On Sunday, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker voiced his alarm at comments made by former President Donald Trump, which he likened to Nazi propaganda.
Speaking on MSNBC’s “Inside with Jen Psaki,” the Illinois Democrat remarked, “I don’t know where it’s going with Donald Trump. What I can say is that his words strike fear in the hearts of those of us who are familiar with the history of Europe in the 1930s and 1940s.
Pritzker said, “And,” he said, “I’m deeply concerned about his predilection for revenge and what that will mean for you know, groups of people that didn’t support him in the 2024 election if, in fact, he gets elected.”
Pritzker was alluding to a Trump address a week earlier in Claremont, N.H., where he said: “We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections.”
The ex-president has previously used quite similar terminology. For example, Pritzker has criticised the “vermin” terminology, arguing that it dehumanises opponents in the same way that Adolf Hitler and others did in the 1930s to rise to power in Germany.
Pritzker, referencing the recent murder of a 6-year-old Muslim boy in his state, said, “I’m deeply concerned about the rise of hate in the United States and especially, of course, here in Illinois.” He also voiced broader concerns about hate speech and hateful behaviour in the United States amid the Israel-Hamas war.
“Wadea Al-Fayoume, the Palestinian American boy of six, is a completely innocent small child who knows nothing about hostilities happening thousands of miles away, who is just living his life, and he gets attacked by an extremist here in the United States. The tragic stabbing of the child in his home on October 14 in Plainfield Township, Illinois, was “just something that none of us should even fathom,” as Pritzker put it.
This little boy was “killed, murdered,” Pritzker added, “because someone had been radicalised by right wing radio and right wing television.” “And yet it happened, and it happened in the wake of this war that’s happening overseas; that’s something we all need to pay attention to.”
