TikTok grandma and Holocaust survivor has something very important to say about Trump and his yes-men

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, or your brain exists solely within the MAGA alternate reality, you may have noticed the United States is “in the middle of a hostile government takeover.” The Trump administration is jeopardizing American democratic integrity, while threatening relationships with long-standing allies with a series of spectacular heel turns. In dark times such as these, we need a bright light like Grandma Elli.

Grandma Elli is an absolute icon who deserves your full attention — even on TikTok, which capitalizes on an ever-weakening economy of attention. Please allow her to introduce herself:

Unfortunately, not enough people listened to Grandma Elli’s advice before they sealed the U.S.’s fate in the voting booth on Nov. 5.

While some of us have been anxiously tracking traces of a concerning historical past in the present day, Grandma Elli got to witness that history first-hand. Born in either 1936 or 1937, she was a child when World War II erupted. Even though she escaped as a toddler in 1938, thankfully, this elderly lady, who took to TikTok to amplify her voice, can recognize better than most that “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”

Not only does she carry the weight of 88 years of wisdom and insight, but Grandma Elli’s collages also have this special ability to make you feel like she’s Grand Master Oogway and you’re Po who’s in dire need of a mentor.

Dissent in the face of evil

As Grandma Elli indicated, the Nazi party did not jump straight to ethnic genocide. First, Nazi leadership initiated multiple measures of social discrimination, including crackdowns on rival political parties, public dissent, and freedom of the press, then came deportations, and, ultimately, policies which culminated in millions of civilian deaths — at countless sites of massacre by death squads all over Eastern Europe, in urban Jewish ghettos, and finally at concentration camps. From these bare facts, one can see how, in her late 80s, Elli was compelled to — and persists in — speaking out: She does not want our present history to keep rhyming with some of the darkest years of the 20th century.

The first TikTok of the two above was posted in the aftermath of the Trump-Zelenskyy Oval Office fiasco, and the second came after Trump’s excruciatingly long-winded congressional speech. What is so refreshing about Grandma’s tirades is that they never feel like frustrated rants that will never be anything more than that. She dismantles Trump’s “leader of the people” image with admirable eloquence, all the while keeping an undertone of hope for the future — if we dare rise and use our voices.

Grandma Elli goes as far as to offer solutions for how people can move past the passive feeling of powerlessness and take action. In the “Ambush at the Oval” TikTok, she shares the White House phone number – 202-456-1111 — so that people can “bombard them with phone calls.” In addition, she advises the use of the 5 Calls: Contact Your Congress app.

In a subsequent video, Grandma promotes “a call to action” that “can be done by everyone in the world” and is to be enacted on March 15:

If Trump and his yes-men had a moral compass working half as well as Grandma Elli’s, we would not be where we are now.

A nice afternoon conversation between Grandma Elli and Sen. Bernie Sanders (D- VT) over tea and biscuits would be as historically remarkable as Noam Chomsky’s 1971 debate with the late Michel Foucault – but perhaps less perplexingly philosophical. Better yet, wouldn’t it be great to wake up tomorrow, turn on one’s phone to news that Trump had been successfully impeached, and President Bernie and VP Elli (or vice versa) were now in charge of reversing the damage? They could mend bonds with America’s allies, treat minorities with dignity and respect, and implement Medicare for All while they are at it!

That may be a fanciful dream. Our reality, however, is not. As this grandmother advises, we’ll need the courage to raise our voices in a chorus of loud dissidence. Otherwise, democracy will die in silence.