Rantz: Politician compared Trump admin to Nazis, could now craft Holocaust education

The Washington state politician who compared the Trump administration to Nazi Germany could guide our state’s schools Holocaust curriculum. As a Jew, this is abhorrent.

A bi-partisan bill by State Senator Ann Rivers (R-La Center), if passed, would strongly encourage middle and junior high schools adopt curriculum that studies and examines the Holocaust. It’s incredibly well-intentioned.

Right now, only high schools are given that recommendation. While I’m not sure when is too young to teach about the Holocaust, a recommendation is fine by me. But, there’s a piece of the bill that’s troubling.

The bill would mandate the state’s superintendent, currently Chris Reykdal, work with a nonprofit to come up with lesson plans. This is problematic as Reykdal is an ideologue who will politicize the curriculum. Indeed, Reykdal has shown a disgusting disregard for those impacted by the Holocaust.

Back in December 2017, Reykdal inaccurately claimed that the Trump administration was banning words from being used by the CDC.

But to Reykdal, this was Nazi-style censorship.

On Twitter, Reykdal wrote: “Please go back and read your history. The rise of Nazi Germany looked exactly like this current administration.”

Only, it didn’t. It turned out, the words weren’t banned at all; they were simply removed from a budget because they were viewed as red flags that could hold up the approval of their financial requests.

It should be generally accepted that you shouldn’t invoke Nazis to make a cheap political point. The history of millions of Jews being murdered shouldn’t be used for political gain by anyone, period. It’s lazy and it’s wrong.

When this Jewish talk show host called him out, Reykdal blocked me on Twitter — he doesn’t like Jewish expression when it conflicts with his deeply and ridiculously held beliefs that Trump is like Hitler.

And when he finally was called out, Reykdal didn’t apologize – he doubled down.

“This is the first evidence I see of an administration essentially trying to wipe out science,” he said. “When you destroy language, you destroy culture and you destroy the ability to have critical thinking … There is a growing bit of momentum here by this administration to do things that look a lot like propaganda and manipulation of language, and I just think it’s a slippery slope.”

His comments are, of course, rather ironic given Progressives actively manipulate language to serve political agendas.

But, politics aside, should someone who thinks Trump is Hitler-esque have anything whatsoever to do with Holocaust education? His offensive comparison – and unwillingness to listen to his Jewish critics – means he doesn’t quite understand the concepts of the curriculum he’d try to develop. He should certainly study up on the topic, but should have nothing to do with it’s development.

Beyond that, because of the currently climate of too many Progressives, I have deep concern that we should mandate any curriculum – including important topics – that can be so easily perverted by political ideologues like Reykdal. And that’s a devastating place to be: a Jew saying we shouldn’t mandate Holocaust curriculum, out of valid fear it’ll be used to make cheap political points.

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