I very much appreciate Mr. Smoler’s arguments in “They Are Not Us: More Thoughts on German Resistance to Nazism,” his well-considered response to my interview with filmmaker Hava Beller. I would like to clarify a few points.
I was not trying to draw a comparison between Hitler’s victims and American citizens. That would be obscene. I was trying to make the point that the personal qualities that German resisters drew upon even under the threat of death—i.e., acting according to one’s conscience—is the very least we Americans can summon up in the face of little threat at all (at least for most of us, as Mr. Smoler points out).
I also want to clarify my use of the word resistance. I did not mean anything as grand as the organized movements in Europe. Perhaps I should have used the word opposition instead.
But I want to push back on Mr. Smoler’s contention that “we run no plausible risk of being them.” I wholeheartedly disagree. Mr. Trump may well be a ranting buffoon, but his casting doubt on, and interfering with, the outcome of our election; refusing to commit to a peaceful transition of power; removing references to climate change from government websites; and calling upon the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” threaten the very foundations of our democracy and foment the rabid hatred we saw in Charlottesville and, more recently, in Michigan. Those acts of intimidation aimed at Jews/Democrats/Blacks, roiled by Mr. Trump, are precisely why I chose the words I did. In fact, I wake up every morning fearing the plausible risk of having to flee my country the way my parents had to flee theirs.