Gov. Pritzker warns GOP dog whistles inevitably lead to Nazi-style racism unless ordinary citizens speak out against it

Finally! We’re starting to get some pushback from Democrats against the creeping authoritarianism of the Trump regime. Some of it’s coming from Illinois, too, and I couldn’t be prouder of my adopted state.

In fact, I think it’s the best thing I’ve seen on the subject of “Illinois Nazis” since they clashed with John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd in Blues Brothers.

Normally our State of the State address is a meat-and-potatoes outline of what the governor would like to see in the next year’s budget. (OK, let’s make that meat, potatoes and magic beans, as Statehouse regulars like to call the accounting gimmicks used to balance a budget as required by state law.) But Gov. JB Pritzker, after sowing a few magic beans of his own for Fiscal Year 2026 (according to his political enemies), used the occasion Wednesday to warn that our current national climate of intolerance can lead to a new Holocaust.

“I’m watching with a foreboding dread what is happening in our country right now,” he said toward the end of the speech, citing racist and misogynistic dog whistles targeting “DEI hires,” women, racial minorities and people who don’t conform to traditional gender roles. In tones reminiscent of German Pastor Martin Niemöller — first they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out […] then they came for me , and there was no one left to speak for me ¹ — Pritzker added:

I do not invoke the specter of Nazis lightly. But I know the history intimately — and have spent more time than probably anyone in this room [the House chamber] with people who survived the Holocaust. Here’s what I’ve learned – the root that tears apart your house’s foundation begins as a seed – a seed of distrust and hate and blame.

I just have one question: What comes next? After we’ve discriminated against, deported or disparaged all the immigrants and the gay and lesbian and transgender people, the developmentally disabled, the women and the minorities – once we’ve ostracized our neighbors and betrayed our friends – After that, when the problems we started with are still there staring us in the face – what comes next?

All the atrocities of human history lurk in the answer to that question. And if we don’t want to repeat history – then for God’s sake in this moment we better be strong enough to learn from it.

Pritzker did not accuse President Trump of antisemitism, and he didn’t mention the open support Trump ally Elon Musk and Vice President JD Vance have given the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (alternative for Germany), in spite of its neo-Nazi or Nazi-adjacent rhetoric. Rather, he spoke of what he learned when he coordinated fund-raising for the Illinois Holocaust Museum in Skokie, founded after a neo-Nazi march was thwarted there in 1978 by massive counterdemonstrations. He said ordinary citizens made the difference:

Those Illinois Nazis did end up holding their march – just not in Skokie. After all the blowback from the case, they decided to march in Chicago instead. Only twenty of them showed up. But 2000 people came to counter protest. The Chicago Tribune reported that day that the “rally sputtered to an unspectacular end after ten minutes.” It was Illinoisans who smothered those embers before they could burn into a flame.

Pritzker’s reminiscence was interrupted repeatedly by standing ovations from Democratic lawmakers, who have veto-proof majorities in both Houses of the legislature. In closing, he urged Illinoisans to act now, while there is still time:

Tyranny requires your fear and your silence and your compliance. Democracy requires your courage. So gather your justice and humanity, Illinois, and do not let the “tragic spirit of despair” overcome us when our country needs us the most.

I’ve heard several of Pritzker’s speeches since he was elected in 2018, and I thought this one was by far his best. Watching Chicago Channel 5’s coverage online, I was proud of my adopted state.

I suppose it was inevitable, Statehouse politics being what it is and the Illinois Republican Party having devolved into what it has become, that state party chair Kathy Salvi would put out a press release the next day accusing Pritzker of “Vile, Antisemitic Attacks.” It said:

Lost in the shuffle of the grandstanding and hypocrisy from Governor Pritzker’s budget speech was the dangerous, divisive rhetoric he used – comparing President Trump and the Republican Party to Nazi’s. During Wednesday’s budget speech, Pritzker referred to Nazi’s six times, painting an inaccurate and dangerously partisan picture of the Republican Party. 

This led Rich Miller, publisher of the Capitol Fax newsletter on Illinois state politics and government, to remark “calling a Jewish person who helped found a Holocaust museum an antisemite may be a first.” It also earned Salvi a couple of choice comments from CapFax readers, who tend to be seasoned political professionals. Here’s one, by “Roadrager” (A screen name), at 11:56 a.m.:

I remember the simpler days, back when words like “antisemitism” had meanings.

Clown response from a state party chock full of ‘em.

And this, by “Give Us Barabbas” (another screen name), at 2:00 p.m.:

I found it telling, that the typos in the GOP press release indicate the intelligence of the people composing it. I would correct their misuse of the apostrophe, but then we’d be talking about grammar nazis, not actual ones.

In all fairness I should probably note that in my experience no one, on either side of the political aisle, knows how to use an apostrophe. The whole exchange, at least Capitol Fax’ coverage of it, ended with a classic statement from the governor’s campaign office. When Miller asked for Pritzker’s response to the ILGOP, here’s what he got, in its entirety:

He said what he said.

Far from being antisemitic, Pritzker’s remarks were directed at the Trump regime’s anti-DEI rhetoric, and they were grounded in his experience raising money for the Holocaust Museum and educational programs in Skokie. The uproar over that neo-Nazi march in Skokie, where an estimated 7,000 to 8,000 Holocaust survivors still lived in the 1970s, attained iconic status — it was even satirized in the equally iconic scene (“I hate Illinois Nazis”) in the Blues Brothers starring John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd.

Pritzker’s association with the events in Skokie came later, and it was more mundane. Mostly he worked with strategic planning and fund-raising. The Pritzker family, who fled Ukraine’s increasingly vicious antisemitic pogroms in 1881 and made a fortune as owners of the Hyatt Hotel chain, were well-known philanthropists in Chicago; it was inevitable the museum’s founders, most of whom were Holocaust survivors themselves, would seek him out.

When the expanded museum was dedicated in 2009, with Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel among the guest speakers, Pritzker recalled for the Forward, the New York Jewish daily newspaper, how he got involved with the fund-raising campaign and what he learned from it. Lisbeth Levine, of the Forward retells the story like this:

The survivors knew they had outgrown their space, and as the number in their speakers’ bureau continued to dwindle, they sought to create a more permanent way to continue their teaching mission, said Sam Harris, 73, a child survivor of the Deblin and Czestochowa concentration camps and president of the museum’s board of directors.

But they were out of their league in terms of raising money. Harris set his sights on enlisting Pritzker to chair the capital campaign. Pritzker, a Jewish billionaire who is a member of the family that owns Hyatt hotels and is a managing partner of a venture capital group, admits that initially, he was reluctant to take on the project.

He sent off Harris with a to-do list that included hiring an architect and obtaining state funding; Pritzker didn’t really expect to hear from Harris again. “They came back six or eight months later and said: ‘We did them all. Would you lead the museum campaign?”

“At that point,” said Levine, “Pritzker was hooked.”

The rest, as the saying goes, was history. Not only history, but a multifaceted, layered history beginning with the Holocaust itself during the 1930s and 1940s (and beyond, if one counts the pogroms the Pritzker family fled in 1881), and continuing 30 years later with the conflict over neo-Nazi marches in the Chicago area. Now, with the Trump regime’s crusade against diversity, equity and inclusion, it’s back in a new, equally toxic way.

And the call to people of faith — Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu or no organized religion at all — is as clear now as it was in Germany in 1933 and Skokie in 1978.

Notes

¹ Niemöller’s confession is a poetic adaptation of an address the Rev. Martin Niemöller gave in 1945. A leader of Germany’s confessional church movement who was incarcerated in the camps at Sachsenhausen and Dachau, he initially supported Hitler; after the war he was “a leading voice of penance and reconciliation, according to Wikipedia. One common English translation, from the the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, reads:.

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
     Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
     Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
     Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Source: “First They Came,” Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_They_Came.

SourceLinks and Citations

The Blues Brothers (1980) – Nazis Take a Dive Scene (3/9) | Movieclips, YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTT1qUswYL0.

Deborah Cole, “All eyes on far-right AfD in German election rocked by violence and US interference,” Guardian, Feb. 20, 2025 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/20/all-eyes-on-far-right-afd-in-german-election-rocked-by-violence-and-us-interference.

“Gov. Pritzker SLAMS Trump and Musk in closing remarks of State of the State address,” WMAQ, Channel 5, Chicago, Feb. 19, 2025 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hS66O1C7Gp4&list=RDNShS66O1C7Gp4&index=1.

“ILGOP calls out Jewish governor for ‘vile, antisemitic attacks” (Updated),” Capitol Fax, Feb. 21, 2025 https://capitolfax.com/2025/02/21/ilgop-calls-out-jewish-governor-for-vile-antisemitic-attacks/.

Lisbeth Levine, “Skokie To Open New Holocaust Museum,” Forward, April 8, 2009 https://forward.com/news/104682/skokie-to-open-new-holocaust-museum/.

“Poll: Majority of Illinoisans believe in budgetary magic beans,” Capitol Fax, March 9, 2018 https://capitolfax.com/2018/03/09/poll-majority-of-illinoisans-believe-in-budgetary-magic-beans/.

“Pritzker: ‘We don’t have kings in America – and I don’t intend to bend the knee to one’,” Capitol Fax, Feb. 19, 2025 https://capitolfax.com/2025/02/19/pritzker-we-don%E2%80%99t-have-kings-in-america-%E2%80%93-and-i-don%E2%80%99t-intend-to-bend-the-knee-to-one/.

Ryan Quinn, “When a U.S. Presidential Candidate Is Called a ‘DEI Hire’,” Inside Higher Ed, Aug.24, 2024 https://www.insidehighered.com/news/government/politics-elections/2024/08/21/when-us-presidential-candidate-called-dei-hire.

[Uplinked Feb. 23, 2025]