Pintele Part 6: Tyrants Disappearing

episodes
Written By Noah Diamond

We open with a joke in Jerusalem, then face the subject of Israel and Palestine. Next, to lighten things up, we ask what it means to be a Jewish American when fascists occupy the U.S. government. And finally, we close with a song in Bloomfield and a dance in East Berlin.


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Life with führer: Fascist criminals are treated as respectable and legitimate leaders by the New York Daily News, January 31, 1933 (left) and January 20, 2025 (right).

The joke which opens this episode is a classic, found in many versions and sources. It circulated widely in the 1970s, sometimes presented as an imaginary exchange between U.S. President Jimmy Carter and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. (Carter at the Wailing Wall: “God, guide the Israelis to relinquish to the Arabs all the territory seized since the 1967 Middle East War.” Begin: “Mr. President, you’re talking to a wall.”) I learned the joke from my stepdad, Steven Nestler, and my version is essentially his.

If you want to know about kibbutzim, see Rachael Gelfman Schultz, “The Kibbutz Movement.”

The description of Israel as “a homeland for all Jews, whether or not they are Israelis, and a state for all Israelis, whether or not they are Jews” paraphrases Yossi Klein Helevi, quoted in “Does new law tilt Israel away from its democratic values?”Christian Science Monitor, July 29, 2018. For more on “Basic Law” (also known as “the Nation-State Law”) try Wikipedia, Jewish Virtual Library, and The Guardian. From the latter, here’s Rabbi Rick Jacobs, on the day the law narrowly passed the Knesset: “This is a sad and unnecessary day for Israeli democracy. The damage that will be done by this new nation state law to the legitimacy of the Zionist vision and to the values of the state of Israel as a democratic — and Jewish — nation is enormous.” The text of the law, in English, is archived here.

The Camp David Accords (1978) and the Camp David Summit (2000) were major U.S.-brokered peace talks which tried and failed to establish peaceful coexistence between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs in a shared homeland.

Regarding double standards and anti-Israel sentiment in the U.S., some will argue that progressives are angrier at Israel’s atrocities than at China’s, Russia’s, or Saudi Arabia’s simply because Israel is a U.S. ally and the recipient of U.S. financial and military support. But Saudi Arabia also benefits from U.S. support (and is run by a far more brutal regime than Israel); and the U.S. economy is deeply tied to that of China as well as Saudi Arabia. Also, the White House is currently occupied by a Russian asset. Next?

Regarding the etymology of the word genocide, start here. For a brazen statement of genocidal intent, see the Hamas charter.

The original 2016 Historians Against Trump letter is here. In 2019, 700 historians urged impeachment; in 2021, over a thousand historians called him “a clear and present danger to American democracy.” Since the earliest public reckoning with Trump’s political candidacy, the sharpest warnings have come from those most familiar with the history of World War II and the rise of European fascism in the twentieth century.

Oligarch Elon Musk gives a Nazi salute at the second Trump inauguration, January 20, 2025

For a disgusting example of pre-Trump Republicans “leaving room for plausible deniability regarding the racist extremes of the American right” and “massaging bigotry with coded rhetoric,” see Ronald Reagan’s 1980 “states’ rights speech” in Neshoba County, Mississippi.

After signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, President Lyndon Johnson famously said, “We’ve lost the south for a generation” — meaning that a majority of southern voters were opposed to the Civil Rights Act and would abandon the Democratic Party. Of course, that’s exactly what happened, though the damage has lasted longer than a generation. These clarifying comments from Bill Moyers (who was there at the time) are interesting, but LBJ’s point stands.

To fully source the many parallels between Hitler’s Nazis and Trump’s Republicans would be a project in itself, but the following links represent a starting point for exploring specific points made in Pintele 6.

On the August 2017 “Unite the Right” hate rally in Charlottesville, see “Far Right Groups Surge Into National View in Charlottesville,” New York Times, August 13, 2017; “A look back on what led to the Charlottesville civil trial,” CNN, November 19, 2021; and “Clashes Over a Show of White Nationalism in Charlottesville Turn Deadly,” Time. Some centrists inexplicably chose Trump’s “very fine people” remark as the moment to grant him some benefit of doubt. I think some people glanced at the transcript, saw that Trump had vaguely excepted “neo-Nazis” two barely-coherent sentences earlier (“They didn’t put themselves down as neo-Nazis. And you had some very bad people in that group. But you also had people that were very fine people on both sides”), and decided this was an opportunity to appear moderate and reasonable. But if one side is Nazis, then centrists are halfway to being Nazis. Of course, the entirety of Trump’s remarks, like the entirety of Trump’s career, makes it painfully clear that he himself is a white supremacist, not only allied with neo-Nazis, but proud to be their leader. See also “Trump Gives White Supremacists an Unequivocal Boost,” New York Times, August 15, 2017; and “The Test of Nazism That Trump Failed,” an opinion column by Timothy Snyder, New York Times, August 18, 2017. Snyder’s slim, essential On Tyranny should be on every coffee table or nightstand in America.

“Trump said Hitler ‘did some good things’ and wanted generals like the Nazis, former chief of staff Kelly claims,” Associated Press, October 23, 2024. “Trump’s long history of trafficking in antisemitic tropes,”Washington Post, October 17, 2022.

Republicans fly big Nazi flags alongside small Trump flags in Florida, October 2024

Republicans wave Nazi flags and chant “Heil Hitler, heil Trump” outside a performance of The Diary of Anne Frank, November 2024

Regarding the terrorist in the “Camp Auschwitz” shirt, see “Rioter gets 75 days in jail,” Associated Press, September 16, 2022; “Virginia man pardoned by Trump arrested after vicious dog attack,” 13 News Now, September 4, 2025; and “Where is he now?” The Forward, January 6, 2026. He’s generally referred to (including by me in Pintele) as “the guy in the Camp Auschwitz tee shirt,” but it was actually a sweatshirt, underneath which he wore a Nazi SS tee shirt. I assume this is because he’s deeply concerned about states’ rights and government spending.

“Opposing Fascism is a Jewish Tradition”: Anti-Trump protest in New York City, October 18, 2025

“Trump tells Christians they won’t have to vote after this election,” Reuters, July 28, 2024. “Neo-Nazi groups seize on Trump’s anti-immigration rhetoric,” The Guardian, September 8, 2024. “Trump Says That if He Loses, ‘the Jewish People Would Have a Lot to Do’ With It,”New York Times, September 19, 2024.

Regarding George Soros as the world’s most generous charitable giver, see “The New Forbes Philanthropy Score,”Forbes, September 8, 2020. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a notorious 1903 publication promoting numerous antisemitic conspiracies and hoaxes. An essential text for Nazis and other racists, it was later adapted for television as The Tucker Carlson Show.

“Right-Wing Extremists Are Abuzz Over Musk’s Straight-Arm Salute,” Rolling Stone, January 20, 2025.

“‘We Don’t Protest’: Borough Park’s Mask-Burning Orthodox Jewish Demonstrators,” The New Yorker, November 1, 2020.

Tyrants disappearing: The full English lyric for “Ma’oz Tzur” / “Rock of Ages,” from The Union Prayerbook for Jewish Worship (Part I), Central Conference of American Rabbis, 1940

More on Charlie Kirk’s virulent anti-Jewish racism here, here, and here.

This happened too recently for me to incorporate it into Pintele 6, but the Nazis who illegally occupy our government are now proclaiming that Trump was “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.” See also “Military Leaders Say Iran War Is So Trump Can Bring About ‘Armageddon,’”New Republic, March 3, 2026.

Seventy-two percent of white Christian voters voted for Trump in 2024. For information about the Jewish vote in 2024, see “Jewish Voters Reject Trump and Republicans, Support Diplomacy, Oppose Netanyahu Government Policies,” J Street, November 7, 2024, and “New Poll Shows Jewish-Americans’ Overwhelming Support for Harris, Democrats in 2024 Elections,” Jewish Electorate Institute, December 4, 2024. There’s more on the 2024 Muslim vote here, and additional demographic information about the 2024 vote here.

Pew Research findings about Jewish-American political alignment, referenced in this episode, can be found here, here, and here. Additional information about Jewish positions on American culture issues, including the overwhelming Jewish support for gun control cited in Pintele 6, can be found here.

Let’s learn the Charleston: The story about Groucho dancing on Hitler’s grave is adapted from remarks I delivered at The Marx Brothers vs. The Man, a storytelling event produced and hosted by Trav S.D. at Coney Island USA, May 24, 2025. You can listen to a recording of those remarks here:

The dancing-on-Hitler’s-grave incident is described by Robert Dwan in As Long as They’re Laughing and by Groucho Marx in The Marx Bros. Scrapbook. I’m relying mostly on Dwan’s more serious and detailed account. In the Scrapbook, when the subject of Hitler is raised, a crotchety, 83-year-old Groucho says, “The cocksucker. I went to Germany once and asked permission to go to East Germany. I inquired as to where Hitler had died and when I got there I danced on his grave. Not much satisfaction after he killed six million Jews!” See also “After the Fall: Hitler’s Bunker and the Ruins of Berlin,”Life; and “Hitler’s bunker is now just a parking lot,” NPR, September 3, 2025.

Noah Diamond https://noahdiamond.com
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Pintele Part 5: The Old Jewish Man of Unity