George Takei Speaks Out Against Trump’s Muslim Registry & Japanese Internment

George Takei, the star of the original Star Trek series, has spoken out against Donald Trump‘s proposed registry for Muslims. Takei, who was affected by America’s internment of the Japanese as a child, urged people to look at the past and learn from it.

On Wednesday,  Carl Higbie, a prominent Trump backer, said that the mass internment of Japanese Americans during World War II was a “precedent” for Trump’s plans to create a registry for immigrants from Muslim countries.

“The Japanese-American internment was an egregious violation of our national values and principles, a terrible event for which Congress apologized in 1988,” Takei said in a statement released Thursday. “To invoke that dark chapter as a precedent for any action against any minorities today is a morally bankrupt and dangerous step, completely out-of-bounds with contemporary notions of civil and human rights.”

“This ignoramus doesn’t have any idea what he’s talking about,” Takei said of Higbie in an interview Friday night as he returned home to Los Angeles after a week spent speaking about internment at locations across the country.

Takei added that discriminating against “innocent people, because of their faith,” is “outrageous” and “un-American.” The actor said that “it’s vitally important for a democracy to learn from those chapters where we failed. This is a part of our history — and we need to learn.”

The advocacy group Asian Americans Advancing Justice also condemned Higbie’s remarks and said it was “outraged that anyone, including political leaders in the U.S., would find inspiration in the racially-motivated imprisonment of nearly 120,000 individuals.”