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Photo by Rebecca Blackwell/AP

Where’s the parallel in this foul, foolish analogy of caravan and Holocaust, to Hitlerian anti-Semitism, the oldest and most durable, deepest racism in history? Is Trump anti-Honduran? An organized and political attempt to deny the sovereignty of the United States, an agitprop march of thousands of poor people duped by those behind the scenes, is emphatically not, to any degree, to be offered as a parallel to Hitler’s efforts to hunt and kill every Jew everywhere while he had the power to do so. It’s close to real blasphemy to assert so.

No wonder one of CNN’s (now-dismissed) pundits (and that’s a real climb up Marc Lamont Hill) just days ago felt it easy to call out, at a UN meeting, and was applauded for it: “Give us … a free Palestine from the river to the sea.” The phrase is the pasteurized version of “end Israel and rid the Middle East of Jews,” just as anti-Zionism is the 21st century’s anti-Semitism 2.0.

Where’s the parallel in this foul, foolish analogy of caravan and Holocaust?

Slackening the meaning of history’s greatest crime merely to insult a president, and suddenly moving towards the idea of an extinguished Israel, is not so far a journey. Rhetoric, unbound by reason or logic, leads to such paths. It’s a strange anti-Semite who broke the logjam and finally recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

We’re in a strange time, when patriotism is a call to white supremacy, nationalism is a return to Hitlerism, and maintaining national sovereignty is a first step to the Holocaust. The obsessive detractors of President Trump — so consumed with his rough style and rowdy address — outstrip him by miles in both. They look in their mirrors and see Donald Trump. But the mirrors are lying. The faces looking back are their own.

* Godwin’s law: “… if an online discussion (regardless of topic or scope) goes on long enough, sooner or later someone will compare someone or something to Adolf Hitler or his deeds …” — Wikipedia. … Except that in the Trump era, no time elapses; there is no “sooner or later.” Adolf Hitler is the first comparison. — Murphy