No one could have guessed—back when Adolf Hitler was writing Mein Kampf and establishing a basis, which resulted in the systematic murder and torture of more than six million Jews—that the most violent example of anti-Semitism in modern history would eventually provide the backbone of any well-formulated political argument.
Just as clicking random links on Wikipedia eventually leads to the website’s Adolf Hitler page, discussion of anything slightly political or controversial is bound, at some point, to result in someone making a harsh analogy to the Holocaust.
Bringing up the Holocaust is just one inevitable aspect of the ever-convoluted American debate culture. But comparing the Nazi Germany-sponsored genocide to things such as abortion or the potential strike on Syria can often be met with great and unfair hostility.
The problem isn’t that we bring the Holocaust up too much, it’s that we don’t provide enough evidence for why we’re drawing such strong comparisons. They seem self-evident!
For instance, take the pro-lifers who claim, “Abortion is the new Holocaust!” On a superficial level, their argument seems born of ignorance. Such an argument can be infuriating because we don’t understand the logic.
But when we think about it (don’t think too hard, though), it’s easy to see how women wanting to control their own bodies and lives is a lot like the annihilation of more than six million innocent people.
The comparison is simple: Abortion takes the lives of almost-people, as in people not yet born. The Holocaust took the lives of real people, as in Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, Slavs, the disabled, the elderly, people of color, freemasons and progressives, et cetera.
When we compare the impediment of potential births to the extermination of more than 6 million fully realized people, it may come off as though we are downplaying the severity of the Holocaust, as though we are manipulating the unfathomable injustices—the likes of which we will never imagine—to fit our own agendas. But that simply isn’t the case.
It isn’t downplaying genocide or perpetuating anti-Semitism in any way. I mean, come on, we love those wacky Jews! The two or three we know are just great people.
It’s easy, too, to see how President Barack Obama is the new Hitler. For one, they were both born in a country other than the one they would eventually lead into ruins.
I’m sure once Hitler got all of the people he disliked out of the picture, he would have gone right to work on an efficient health care program, just like Obama.
And the comparisons to Syria are obvious. We need to strike them to stop an oppressive leader from getting out of control. Just like we did when we liberated Europe from the injustices of Nazi Germany, after we were done waiting for Japan to give us an excuse to join the war, of course.
In addition to elaborating on our arguments and comparisons to the Holocaust, we ought to stop mentioning slavery and our entire historic oppression of any minority.
The only reason we bring up the Holocaust more than we do slavery is because we can blame the Germans. We get to say, “Well at least we aren’t as messed up as that country, am I right?” once we inevitably win an argument.
But to bring up our own oppressive tendencies would be to launch the discussion into something entirely different, something that might put a smudge on the reasoning behind our unflinching, unrivaled nationalism.
In the end, when we find ourselves in an argument where our opinions and surely sound logic fail, we must be quick to provide a little more explanation so the historically illiterate can keep up.
