Nazi Who

In which you’d be speaking German and I wouldn’t have been born at all.

Twenty-sixteen was the year of the Punch-a-Nazi. As the Trump-Hilary election cycle descended into radioactive levels of toxicity, “punch a Nazi” turned into a rallying call for anyone even remotely left-of-center (by Nazi, of course, they meant Trump supporters). To our credit, Jewish advocates online, including those of us on the left, quickly clocked the phrase for what it was: an empty slogan, utterly devoid of meaning. This became clearer and clearer as the left grew more comfortable in its antisemitism, such as in 2017, when the Chicago Dyke March banned the Jewish pride flag, with its “provocative” Star of David emblazoned in the center, or when the calls of “Jews will not replace us” at the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally became “you will not replace us” to the liberal ear.

Here I thought all along that Nazism was a genocidal antisemitic ideology motivated first and foremost by its objective to exterminate world Jewry. How wrong I was! Somewhere between 1945 and 2016, Nazism morphed into any political persuasion that the left doesn’t like. How’d that happen?

I am reminded of all of this a decade later, as I write this article on February 28, 2026, upon news of the much-awaited joint American-Israeli strikes on the Islamic Republic regime in Iran, which have reportedly killed the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. For over a month, civilians inside Iran have been begging for foreign intervention, as the evil, fundamentalist, fascist forces of the Islamic Republic brutally slaughtered tens of thousands of protestors in cold blood over the course of a few days. The best the mainstream left has had to offer? “The news of the massacre is joint CIA-Mossad propaganda,” “No war on Iran!” (the war has been ongoing for 47 years! Where’ve you been?), and the kicker, “The Iranians deserve freedom, but they should liberate themselves!” Sure, unarmed civilians will overtake the regime’s military-grade weaponry with their bare hands. Why not!

Rachel Griffin-Accurso, of Ms. Rachel fame, best known as the Lord and Savior of the Children of Gaza, offered her own riveting take: “Stop killing children.” Ali Khamenei, 86-year-old child (or child-killer?).

You could pluck the left’s (astonishingly stupid) response to the events unfolding in the Middle East right out of an anti-war demonstration on Fifth Avenue, held on July 7th, 1941. “Why not peace with Hitler?” a now infamous sign read. “Hitler has not attacked us. Why attack Hitler?” declared another. One demonstrator held a poster board demanding, “Stay out of Europe,” and another stated, “Arm Britain and prolong the war.” That last one reads like an anti-AIPAC manifesto, doesn’t it?

Interestingly enough, though, the isolationists of 1941 were, for the most part, right-wing.

I do not presume to know how this will all unfold, and I understand the apprehension in light of America’s disastrous Middle East interventions in recent decades. I do not know what Trump or Netanyahu are thinking, and I trust neither. I do not know what will become of Iran if (when) the regime falls. I know that war is ugly, having experienced it myself, and I do not wish it upon anyone, Israeli or Iranian alike. I am worried for my family and friends. How could I not be?

But I also know that you do not stop tyrants with platitudes.

There is something particularly perverse about pretending to stand with the people of Iran by protecting the killers of the people of Iran, and that is precisely what so many on the left are doing. It’s atrocious. Audacious, if you will.

Here’s what it all comes down to: at this point, I am entirely convinced that if the left of today had been around in 1939, you’d all be speaking German and I would’ve never been born, because Jews would’ve long been relegated to the dustbin of history.

Sometimes the only way out is through. Sometimes the ugly choice is the right one to make. You cannot bring evil to its knees with please and thank yous (that’s why you punch Nazis, no?). The anti-Nazi liberal left of the 1940s recognized it. Why don’t you, Ye Olde Puncher of Nazis?