jewish-privilege:

(x, x)

I imagine that most Jews would have no issue with Holocaust comparisons and using the Holocaust as a rhetorical device if that was all there was to it. But there’s a broader context. A context that Jews cannot divorce ourselves from (and I would imagine the same is true for Rromani, but I don’t want to speak for them). In the same breath, people who say “X is just like Hitler” or that “this is just how the Holocaust started” will also say they don’t care about Jews or antisemitism.

They call Israeli or diaspora Jews with whom they disagree over Israel: Zionazis, the new Nazis, or just plain old Nazis.

They insert the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into ever conversation even remotely related to Jewishness, Judaism, or antisemitism regardless of whether we’re talking about the present or Israel.

They conflate all the different camps used during the Holocaust into “concentration camps.” They conflate all treatment of targeted groups during the Holocaust so that “it wasn’t just Jews” with the implication that we should shut up and stop because we don’t own the Holocaust.

They think antisemitism began and ended with the Holocaust and we got Israel as a reward for surviving the Holocaust because “they’re white.”

They erase Jewish refugees. The erase Jewish refugees from the MENA. They erase that no countries took in Jewish refugees before, during, or after the Holocaust.

They say: “They’re the new Jews,” as if Jews have ceased to exist, antisemitism ceased to exists, and that things can be inhumane and due to prejudice without using another group’s trauma and history as a rhetorical device.

They call us white supremacists while actual white supremacists call us globalists, oppressors, kikes, and for our destruction.

They erase antisemitism from white supremacy and refer to it as if it as if it’s incidental to white supremacy instead of central to white supremacy. And when we tell the truth, we’re told we’re playing the victim and that we’re claiming to be the most oppressed (we aren’t). 

They talk about our historical trauma as an ephemeral and divorced historical event while we still breathe and feel it every day. They talk about our historical trauma as if it was confined to the Holocaust and not spanning across centuries and nations since we were colonized and then expelled from our land.

For us, it’s never just a Holocaust or Hitler comparison. And evil things are evil because they’re evil not because of how closely they resemble the Holocaust or historical traumas sufferers by other groups.

All of this is true… but I think the comparisons are apt in this instance, and there are a lot of Jews using it too. The instant recognizability and emotional punch of the comparison can be helpful if it’s used judiciously… though unfortunately it hasn’t been, which dilutes its power. I think the most powerful and useful aspects of the comparison are that the Nazis were elected; that they built their way up to extermination gradually, by inuring people to lesser monstrosities; and that the political establishment and the international press ridiculed Mussolini and Hitler and believed their incompetence would limit the damage they could do.