Trump Slammed by Jewish Group Over ‘America First’ Slogan

[Eugene]

Source: ABC News

Trump Slammed by Jewish Group Over ‘America First’ Slogan

By MEGHAN KENEALLY
Apr 29, 2016, 2:07 PM ET

Donald Trump is being criticized by the Anti-Defamation League for repeating a slogan the group believes to be anti-Semitic.

The ADL has taken issue with Trump's use of the phrase "America First" to describe his approach to foreign policy.

The phrase was originally used by a group called the America First Committee in the 1940s, which pushed to keep the U.S. out of World War II.

The ADL released a statement Thursday saying that famed aviator Charles Lindbergh, one of the best-known supporters of the committee, sympathized with the Nazis.

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Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-slammed-jewish-group-america-slogan/story?id=38762289

[longship]

1. Who hasn't he pissed off?

The list is getting mighty short.

Good luck GOP!

[sendero]

2. America-first is anti-semitic?

Laughable. You know an organization is useless when even Trump is smarter.

[Behind the Aegis]

3. Did you read the actual article?

Nowhere does the ADL say "America-first" is anti-Semitic, that is the product of the author of the piece. What they actually said was:

"The undercurrents of anti-Semitism and bigotry that characterized the America First movement – including the assumption that Jews who opposed the movement had their own agenda and were not acting in America’s best interest – is fortunately not a major concern today," ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement.

"However, for many Americans, the term ‘America First’ will always be associated with and tainted by this history. In a political season that already has prompted a national conversation about civility and tolerance, choosing a call to action historically associated with incivility and intolerance seems ill-advised," Greenblatt continued.

Sounds like the ADL is smarter than Trump.

[Igel]

4. No, it means to keep from offending people, we have to know everything they know.

To be That gets ridiculous really, really fast. Trump was born in '46. I was born over a decade later.

Such trivia is trivia. To resent a phrase and to assume that the meaning is what it was in the '30s when the phrase has been used frequently since I've come of age to refer to non-Nazi, non-anti-Semitic thinking, is searching out cause for offense with a zeal that few probably could muster for looking for chometz last week.

[bullwinkle428]

5. So if Trump called a plan to stop illegal immigration a "final solution", should we be willing

to accept that as a completely new definition of the term?

[WinkyDink]

8. That term has an actual evil connection, as does "Holocaust." "America First" is not associated

specifically with the murder of millions.

[LeftyMom]

6. I was born in 1981, went to terrible schools and know what America First was, and the implications.

I'm positive it was in our high school history text.

Being ignorant of history isn't something to brag about and thankfully it's not a universal condition.

[Behind the Aegis]

9. No, it means history is important.

Given the first of the movement and the phrase, there are parallels and using something so similar can bring on comparisons. Despite the claim of the author, the ADL didn't claim it was anti-Semitic, but rather linked with a movement that was bigoted.

While I don't see this as a major issue, it certainly does conjure up the arguments I see from people wanting to "reform" the swastika because...you know...in the past...it was good. So, why can't someone also remind people when something that is happening now, that happened then, and have the same "slogan" might be seen as 'problematic'?

[sendero]

13. No

No I don't read drivel. And I have no problem believing that the state of Israel is our friend like Tom Sawyer was a "friend" to the chump that painted the fence.

[WinkyDink]

7. "America First" meant isolationism, not mass murder.

[pressbox69]

10. Those that forget the past are doomed to repeat it

or maybe that's a better slogan for Trump and his supporters.

[GOPblows431]

11. Trump is a true a-hole with no class

He's pretty much pissed off every major racial/ethnic/religious group in America. His defeat cannot come soon enough.

[pampango]

12. FDR thought Lindbergh (America First's spokesman) was a Nazi. He certainly sounded like one.

In a speech at an America First rally at the Des Moines Coliseum on September 11, 1941, "Who Are the War Agitators?", Lindbergh claimed the three groups, "pressing this country toward war [are] the British, the Jewish, and the Roosevelt Administration", and said of Jewish groups,

“ Instead of agitating for war, the Jewish groups in this country should be opposing it in every possible way for they will be among the first to feel its consequences. Tolerance is a virtue that depends upon peace and strength. History shows that it cannot survive war and devastation. ”

In the speech, he warned of the Jewish people's "large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio, and our government". He used the term "Jewish race" in the speech, the same terminology that had been used by Nazis.

“ I am not attacking either the Jewish or the British people. Both races, I admire. But I am saying that the leaders of both the British and the Jewish races, for reasons which are as understandable from their viewpoint as they are inadvisable from ours, for reasons which are not American, wish to involve us in the war. We cannot blame them for looking out for what they believe to be their own interests, but we also must look out for ours. We cannot allow the natural passions and prejudices of other peoples to lead our country to destruction. ”

The speech was heavily criticized as being anti-Semitic. In response, Lindbergh stated again he was not anti-Semitic, but he did not back away from his statements.

Interventionists created pamphlets pointing out his efforts were praised in Nazi Germany and included quotations such as "Racial strength is vital; politics, a luxury". They included pictures of him and other America Firsters using the stiff-armed Bellamy salute (a hand gesture described by Francis Bellamy to accompany his Pledge of Allegiance to the American flag); the photos were taken from an angle not showing the flag, so to observers it was indistinguishable from the Hitler salute.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt disliked Lindbergh's outspoken opposition to intervention and his administration's policies, such as the Lend-Lease Act, and said to Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau in May 1940, "if I should die tomorrow, I want you to know this, I am absolutely convinced Lindbergh is a Nazi." On April 26, 1941, Roosevelt wrote to Secretary of War Henry Stimson: "When I read Lindbergh's speech I felt that it could not have been better put if it had been written by Goebbels himself. What a pity that this youngster has completely abandoned his belief in our form of government and has accepted Nazi methods because apparently they are efficient."

In his book written after the war, Lindbergh said that no one he met in pre-wartime Nazi Germany did not believe the country would be better off without the Jews ...

I am not sure which is worse: assuming a leading candidate for a presidential nomination, Trump, does not know the history of "America First" or that he does know and chooses to use the term anyway, assuming it sounds as good now as it did 70 years ago and people won't draw the connection.

[Scurrilous]

14. K & R

[Warren DeMontague]

15. Il Douche strikes again.