The Quiet Part Out Loud

When somebody tells you who they are, believe them. Even if that somebody is a State Representative.

One problem Democrats have in messaging against Republicans is that the average hog voter does not believe the depravity of the GOP’s literal actions. It’s like how you sound like a crackpot when discussing the crimes of the CIA, to which they’ve admitted numerous times in court documents, with the average person.

For example, a focus group of Ohio voters probably wouldn’t believe me if I told them the Ohio Republican Party wants to mandate that public schools teach the Holocaust from the Nazi perspective.

Rep. Fowler Arthur is the sponsor of House Bill 327, which would “change the way topics that are controversial are taught in schools.”

Now, unlike Rep Fowler Arthur, I attended and graduated from three public schools. They weren’t the kind that gets profiled in the U.S. News & World Report, but one fact I learned was that the Holocaust is only considered controversial to the Nazis who want to re-write the Holocaust.

Here is what the bill is about in Rep. Fowler Arthur’s own words in the News 5 Cleveland interview:

"Maybe you're listening to it from the perspective of a Jewish person that has gone through the tragedies that took place," Fowler Arthur continued. "And maybe you listen to it from the perspective of a German soldier."

Fowler’s interview was so alarming that News 5 held multiple editorial meetings and decided to share the unedited interview with leaders of three local Jewish groups to push back against the fascist revisionism they heard.

"German soldiers, or the Nazis," [Regional Director of the Anti-Defamation League James] Pasch clarified. "Would she feel the same way about, like 9/11? Does she want the perspective of the hijackers who flew the planes into buildings? No, because there's moral absolutes, right? And so there aren't two sides to every historical event."

Rep. Fowler Arthur and her ilk didn’t attend public schools, so they don’t know they’re institutions where students chant fealty to the flag five days a week. They don’t know that history curriculum already paints our country in the best possible light.

I did not learn about the racist massacre on Tulsa’s Black Wall Street or Operation Paperclip in public school. My Marxist teachers must have forgotten the assassination of Fred Hampton or the 1985 MOVE bombing.

But that’s not good enough for right-wing militants. They want to pin their longtime assault on public schools as the reason why younger generations are much more atheist and liberal than their parents. That’s the furnace in which the culture war burns.

Rep. Fowler Arthur did not return News 5 Cleveland’s requests for clarification, which you would think she would want to do after a local media outlet ran an article about her entitled, “Lawmaker’s comments about the Holocaust raise concerns.”

Rep. Fowler Arthur will simply slink back to the conservative media sphere that includes the futurist YouTube channel where she hawks QAnon and “Killary” themed shirts with her vlogger husband. Again, that’s something that sounds fabricated but is entirely true.

If a Democratic legislator said something similar, the Republicans would bury them in an avalanche of bad-faith criticism and pearl clutching. And I’m having a hard time imagining what the Democratic equivalent of “Teach history from the Nazi perspective” would be. Probably something like how we should defund the police and then hold public executions.

Ohio Democrats lack a similar messaging apparatus. Every prominent Democrat — from Senator Sherrod Brown on down — should be in lockstep with condemning this radical Republican legislator who thinks your children should learn the Holocaust from the perspective of a guard at Auschwitz.

That’s exactly what the other side would do if they were handed a similar gift.

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