Michelle Frankfurter is an adjunct professor of photography at the Corcoran School of the Arts & Design.
In college, I took a history class that examined the post-World War I decade and a half leading to the rise of the Third Reich that culminated in a second world war and the systematic, industrial-scale murder of approximately 17 million people. While Jews were primarily singled out by the Nazis’ extermination campaign, they also targeted Communists, trade unionists, gay men, the disabled, Roma, political rivals, dissenters and Soviet prisoners and civilians, among other people deemed undesirable by the Nazi party. The professor was a first-generation American-born German and said his own family had been politically divided, with some members belonging to the Nazi party while others dismissed Hitler as an unhinged clown. In the intervening years between Trump’s first and second terms, the extreme polarization within American society has only intensified, echoing the political divisions within Germany in the years leading up to the Nazi rise to power.
My father, who passed away suddenly last November at the age of 91, survived the Holocaust in Budapest, Hungary, where he was born and raised. The Holocaust arrived in Hungary in March of 1944 and lasted less than a year before the Nazis were defeated, however, the persecution of Jews and the anti-Jewish legislative policies leading up to it began as early as the 1920’s under the ultranationalist authoritarian government of Miklós Horthy. The assault on our democratic institutions through a series of policies, Supreme Court rulings, ultranationalist or racist propaganda amplified by media conglomerates and social media has tenderized parts of American society over a period of several decades to accept as normal extremist views, conspiracy theories and a growing cynicism toward the political system.
Long before he was appointed chancellor by President Paul von Hindenburg, Hitler had claimed that he would destroy democracy by working within the boundaries of the legal system through legislative action and decrees. It took the Nazis less than three months to consolidate power, sideline parliament and suspend civil liberties. Since Trump took office in January, the administration has comparably acted without legal precedent, purged the ranks of the government of opposition in favor of party loyalists, ignored orders from federal judges and deported people without due process.
The recent case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a legal resident of Maryland who Immigration and Customs Enforcement mistakenly deported to El Salvador, underscores the degree to which Trump has demonstrated a willingness to defy the courts. After ICE officials and attorneys from the Justice Department acknowledged that his deportation was made due to an administrative error, a federal judge ordered the administration to facilitate his return to the United States. The Supreme Court ruled in a unanimous decision that Garcia was unlawfully deported. Trump has defied both the Supreme Court’s ruling and the judge’s orders, declaring without evidence that Abrego Garcia is affiliated with the Salvadoran criminal gang, MS-13. The issue of whether Abrego Garcia is a gang member or not is irrelevant to the administration’s argument, nor is it a justification for violating the civil rights of a legal resident of the United States. By defying the court, Trump is signaling that he can rule by decree, while setting a precedent that could lead to the arrest and deportation of American citizens who disagree with him to foreign prisons. Auschwitz, in case anyone needs reminding, was in Poland.
Made public in 2023, Project 2025 was developed by the Heritage Foundation and various conservative organizations. The policy initiative outlined a broad conservative agenda that would radically transform the government, expand the powers of the president and cripple regulatory agencies through legislative actions and government restructuring. With all three branches of government under GOP control, the system of checks and balances established by the framers of the Constitution to prevent the concentration and potential abuse of power in any one branch has been weakened to a degree that legal experts fear an impending constitutional crisis. As shocking and appalling as the events of the past several months may be, they should not come as a surprise: Project 2025 openly publicized the Republican policy agenda as clearly as Hitler had announced his intent to destroy democracy through legal, democratic means in his 1930 address to Germany’s Constitutional Court. Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda and one of Hitler’s closest allies stated, “the big joke on democracy is that it gives its mortal enemies the tools to its own destruction.”
As members of the GW community, we need look no further than our own campus for evidence of how the Trump administration is using the executive branch of government to intimidate private universities into adopting policies that are in clear violation of free speech guaranteed by the Constitution. Under the pretext of fighting antisemitism, 60 universities across the country, including Harvard, Yale, the University of Michigan, neighboring American University and George Mason University, are currently under investigation by the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights for Title VI violations. None of the accusations made against these private institutions by the Trump administration have been submitted for review, nor have they been substantiated. Still, Trump is threatening to withhold billions of dollars in funding unless universities agree to alter curricula and, in some cases, eliminate entire departments deemed “woke” or falling under the rubric of DEI. Trump’s attack on universities under the pretext of combating antisemitism is a first step towards purging academia of intellectuals and replacing them with ideologues.
I would urge our Jewish faculty, students, staff and members of the board to reject this blatantly specious and grotesque pretense of concern for our safety. When the unelected shadow president Elon Musk repeatedly throws what appears to be a Nazi salute, when one of Trump’s most staunch supporters, the unfailingly pixilated Marjorie Taylor Greene recycles antisemitic tropes, we should refuse to be pawns. We should be marching in unison, chanting, “Not in our name!”
