Rep. Elise Stefanik, Trump's handmaiden who chairs the House Republican Conference, tweeted on June 3: "I am proud to announce my endorsement of my friend Carl Paladino in #NY23."
Yesterday, an interview with candidate Paladino surfaced in which he praised Hitler, calling him "the kind of leader we need today."
You'd think Stefanik would have dropped her endorsement as soon as she learned about her friend's bad taste in mass murderers. But she hasn't. Instead, she has kept herself busy complaining about the January 6 commission investigation into the attempted fascist overthrow of the United States government. Because she has remained silent on her endorsement, I can only conclude that Stefanik agrees with Palladino's high opinion of Hitler's leadership.
Earlier today, I was reading the introduction to Bruno Ernst's book, The Magic Mirror of M.C. Escher, a book I bought in 1976 and still have. (My Ballantine edition is long out of print, but Taschen has an in-print edition.)
Ernst wrote that Escher (1898 – 1972), after faring poorly in his undergraduate studies, ended up in architectural school at his father's urging. It was there, in 1920, that Escher met an art instructor named Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita (1868 – 1944). Escher switched to graphic arts, and de Mesquite became his main teacher. After leaving school Escher remained in contact with de Mesquite, writes Ernst, until 1944, "when de Mesquite, together with his wife and family, was taken away and put to death by the Germans."
Wikipedia has a short entry about de Mesquita, with examples of his art (which make it clear that Escher had been inspired by his teacher):
Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita was a Dutch graphic artist active in the years before the Second World War. His pupils included graphic artist M. C. Escher (1898–1972). A Sephardic Jew, in his old age he was sent to Auschwitz by the Nazis, where he was gassed along with his wife. After the war, de Mesquita was largely forgotten.
…
In the winter of 1944, on either 31 January or 1 February, the occupying German forces entered the home of the de Mesquita family in Watergraafsmeer, now part of Amsterdam, and apprehended him, his wife Elisabeth, and their only son Jaap. Transported to Auschwitz, Samuel Jessurun and Elisabeth were sent to the gas chambers within days of their arrival on 11 February; Jaap perished in the concentration camp at Theresienstadt on 20 March. Escher and some of Jaap's friends were successful in rescuing some of the works that had remained in the de Mesquita home.
De Mesquita, his wife, and his son were three of six million Jews who had been murdered by the man Paladino says is "the kind of leader we need today."
Fuck you, Carl Paladino, and fuck you, Elise Stefanik.
