Alabama, black protesters were attacked by a mob of Trump supporters:
A black protester at Trump's rally today in Alabama was shoved, tackled, punched & kicked: https://t.co/Aq0wuaAtax pic.twitter.com/...
— Jeremy Diamond (@JDiamond1) November 21, 2015
And in Miami, a Trump supporter knocked down and dragged an immigration activist at a Trump rally. All while the crowd changed “USA!”
And here, another Trump supporter screams at and spits in the face of an immigration activist at a different rally:



Immigration activists disrupt Trump rally. He gamely continues, but crowd raged. One spit on protestors @wusa9
At this rate, it really is only a matter of time before somebody gets seriously injured or killed—fueled directly by Donald Trump’s increasing dangerous rhetoric. 

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