"When a 5-Alarm Fire Starts to Burn, Every Good Person Better Be Ready to Man a Post"

In blunt and unequivocal language, the governor of Illinois emerges from the ranks of cowering Democrats to describe clearly Trump's drive towards authoritarianism

On Feb. 19, JB Prizker delivered to the Illinois General Assembly the seventh State of the State and Budget Address of his two terms as governor of the Prairie State.

As is typical of such traditional orations, it was a long speech - more than 35 minutes - filled with facts and figures about the state’s fiscal condition, self-serving assertions about its business climate and a raft of policy prescriptions about everything from community colleges to the cost of prescription drugs.

Not surprisingly, it also folded in a few sharp criticisms of the Trump Administration, in both the previous and the current iterations, on issues like tariff increases, health care cuts and Elon Musk’s federal budget vigilantism.

Near the close of his speech, about half-an-hour in, however, Pritzker did something extraordinary.

A Jew of Ukranian descent, he spoke about his work helping create Illinois’ Holocaust Museum, using it to pivot to a forceful and lucid comparison between Trump’s actions to date and the way that the Nazis swiftly crushed the Weimar Republic through extra-legal, if marginally constitutional, means.

At a time when many among the majority of voters in the country who cast a ballot for Kamala Harris or someone else (NB: the MAGA claim of a “mandate” is a fraud) are worried or in distress at the lack of organized political opposition to his ransacking of the government, Pritzker’s was a powerful and clarifying voice that broke through the despair, for one reason: he displayed the courage to speak the truth, unadulterated and out loud.

In hopes that more Democratic leaders follow his resolute example, here is a transcript and video of his remarks. You can read his entire address here.

“I’ve been reflecting, these past four weeks, on two important parts of my life: my work helping to build the Illinois Holocaust Museum and the two times I’ve had the privilege of reciting the oath of office for Illinois Governor.

As some of you know, Skokie, Illinois once had one of the largest populations of Holocaust survivors anywhere in the world. In 1978, Nazis decided they wanted to march there.

The leaders of that march knew that the images of Swastika clad young men goose stepping down a peaceful suburban street would terrorize the local Jewish population – so many of whom had never recovered from their time in German concentration camps.

The prospect of that march sparked a legal fight that went all the way to the Supreme Court. It was a Jewish lawyer from the ACLU who argued the case for the Nazis – contending that even the most hateful of speech was protected under the first amendment.

As an American and a Jew, I find it difficult to resolve my feelings around that Supreme Court case – but I am grateful that the prospect of Nazis marching in their streets spurred the survivors and other Skokie residents to act. They joined together to form the Holocaust Memorial Foundation and built the first Illinois Holocaust Museum in a storefront in 1981 – a small but important forerunner to the one I helped build thirty years later.

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 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.

The seed that grew into a dictatorship in Europe a lifetime ago didn’t arrive overnight. It started with everyday Germans mad about inflation and looking for someone to blame.

I’m watching with a foreboding dread what is happening in our country right now. A president who watches a plane go down in the Potomac – and suggests — without facts or findings — that a diversity hire is responsible for the crash. Or the Missouri Attorney General who just sued Starbucks – arguing that consumers pay higher prices for their coffee because the baristas are too “female” and “nonwhite.” The authoritarian playbook is laid bare here: They point to a group of people who don’t look like you and tell you to blame them for your problems.

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.

I swore the following oath on Abraham Lincoln’s bible: “I do solemnly swear that I will support the constitution of the United States, and the constitution of the state of Illinois, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of Governor .... according to the best of my ability.”

My oath is to the Constitution of our state and of our country. We don’t have kings in America – and I don’t intend to bend the knee to one. I am not speaking up in service to my ambitions — but in deference to my obligations.

If you think I’m overreacting and sounding the alarm too soon, consider this:

It took the Nazis one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic. All I’m saying is when the five-alarm fire starts to burn, every good person better be ready to man a post with a bucket of water if you want to stop it from raging out of control.

Those Illinois Nazis did end up holding their march in 1978 – 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.

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.”