‘I’m not seeing a Jewish person’ — Aaron Stone, justifying his use of ‘Nazi’
Step Two. Stalin reportedly said:
“A single death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic.”
Step one. Aaron Stone, running for City Council in Boulder, said of his use of “Nazi” to describe a Boulder leader of the Jewish demonstrators walking for the freedom of (mostly) Jewish hostages:
“I’m not seeing a Jewish person. I’m seeing someone who is walking down the street talking about 20 hostages and ignoring the two million Palestinian hostages that are being kept in Gaza.”
This is how indifference to human life begins: I’m not seeing a person. This is how hatred takes hold.
This is how the abstract ideal — be it the “proletariat” or the “Palestinian hostages” — is invoked to eventually justify mass cruelty.
Whether Stalin actually used the words we quoted above is unclear. That they represented him, that his inhumane policies embodied them, that he could starve millions and sleep at night, is perfectly clear. I’m not seeing a person. Welcome to the worldview of Josef Stalin. Step Two begins with Step One.
Not every Step One eventuates in a Step Two, to be sure; but when a Jewish woman is called a Nazi for standing up for other Jews held in bondage, one must take notice and loudly call it out. The worst atrocity begins with the deformation of language. Aaron Stone has deformed the English language.
Deformation: “The two million Palestinian hostages that are being in Gaza.”
There is not a single Palestinian in Gaza held in an underground tunnel, deliberately starved, used as a pawn in negotiation, who had his emaciated body face videoed and sent around the world, who witnessed the rape and mutilation of his friend, neighbor or close relative.
The danger in Aaron Stone’s fallacious equivalence between Palestinians in Gaza and kidnapped Israelis in Gaza is the generation of indifference to the suffering in Gaza. When the suffering is grossly exaggerated — “two million Palestinian hostages” — it is in danger of being tolerated.
This is but one danger in Aaron Stone’s fallacious equivalence between Palestinians and kidnappees in Gaza. The other danger, of course, is indifference to the kidnappees — and the legitimation of beheading, rape, mutilation and kidnapping. If these inhumane methods are OK for Hamas to use and for Aaron Stone to overlook, then he should not be surprised if others turn these tactics against peoples he defends.
Aaron Stone has devised his own version of the Big Lie: the way Israel responds to a cruel enemy is equated with the way the cruel enemy treats its own people. At its roots, there is suffering in Gaza because Hamas started a war, entirely indifferent to the predictable consequences.
Do not forget: Last June 1, these peaceful demonstrators in Boulder were firebombed. We have here a vicious inversion, validated by Hamas again and again: the more cruel its behavior, the more it is excused. Look at France, responding to Hamas’ cruelty by announcing it will declare a Palestinian state.
Pivot to Boulder: the more heinous the attack on “Run for Their Lives” — a fatal firebombing! —the more it is inverted by the likes of Aaron Stone: In effect, the firebombing is your fault. You ignored the two million hostages.
Aaron Stone might note that when masses of victims are blamed, as when the real Nazis blamed the Jews, it did not turn out well for either the Nazis or the millions upon millions of innocent non-Jews who lost their lives.
I’m not seeing a person.
When you hear that, beware.
© IJN 2025
