lly, in Kristallnacht. Only geography, not morality, prevented him from being the stormtrooper pointing the rifle at my grandfather on his knees in front of the blackened bricks of his synagogue….
Imagine, therefore, that Schwarzenegger had chosen to compare the storming of the Capitol to, say, the Tulsa race massacre of 1921, a horrific racist rampage where many black homes were destroyed and between 85 and 300 black people died. And now let’s imagine that Schwarzenegger’s father had been not Austrian and in the Nazi party but American and in the Ku Klux Klan; in the Klan, and part of that rampaging mob. Perhaps the comparison would have passed without mention. Or perhaps he would have been condemned on social media for a lack of sensitivity: for failing to understand how a person with such a lineage using that atrocity as an inflammatory reference to make his — valid or otherwise — political point might feel to the minority concerned.
The issue here is not about Schwarzenegger and his family. I certainly don’t believe one should be held responsible for the sins of the fathers. What I’m interested in is the differing progressive reactions to such comparisons. Because I know that if there had been black discomfort over such a thing, it would have been — correctly — respected and listened to, and white allies would have done their best to check their privilege and understand it. Whereas, from the same quarters, a Jew questioning the use of Kristallnacht is — was — mainly dismissed. This is because Jews don’t count.
The new ethnic studies program shortly to be rolled out to high schools in California, where Jews are, as Emily Benedek explains, cleansed from the history of racism, sadly confirms the point Baddiel is making.
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