(Jewish Group) Nazi comparisons are wrong, whoever is making them
I’m in America, but before I got here, I went to a birthday party, at which the host made a speech about the state of the world, or, to be more exact, how the world feels presently for Jews. It was an anxious speech, getting more and more anxious as it continued, the anxiety spreading among the various Jews congregated around the cake and candles, until eventually one of the other guests said, “It could be worse: it could be 1939.”
It broke the tension, and everyone laughed. But I think that joke, as often with jokes, contains an important truth. I, like many Jews since October 7, have spent some time on various WhatsApp groups on which other Jews, basically, kvetch. However, I have taken myself off all of them because a) I can’t be doing with that much kvetching – Ting! Oh good, another complaint about BBC News – and b) so much of the kvetching concerns the notion that we are living in the ante-room of a second Holocaust.
Which, let me reassure you, we are not. Presently, we in the West are living through a spike in antisemitism. An extreme spike, but one magnified through the dysfunctional lens of social media. Most importantly, none of it is state-sanctioned. You may not think the state response is good enough – you may think that various governments should be doing more, policing more, denouncing anti-Jewish hatred more – but I promise you, no one in these governments is planning legislation towards new Nuremberg Laws.
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But these protesters are not Nazis. Nazis are defined by conscious, active, unashamed hatred of Jews. Modern antisemitism is defined, and I’m sorry to bring this phrase in, but I don’t know a better one, by Jews not counting. By a basic assumption that the feelings and concerns of Jews are not that important. If Jews are intimidated and disturbed by what is happening now, by what they are seeing on TV and on social media, that is, at best, a pity, and, at worst, something which is considered to pale next to the need to protest what is happening in Gaza. Jewish sensibilities are considered reasonable collateral damage.
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It is always important to know when and how to use them, and not to be careless with the use of Nazi terms, but, IMO, it is rarely Jews (except a certain "breed" ) who go whole hog with the use of Nazi terminology.