How do you destroy democracy?
“Bit by bit,” Deborah Oleshansky said in a visit to McMinnville on Thursday. She is the Jewish Community Relations director for the Jewish Federation and Jewish Foundation of Nashville and Middle Tennessee.
Oleshansky addressed anti-Semitism and the continuing threats to democracies when she spoke to The Rotary Club of McMinnville and to public radio listeners in an interview recording for WCPI 91.3. That interview will be on the air this week.
“Anti-Semitism is the oldest hatred in the world,” she told Rotary’s weekly luncheon meeting in the fellowship hall of Central Church of Christ.
One of the early and notable examples of anti-Jewish violence was the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem and the First Temple, built by Solomon, in 587-86 BC, the Rotary speaker noted. In the following 2,500 years, mindless hatred of Jews has erupted in spasms of aggression, warfare and oppression, she said.
Currently, the FBI is actively watching at least 34 distinct hate groups working in Tennessee. Many of those groups have threatened violence against Jews and Jewish institutions “simply because they are Jews,” Oleshansky said.
Mass murder by shootings at synagogues and other places where Jews gather is one gruesome aspect of present-day anti-Semitism, she emphasized.
Another profound threat — one that endangers all freedom-loving Americans, not just Jews — is the deepening assault on democracy.
After years of electoral losses, the National Socialist Party gained a foothold in German politics and government in 1933. Under its bombastic, charismatic leader Adolf Hitler, the Nazis moved step by step, methodically dismantling the democracy that allowed their rise to power. Once in control, they shattered all norms of civil governance, human rights and decency. Then came the descent in the hellish darkness and destruction of World War II and the Holocaust.
Then came the ghettoes and “literally shooting” innocent people who opposed the Nazi dictatorship. Those horrors on the streets of European towns and cities was followed by a state-run system for the industrialized killing of people, “the gas chambers for more efficiently murdering Jews.”
Altogether, some 6 million Jews, half of the world Jewish population, were consumed in the years-long rampage, not to mention uncounted others such as political dissenters, Communists, and non-conformists.
“Unfortunately, I see that happening here and now,” she said, citing the tidal wave of legislation in various states to restrict voter access to the polls. “Without voting rights, other rights really don’t matter,” she affirmed.
“We have to confront the power of misunderstanding,” Oleshansky said. ”We are all human and want the same things.”
The half-hour conversation with Oleshansky airs on 91.3 FM on Tuesday at 5 p.m., Wednesday at 5 a.m., Thursday at 1 p.m., and Friday at 1 p.m.
