Popular political discourse is rife with Holocaust comparisons. Every politician is Adolf Hitler, every political ideology is Nazism, and every perceivable injustice is the Holocaust. From border detention centers, abortions, vaccine mandates, zionism, anti-zionism, meat eating, and critical race theory to trump, biden, and school boards requiring masks- when people want to impress upon others how serious they are, they invoke the Holocaust.
In a short essay titled “No, Donald Trump is not Adolf Hitler,” Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, argues against analogizing modern circumstances to the Holocaust. He asserts that Holocaust comparisons appear frequently because the Holocaust is “the most available historical event illustrating right versus wrong.” I find this claim fascinating because it’s not actually a fact, as Greenblatt suggests. Instead, it’s a confession. That statement reflects the narrative that Greenblatt and the rest of the white euro-american world desperately needs to be true. Ironically, this narrative’s cultural preeminence is also the reason that people feel compelled to compare everything to the Holocaust.
The Most Available Historical Event Illustrating Right Versus Wrong
The Holocaust itself does nothing- no historical event can. It does not illustrate right versus wrong or demand we defend liberal democracy; it does not push us to be kinder to or more tolerant of others and it doesn’t instill in us a sense of justice or virtue. These are not truths about the Holocaust but are the dominant propagandistic narratives that developed after it. The Holocaust is not the “most available historical event illustrating right versus wrong” but through philosemitic white euro-american cultural hegemony it has been turned into the most available historical event illustrating right versus wrong.
This process has nothing to do with the Holocaust itself and has everything to do with saving the souls of the same white euro-american societies that made the Holocaust possible. Reducing the Holocaust to a symbol of evil was necessary for white euro-america to “move-on” from the Holocaust while retaining the wealth it stole (and continues to steal) through enslavement, colonization, and genocide. Via Holocaust commemoration, white euro-america ‘forgives’ itself and considers all of its past (and future) debts settled.
In this distorted and fantastical philosemitic history, nazis become the symbolic representation of pure evil. To make this narrative coherent, the Holocaust and nazism are suspended above history, where they are no longer capable of influencing or being influenced by the ideological, social and political systems that existed before, during, and after. The Holocaust is disconnected from germany’s colonial and imperial violence that preceded the Holocaust and its post-Holocaust philosemitic “rebirth.”
Dubbed by Houria Bouteldja as a “European civil religion,” this narrative about the Holocaust — and the attendant phony pronouncement “Never Again!” — is used to validate white euro-american superiority and domination over the colonized world. This warped memory of the Holocaust marks a complete disengagement from reality, yet is completely ubiquitous. It is placed at the center of the white euro-american collective conscience.
The Inevitable Byproduct
Analogical reasoning is a common rhetorical tool. In highlighting the similarities between two distinct things, one can better explain something unknown, can provide strength to the argument that what is true of one must also be true of the other, and can interrogate why two similar things are treated differently. Turning the Holocaust into the “most available historical event illustrating right versus wrong” — and attaching symbolic meaning to its main actors, military and technological infrastructure, and ideology — makes comparisons to it inevitable. The philosemitic white euro-american narratives that detach the Holocaust from reality and treat it as “incomparable” make comparisons to it that much more rhetorically effective and evocative.
Additionally, when we consider the immense focus on the Holocaust — national and international holidays to commemorate it, museums established throughout the world, endless documentary and narrative media produced about it, laws passed demanding there be more education on it, and the multitude of memorials built to honor its victims — it makes even more sense that it would be used as a point of comparison by the victims of other instances, both historic and ongoing, of systemic violence, subjugation, and genocide that have not received this same treatment. When “never again” is a popular call, it seems nothing less than evil to scoff at the people in prisons and border detention centers who ask “why does never again not apply to us right now?”
Critics of Holocaust comparisons often argue that these analogies “trivialize” the Holocaust. While, sure, this may be true of some of the more ridiculous circumstances people invoke the Holocaust, this argument is also used to condemn as antisemites Black people who compare anti-Black slavery to the Holocaust, non-Black Indigenous people who compare settler-colonial genocide to the Holocaust, and Palestinian people who compare the Nakba to the Holocaust. In these instances, the victims of ongoing genocides are told that comparing their suffering to the Holocaust “trivializes” it. Apparently, their suffering is somehow less important than that of Jewish Holocaust victims. Who is doing the trivializing here?
The white euro-american contempt for Holocaust comparisons is the white euro-american need to maintain the Holocaust’s status as the “most available historical event illustrating right versus wrong.” Holocaust comparisons are one byproduct of a white-supremacist philosemitic culture. We must renounce the philosemitic narratives that treat the Holocaust as nothing more than a tool for white euro-american self-absolution and superiority. In viewing the Holocaust not as a symbol but as a real historical event and process, we can better understand what systems made the Holocaust possible. We can also see that those very same systems still exist today.
Recommended Readings:
Whites, Jews, and Us by Houria Bouteldja
Policing the Borders of Suffering by Zoé Samudzi
The Holocaust Industry by Norman Finklestein (with this much needed addendum)
