Merriam-Webster defines "pogrom" as "an organized massacre of helpless people."
Disgruntled former New York Times columnist Paul Krugman raged over ICE cracking down on illegal immigration in an insane June 1 Substack op-ed headlined, “Pogroms, American Style.”
"Pogrom" is often associated with violent attacks on Jews. But in Krugman’s dusty mind, fixing America’s broken immigration system is equivalent to massacres such as the string of pogroms between 1918-1921 that took place in an area that is today part of present-day Ukraine, where over 1,100 of these violent eruptions resulted in at least 100,000 Jews slaughtered. And yes, that was around 20 years before the hellish events of the Holocaust.
But Krugman took it a step further, likening ICE agents deporting people here illegally — including violent criminals — to the sexual depravity undergirding the twisted philosophy of French nobleman Marquis de Sade: “The Trump administration’s attack on immigrants isn’t about rule of law, crime or jobs. It’s racism and sadism all the way down.”
This is a textbook case of Godwin’s Law if there ever was one, which posits that as “an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.”
Krugman used the word “pogroms” five times throughout his article. So will he apply that same erroneous standard to Mexico, for which an American and anyone else illegally entering its borders could face up to two years in prison and a hefty fine? How about other countries? In 2019, The Washington Times reported that illegal migrants could face up to two years in a prison labor camp in Russia, 10 years imprisonment in Pakistan, and six months imprisonment plus caning in Singapore. In fact, as the report noted then, “The U.S. has one of the world’s weaker laws for illegal entry, according to the data in a study by the Library of Congress, which surveyed statutes in more than 160 nations and released its findings amid a heated debate over whether America’s penalties are too stiff.”
Fun fact: That Washington Times report was published during the tail-end of the first Trump administration.
Krugman proceeded to make the logically derelict argument that Trump cracking down on illegal immigrants means he’s attacking all immigrants: “The Trump administration is trying to drive out all immigrants, legal as well as undocumented, with almost no pretense that its pogroms serve any wider social or economic purpose. And I use the word ‘pogroms’ deliberately.” He continued this line of reasoning, making poorly-crafted strawmen out of conservatives’ long-held policy position that the current immigration system weighing on taxpayers needs to be systemically fixed:
To understand what’s happening, a good starting point is the more or less official acknowledgement that virtually all immigrants — I’ll talk about the few exceptions shortly — are viewed as undesirables to be pushed out in any way possible.
“More or less official acknowledgement?” What in heck does that even mean? Krugman, like any leftist, treated both illegal and legal immigrants as if they weren’t mutually exclusive: “And the idea that immigrants are, as a group, especially crime-prone, has been extensively debunked.” Alexa, define the term “illegal.”
What evidence does Krugman provide for his overtly rhetorical hyperbole? Well, nothing beyond regurgitating the editorialized ramblings of his former colleagues at The Times, a newspaper he himself holds in personal disdain for editing down his more wild-eyed columns in recent years. The piece Krugman relied on, blurted out the following:
‘For more than a year, administration officials have sought to pull every bureaucratic lever possible to cut off immigrants — both documented and undocumented — from jobs, medical care, financial services, tax credits and even from enrolling their children in day care. The goal has been to compel immigrants to leave the country, and, in the long run, to eliminate incentives that draw many people to the United States in the first place.’
Or, perhaps — and stay with us here — the exorbitant costs from the current system as it stands is fiscally unsustainable? In 2023, the Federation for American Immigration Reform estimated based on a juxtaposition between national, state and local expenditures on illegal immigrants and federal/state tax revenues received from them that the total fiscal burden to U.S. taxpayers was a whopping $150.7 billion. Another analysis by CIS author Eric Gordy in 2024 revealed that “the foreign-born population has increased by 6.6 million since 2021, with 58% of this increase coming from illegal immigration. This massive population influx has increased the demand for housing, worsening the existing shortage.”
Does Krugman acknowledge any of this? Nope, he instead just kept spitting out “pogroms” as if anyone is supposed to take that historical juxtaposition seriously:
It’s important to realize that the pogroms, aside from objectively failing to help native-born Americans, aren’t popular. Donald Trump’s approval rating on immigration, which was positive when he took office, is now deep in negative territory.
For Krugman to grotesquely cheapen the nightmarish memories of some of the most barbaric events in human history and shoehorn American law enforcement into them is yet the latest exhibit for why no one worth their functioning brain cells should ever consider him a legitimate source on anything.
