Mick Hartley

Another view of Trump's Executive Action, and the reactions to it, from James Kirchick: 

The problem with crying wolf about a supposed “Muslim ban” is that, should an actual prohibition on Muslims entering the United States ever be proposed, people will be less inclined to heed the protests against it. A more accurate label for Trump’s executive action is “temporary refugee ban,” or, more specifically, “Syrian refugee ban,” as it’s only Syrian refugees whose entry into America has been suspended for an indefinite period of time. This is really not that much less shameful than an outright ban on Muslims, and Trump’s critics only play into the crafty hands of his Rasputin, Stephen Bannon, by turning what should be a discrete debate over refugee policy into a broader one about Muslim immigration. The way things are developing, soi-disant Leninist Bannon will cynically frame the controversy as a presidential administration committed to tougher vetting procedures pitted against a raft of ACLU lawyers and crowds shouting, “No borders, no nations, fuck deportations!” Guess who wins that fight.

That Trump happened to sign this measure on Holocaust Memorial Day only added to the frenzy. Countless comparisons were made to the plight of Anne Frank, whose family was also denied entry to the United States. In the self-congratulatory bubbles of social media, the JFK arrivals terminal, and The New York Times op-ed page, the stakes of moral validation are continually being raised such that the tweeting glitterati must outdo one other in expressing their righteous indignation. As there is no greater moral currency than the plight of Jews during the Holocaust, it was naturally the historical analogy upon which everyone settled.

Never mind the evident flaws in equating Jews forced to flee Nazi extermination to Syrians voluntarily leaving United Nations-administered refugee camps in Turkey. More galling was the sudden rush for Holocaust analogies from people who in 2015 turned over the Middle East to a Holocaust-denying regime. It has been quite a sight to behold, Obama administration alumni and their sycophants, who, having upended four decades of American foreign policy by emboldening Iran and laying the groundwork for Russia’s return to the region as a military power, guilt-trip the rest of us into seeing Trump—barely a week in office—as being somehow responsible for the upheavals of the Middle East….