Gay Holocaust survivor Grandma Elli joins TikTok to urge folks to vote against the next Hitler

In the grassroots effort to get out the vote in this year’s election, few may be more surprising (or bracing) than a gay 88-year-old Holocaust survivor’s posts on TikTok.

With the help of her kids and grandkids, Grandma Elli got up to speed on the popular social media platform and is already welcoming viewers with the ubiquitous online greeting, “Hi, guys!”

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Should she be stressing her policy positions or attacking Trump?

But the youthful salutation belies more than four score years of wisdom, in particular when it comes to tyranny: Grandma Elli was witness to its terrors as a young Jewish child in the Holocaust.

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“I’ve been around a long time and seen many crises, but never like this one in our country,” she says in her inaugural pitch to voters, posted last week.

“I wanted to talk to you wonderful people about how important and how crucial the upcoming election is,” Elli explains. “As far as I can see, there’s really only one question to answer as we decide who we want for our next president, and that is: Do we want to continue our democracy, civil liberties and free elections, or do we want a wannabe dictator, by his own words, who will go after our freedoms one by one, dismantle them, and then take vengeance on all?”

The choice, Elli makes clear, couldn’t be starker.

“We are at a big crossroads,” she says, “and it’s up to you guys to decide.”

@grandmaelli

Welcome to my page! Now more then ever we must have open discussion and talk to our neighbors like our life depends on it! Because well….it does. #trump #harris #democracy #MAGA #president #election #vote #fyp #foryou #xyzbca #love #campaign @Beyoncé @Taylor Swift

♬ Classical piano performance “letter to parents” – Popolony

In a series of five videos to date, Elli lays out her case that Trump is a latter-day Adolf Hitler who uses the same tactics as the Nazi dictator in his quest for power and displays the same disregard for democracy and fundamental human rights and values.

And she’s got props.

Each video features a collage she’s made on the threats she addresses, including reproductive rights (Mind Your Own Damn Business), January 6 and a history of American violence (Terror), and stoking fear and hatred as a means to power (Liars).

Elli is also unsparing in her description of Trump’s supporters.

Dictators use “fear and bullying violence in order to” achieve and maintain power, Elli says, “and we have a history in this country of violence, as you know. Remember the KKK? And there are groups that would like to go back to those days, and guess what? Their slogan is, Make America Great Again. We know what they mean by that.”

Elli is maybe most indignant when it comes to Republican attacks on reproductive freedom.

“It just boggles the mind and is totally incomprehensible to me that any man thinks he has the right to tell any woman what she can and what she cannot do with her body.”

In her post about “Liars”, Elli invokes Hitler once again, along with his propaganda minister Josef Goebbels, as she describes the alternate and false reality peddled by the MAGA presidential ticket.

“There are so many lies being told by Trump and Vance that it’s hard to even attack them or to discuss them. The Statue of Liberty can’t even believe it,” Elli says.

“It’s always someone else’s fault to people like Hitler and Trump,” Elli shares. “Never admit a fault or wrongdoing. Certainly never accept blame. And people will believe a bigger lie sooner than they will believe a little lie. The liars try to muzzle everyone so that we can’t breathe. All dissent is suppressed.”

“That’s not the kind of world we want to live in, you and I. We want to be able to speak, and we want to be able to disagree without feeling like we’re going to be punished and really harassed for it.”

Take it from Grandma Elli, as she ends every video, “Get out and vote, guys.”

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