Shame on you, George Takei.
The Star Trek actor is using the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II as an all-purpose historical analogy to guilt-trip and stigmatize anyone who supports the deportation of illegal aliens. His false equivalence is both shocking and insulting in its manipulative audacity.
It’s especially insulting to that generation of Japanese Americans whose memory he clearly holds dear.
In a series of recent social media posts to his millions of followers, George Takei attacked former President Donald Trump for his promise to implement mass deportations of illegals should he return to office. The actor equated it to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s rounding up and incarceration of people of Japanese descent, the vast majority of whom were U.S. citizens.
Takei has also lashed out at House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), predicting that GOP politicians in Congress will use the recent murder of 22-year-old nursing student Laken Riley — an illegal alien has been arrested — to create internment camps in what he claims would be a repeat of one of America’s most shameful chapters.
“Never again,” the Star Trek actor wrote.
Takei was one of the 125,000 interned in camps throughout the country during World War II, so he should know better than to throw around sloppy analogies. No doubt he probably does. But historical analogies are powerful tools for creating mass consensus, and Takei — or the handlers who work on his political messaging — clearly can’t resist using them, especially during an election year.
The historical analogy or metaphor is the one of the left’s favorite instruments of mind control. Israel is South Africa. Putin is Hitler. Putin is Trump. Trump is Hitler. Literally! The intent is to feed the public a convenient shorthand on how to think, thereby alleviating them of the responsibility of actually having to think.
But Israel isn’t South Africa. Trump isn’t Hitler. And illegals who have broken our immigration laws aren’t the same as law-abiding Japanese American families during the 1940s.
Ridiculous as it is, let’s take Takei’s argument at face value for a moment.
If Trump is re-elected in November, and makes good on his promise to enact what he has called the “largest domestic deportation in American history,” his administration will have to put the millions of illegals somewhere while they await the final bon voyage. Would those facilities qualify as “internment camps,” as Takei argues?
“Internment” is a broad word that refers to any kind of forced confinement, but its connotation is sinister — “internment camp” is often used interchangeably with “concentration camp,” the implication being that those interned are innocent and are there because of their race or religion.
Illegal aliens are felons under U.S. law and as such can be sentenced to jail or an ICE detention center. But if government facilities housing illegals are “camps,” can they even be considered legitimate?
No society could function if its penal system were viewed as a human rights violation of the highest order. All jail sentences could be seen as “internment” and therefore illegitimate. But this is what Takei seems to be proposing — a wholesale re-classification of jails and ICE facilities as “internment” or “concentration” camps, thereby negating them and the entire rule of law.
Takei’s rhetorical deception is blatant and transparent. The question remains — is anyone stupid enough to fall for it? Takei seems to think so.
The actor took his one-size-fits-all historical analogy to the extreme in a Daily Beast essay he wrote last year in which he equated the GOP’s opposition to transgender medical procedures for children to not just Japanese-American internment, but the Holocaust itself.
He argued that the scapegoating of Japanese-Americans and Jews is happening all over again, only this time the target is LGBTQ activists who want to medically transition children.
Transgenders are the new Jews? The locking up and extermination of LGBTQ’s still happens in some countries, but not the U.S. Takei and the left are betting on our citizenry’s ignorance of history and world events to control us.
Takei’s emotional blackmail is ultimately rooted in identity politics. He is both gay and Japanese American, so you aren’t allowed to disagree with him.
Only you are, especially if you’re Japanese American, because Takei doesn’t speak for you.
At the very least, the actor owes an apology to that generation that was sent to internment camps during World War II and whose memory he has sullied in the name of political expediency.
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