Written by Jerry Elman
Listen to the language.
Vermin.
Infestation.
Contamination.
Talk of blood.
Talk of purity.
Talk of a people who must be removed because they are poisoning the nation from within.
Crowds cheer.
Leaders shout warnings of invasion and decay.
They speak of enemies among us.
They promise protection—if only the nation is cleansed.
This sounds familiar.
It should.
This is the 1930s.
A society under strain.
Economic fear.
Loss of pride.
Resentment searching for someone to blame.
Leaders learn a lesson history has taught again and again:
Hatred mobilizes faster than solutions.
Contempt binds people tighter than hope.
And once you describe human beings as vermin, empathy becomes optional.
Millions cheer.
Others stay quiet.
They don’t like the language—but it works.
Besides, it’s not aimed at them.
Not yet.
“It’ll burn itself out.”
“It’s just rhetoric.”
“It can’t happen again.”
History records this moment clearly.
No.
This is not the 1930s.
This is today.
The same words are back.
The same tolerance is back.
The same belief that it will go away on its own is back.
Only the names have changed.
Only the country has changed.
The pattern has not.
Listen again—without the comfort of distance.
Political figures openly use words like vermin and garbage.
They warn of contamination of our race, our blood, our culture.
They speak of invasion and rot—of people who do not belong.
They do not whisper these words.
They shout them.
And tens of millions cheer.
At the same time, people are taken.
Masked agents.
No visible identification.
No warrants shown.
People disappear from workplaces.
From streets.
From homes.
And again—people cheer.
Because it’s the scum.
The invaders.
The garbage.
Yes, we are not yet at concentration camps.
Yes, we are not yet at genocide.
But history does not begin where it ends.
It begins with language.
It begins with tolerance.
It begins when cruelty stops shocking.
And the pattern is identical.
The Pattern, Plainly
History shows the same sequence every time:
- Language dehumanizes
- Tolerance becomes permission
- Limits are tested
- Law adjusts to normalize cruelty and corruption
- Violence is excused, then celebrated
- Silence becomes survival
- The point of no return arrives quietly
Hitler did not leap to the end.
He tested.
A speech.
Then a law.
Then a symbol.
Then a purge.
Each step asked the same question:
How far can I go?
When there was outrage, he slowed.
When there was acceptance, he advanced.
When there was cheering, he accelerated.
Every step that met little or no resistance became permission to go further.
What shocked one year became tolerable the next.
What was tolerable became legal.
What was legal became mandatory.
By the time people said, “This is too far,”
the system already knew it wouldn’t stop.
Denial did not block the pattern.
Denial trained it.
Then the symbols changed.
New flags appeared—symbols of loyalty, not shared citizenship.
The old flag remained, but only as decoration.
The new flag demanded allegiance.
The leader became inseparable from the symbol.
He always wore it.
He never removed it.
Because it was no longer clothing.
It was identity.
Wear it and belong.
Refuse it and explain yourself.
Neutrality became suspicion.
Law followed.
Quietly.
Methodically.
Laws were rewritten.
Enforcement became selective.
Corruption was excused as necessity.
Cruelty stopped being a failure of the system.
It became the system.
“Well, it’s legal,” people said—
as if legality has ever guaranteed justice.
Rallies grew.
The leader did not speak.
He screamed.
Every sentence was anger.
Every phrase a threat.
The crowd shouted back words of elimination:
Vermin.
Garbage.
Destroyers.
Contamination.
Vermin became normal.
Garbage became patriotic.
Elimination became “necessary.”
Accusation replaced evidence.
Once accused, people were no longer treated as citizens.
They were targets.
People began to believe harm was justified.
Then murder.
And when it happened, the killers were not condemned.
They were praised.
Put on stage.
Thanked.
Violence was no longer the problem.
Violence became proof of loyalty.
Daily life changed.
Civility collapsed.
Anger filled ordinary interactions.
Families split into enemies.
Friendships ended.
Allegiance mattered more than blood.
History began to disappear.
Books were banned.
Libraries purged.
Education turned into loyalty training.
Complexity vanished.
False narratives replaced truth.
People were no longer taught how to think—
only what to repeat.
There was always an economic engine beneath the cruelty.
The wealthy tolerated it because markets don’t punish it immediately.
The desperate believed because they lost everything.
They were told their suffering wasn’t random.
It was taken.
Taken by them.
The vermin.
The garbage.
Once pain had a target,
it stopped asking hard questions.
It started demanding punishment.
And the middle?
The middle hid.
“I don’t want to be a target.”
“I’ll keep my head down.”
Silence felt safer.
So the pattern locked in.
The wealthy tolerated.
The desperate believed.
The middle disappeared.
And the leader gained what mattered most:
Permission.
What is disappointing—but not surprising—is that Jews of all people should recognize this pattern.
We have lived it repeatedly since the Roman Empire.
Expulsions.
Blood libels.
Ghettos.
Pogroms.
Camps.
Holocaust.
It is why, in a world of 8.1 billion people, there are only 16 million Jews. (yes million!)
And yet some Jews are embracing the same language.
Vermin.
Garbage.
Invasion.
Believing alignment with power will protect them.
History has never rewarded that belief.
Not once.
Aligning with power has never saved Jews.
Silence has never protected us.
Believing “this time is different” has never worked.
If I were to embrace this language—
to chant it, excuse it, benefit from it—
my parents would have seen it as the most unforgivable betrayal of humanity.
They survived the Holocaust.
Not so their child could become part of the fire they barely escaped.
Not so their suffering could be twisted into permission for cruelty.
Not so survival itself could be used to justify becoming what hunted them.
To help repeat that pattern—even quietly—
would have made their survival feel tragic rather than meaningful.
I do not get that choice.
If their lives are to mean more than endurance,
if survival is to stand for more than breath drawn after catastrophe,
then speaking is not optional.
Silence has never saved us.
And it never will.
All religions claim that life is sacred.
All life is God’s creation.
Until it isn’t.
Until power becomes more important than principle.
Then scripture bends.
Faith becomes costume.
Belief becomes branding.
Symbols replace conscience.
People wear religious signs while cheering cruelty—
believing this will please God.
But no God worthy of worship
has ever been impressed
by obedience purchased at the cost of humanity.
We are not yet at the point of no return.
That matters.
But every day—every week—we are tested.
Each test asks the same question:
How much more will you allow?
Each green light—
especially the quiet ones—
moves the line forward.
Turning around does not become impossible all at once.
It becomes impossible
step by tolerated step.
Believing “it can’t happen here”
is like believing you’re such a good driver
that you don’t need seatbelts.
You may be careful.
You may be experienced.
You may never have crashed before.
But crashes don’t happen because people plan them.
They happen because conditions change faster than reaction time.
Every society that collapsed believed it was
too stable,
too moral,
too advanced
to lose control.
Confidence didn’t save them.
Only the names have changed.
The country has changed.
But the pattern is the same.
Each step produces the same consequences it always has.
Each silence authorizes what follows.
It’s like watching a movie when you already know the ending.
You recognize the opening scenes.
You spot the turning points early.
You know where it’s headed.
And still—most people stay seated.
Every generation that later said,
“We didn’t realize what was happening,”
had already dismissed its warnings as:
political
exaggerated
ideological
alarmist
History remembers those warnings very differently.
One Simple Thing You Can Do
This isn’t about shouting or converting anyone.
It’s about not being silent.
If this unsettled you—
if it named something you’ve felt but couldn’t quite articulate—
pass it on.
Send it to one person.
Or two.
History doesn’t always ask for grand gestures.
Sometimes it asks only that we stop pretending
we didn’t see what was right in front of us
—before the choice disappears.