Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker blasted former President Donald Trump on Sunday over the Republican’s choice to explain his perceived enemies as “vermin,” stressing that such language is identical dehumanizing rhetoric that was utilized in Nazi Germany.
Earlier this month, Trump held a rally in Claremont, New Hampshire, the place he pledged to “root out the Communists, Marxists, fascists and the novel left thugs that reside like vermin throughout the confines of our nation that lie and steal and cheat on elections.” The 2024 GOP front-runner additionally posted an analogous assertion to his social media platform, Fact Social.
Pritzker, a Jewish progressive, stated on MSNBC’s “Inside with Jen Psaki” that Trump’s rhetoric, which will get echoed by his followers and far-right extremists, is identical rhetoric that “was used within the Nineteen Thirties in Germany.”
“I’m very involved concerning the route of the nation if we see insurance policies like what Donald Trump is espousing come to gentle for our nation.”
Earlier than his tenure as governor, Pritzker helped plan and fund the Illinois Holocaust Museum, aiming to create an establishment within the Midwest devoted to educating the general public on the Holocaust and different genocides.
Trump has used comparable rhetoric prior to now to dehumanize and goal marginalized populations for his followers to direct their anger in direction of. For years, the previous president has particularly used dehumanizing language to explain Black and brown migrants with a purpose to stoke worry concerning the U.S.-Mexico border.
Not too long ago, Trump stated that undocumented immigrants have been “poisoning the blood of our nation,” and ought to be detained in camps.
Pritzker stated that Trump’s use of the time period “vermin” is “only one in a protracted collection” of phrases that the previous president has used “which might be sadly harking back to the previous.”
“I don’t know the place it’s going with Donald Trump. What I can let you know is that the issues that he talks about are horrifying to these of us who know the historical past of Europe within the Nineteen Thirties and ’40s,” Pritzker stated.
“And I’m deeply involved about his predilection for revenge and what that may imply for, you realize, teams of folks that didn’t help him within the 2024 election, if in reality he will get elected.”
Trump’s harmful rhetoric comes at a time that the U.S. is seeing an increase in hate-fueled violence, particularly antisemitic and Islamophobic assaults within the wake of the violence in Gaza. The governor stated he’s “deeply involved concerning the rise of hate in america,” citing the October killing of a 6-year-old Palestinian American boy in Plainfield, Illinois.
“It’s simply one thing that none of us ought to even fathom,” he stated. “And but, it occurred, and it occurred within the wake of this battle that’s taking place abroad. And this younger boy, killed, murdered, as a result of somebody had been radicalized by right-wing radio and right-wing tv; that’s one thing all of us want to concentrate to.”