Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

John McCain Uses Nazi ‘Blood And Soil’ Slogan In Stark Warning About Trump

Senator John McCain on Monday mentioned a Nazi slogan and warned Americans against buying into “half-baked, spurious nationalism” in what appeared to be a stark warning about the dangers of President Trump and white nationalism.

Speaking in Philadelphia, where he was being honored with the Liberty Medal by the National Constitution Center, McCain said, “We live in a land of ideals, not blood and soil.”

The slogan “blood and soil” was chanted by white nationalists at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia — alongside others, like “Jew will not replace us” — and is an explicit Nazi reference, coming from the German “Blut und Boden,” a phrase popularized by Nazi thinker Richard Walter Darre.

McCain has regularly sparred with Trump, who mocked him during the presidential campaign for being captured and held as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War.

_Email Sam Kestenbaum at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter at @skestenbaum _

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.