FOR someone of my generation, who grew up with the horrors of the Holocaust imprinted in my mind by The Diary of Anne Frank and by conversations around the dinner tables of my family and our Jewish friends, it seems unthinkable that anti-Semitism and the symbols of the Nazi party would become fashionable again.
But here it is, the unthinkable, as The Daily Telegraph revealed this week: the Nationals party is investigating at least 35 NSW members for links to neo-Nazi groups.
The news is even more disturbing in light of the worst anti-Semitic violence in American history on the weekend, a terrorist attack by a neo-Nazi on a Pittsburgh synagogue in which 11 people were slaughtered.
The rise of anti-Semitism around the world has been shocking and rapid. An unholy alliance of Islamists, the anti-Israel left, and the far right has created a perfect storm which is forcing Jews out of Europe. You see the evidence in the armed guards, bollards and bullet proof glass at synagogues and Jewish schools across Sydney.
At the same time, epithets such as “Nazi”, “fascist”, “bigot”, “racist” are thrown around too readily as a way to shut people up. Donald Trump, for instance, is not a Nazi or a neo-Nazi.
Read the article by Miranda Devine in The Daily Telegraph.