Despicable Tim Walz hits a dangerous new low — soiling Anne Frank’s memory

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz compared ICE arresting illegal immigrants to the Nazis murdering Anne Frank. AP Photo/Abbie Parr

Imagine comparing Anne Frank to a murderer. 

Imagine comparing the best-known victim of the savagery that Nazi Germany visited upon Europe to burglars, drug dealers and gang members.

Surely no one has so badly lost touch with morality that he would speak of that innocent 15-year-old girl in the same breath as wicked men who’ve been convicted of sex offenses, drunk driving and gang violence.

Well, Tim Walz would.

On Sunday, the governor of Minnesota outrageously compared ICE’s search for illegal aliens in his state to the Nazis’ deranged hunt for Jews like Anne Frank.

“We have got children in Minnesota hiding in their houses, afraid to go outside,” he said.

Then came his despicable line, one of the most shameful things I’ve heard an American politician say in a long time.

“Many of us grew up reading that story of Anne Frank. Somebody’s going to write that children’s story about Minnesota.”

To call this deplorable would be far too generous.

Walz was essentially marshaling a murdered Jewish kid to fight his pathetic political battles in the here and now.

He was weaponizing the Holocaust itself to try to land a cheap blow on President Donald Trump. 

For those of us whose moral compasses have not been completely destroyed by the disease of Trump derangement, there is clearly no comparison whatsoever between what the Gestapo did and what ICE is doing.

ICE is looking for illegal aliens: The vast majority of the illegal aliens it has arrested — 70% — have also committed crimes inside the United States.

The people its agents have picked up in Minnesota include a convicted pedophile from Laos, a Somalian convicted of domestic assault and hundreds of murderers, thieves and gang members.

Frank was not an illegal alien.

She was not a criminal.

She was targeted for arrest and death in a concentration camp for one reason and one reason only — she was a Jew.

That politicians are comparing the arrest of literal criminals to the ideological mass murder of an entire people confirms they have completely lost the plot.

Their Trump Derangement Syndrome has laid waste to every last one of their moral faculties.

Walz is not alone in exploiting the horrors of the Holocaust to try to defame ICE and hurt Trump.

“ICE is the American Gestapo,” tweeted Stephen King, who needs to take a break from writing horror novels and try reading a history book.  

Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) said ICE is behaving like “Hitler’s secret police.” 

David French at The New York Times says that while we are not yet in “the Nazi reality,” we’re getting there.

Do these people truly not know how insane they sound?

Arresting child abusers, wife beaters, drug dealers and gang members is not fascism.

It’s law enforcement.

How easy it is for these preening fools — with their luxury beliefs in their luxury homes — to scream about ICE Nazis.

They never give so much as a passing thought to the good people of Minnesota who’d rather not have illegal-immigrant criminals in their midst.

Of course, it’s all of a piece with the howls we’ve heard from leftists many times before.

Ever since Trump was first elected in 2016, the coastal elites have been wailing about “Nazi America.” 

It’s a sickening spectacle of historical ignorance and emotional appropriation. 

These people shamelessly plunder the worst crime in human history, just to underline their unhinged hatred for a freely elected American president. 

They exploit the mass murder of Jews to vent their own pseudo-virtuous loathing for Trumpism.

It’s worse than dumb — it’s dangerous.

All this Holocaust talk both trivializes the past and stokes tension and violence in the present.

It waters down the colossal criminality of the Nazi regime by comparing its atrocities with today’s run-of-the-mill arrests of illegal aliens.

It robs the Holocaust of its unique evil, treating it instead as just another case of overexuberant law enforcement.

And it whips up dangerous rage in America’s streets by convincing witless leftists that there’s an actual Gestapo at work in Minnesota. 

This is why there’s so much fire and fury in Minneapolis and elsewhere: These anti-ICE hotheads are being goaded into action by the scandalously irresponsible Nazi talk of Democrats and digital influencers.

On Tuesday, the world marks Holocaust Remembrance Day.

For Walz to exploit the memory of Anne Frank at any time would have been bad; to do it when we’re meant to be remembering the truth and horror of the Holocaust is downright evil.

All you useless idiots, get the words Hitler, Nazi, Gestapo and Anne Frank out of your mouths.

To borrow a woke phrase: Educate yourselves. 

Brendan O’Neill is chief political writer for the British online magazine spiked.