By Alexandra Rosenmann / AlterNet / November 14, 2016
Glenn Beck, Louis C.K., Meg Whitman and Cher were all adamantly anti-Trump this election and quickly became some of the most notable to compare Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler.
But since Trump was elected, Mountain View High School history teacher Frank Navarro was placed on administrative leave for drawing the same parallels in the classroom. The California high school history teacher, also a Holocaust scholar, was asked to leave the school early, two days after election day. Apparently, one angry parent had complained about his lessons and notified the school.
“This feels like we’re trying to squash free speech,” Navarro told the Mercury News. “Everything I talk about is factually based. They can go and check it out. It’s not propaganda or bias if it’s based on hard facts.”
Navarro’s lessons include obvious similarities that even Trump supporters would have a hard time disputing. Did the president-elect, on his rise to power, not promise to deport foreigners to make his country “great again”? Well, that’s just what Hitler did too.
The school did not permit Navarro to read the parents’ emails. But as of Monday, November 14, a Change.org petition to allow Navarro to return to the school, where he has taught for four decades, has received nearly 30,000 signatures.
“To stand quiet in the face of bigotry and to turn your eyes away from it is to back up the bigotry, and that’s not what I, or any history teacher, should be doing in our work,” Navarro said.
The petition also asks for an apology from Mountain View High School “for attempting to intimidate a respected educator. We will not stand for censorship and respectability politics.”
“We are interested in getting Frank back in the classroom … we’re just trying to maintain our due diligence,” Mountain View High School superintendent Jeff Harding said. “We have a heightened emotional environment right now with the election. It’s always a challenge to maintain a line in a classroom.”
Navarro will be officially suspended until November 16.
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Holy crap! Let the recriminations begin——-while Trump is obviously not exactly Hitler, he has willingly surrounded himself with racists and white nationalists (i e Steve Bannon). There are certainly many historical parallels to how they both ginned up enemies & emotions & fears to get themselves elected.
Remember: Hitler was elected vice chancellor, albeit by a minority of Germans. He later took power, then steadily ratcheted up his authoritarian, then dictatorial profile. If history teachers are going to be punished for doing their jobs, we are headed for rocky shoals.
Worth remembering, Those who forget the past are doomed to–oh, never mind. . . .We are a country of sheep, waiting to be shorn!!
Baaaaaa
My 100 year old neighbor who was in WWII and landed in Casa Blanca to fight in Africa, Italy, France, Germany, Austria as a “Tommy gun operator” finally came home with many combat ribbons including the Purple Heart. He was one of 12, out of 164, who lived. He was watching TV, the Trump came on and he asked who is he? I told him and he said that Trump spoke and carried himself “just like Hitler” INTERESTING, don’t you think.
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