Never compare Jews to Nazis

Posts about Israel are obviously fraught, so first:

• I keep an index of resources
• the moral question is simple:
  Palestinian liberation is right & necessary
• the history is complicated:
  I have a survey which addresses many common misunderstandings
• the praxis is complicated:
  antisemitic entryism into the movement for liberation is subtle, pervasive, and unacceptable

This should require no explanation. I offer one anyway.

One can call Israel’s attack on Gaza genocidal; it is. One can call Kahanists and Likudniks fascists; they are. One should not call Zionism fascist because that is offensively false, but that is not wrong in the same weight class as comparing Jews specifically to Nazis.

Any point worth making with the comparison is better made another way.

Comparing Jews to Nazis is using a slur, a slur strong enough that it is best to be a little weird about it.

Consider a slur where we have a settled practice of absolute prohibition: white people must never use The N Word. Summoning that example requires treading very carefully, so I have to be clear that I am not claiming a simple parallel, which would be wildly irresponsible. But it is the clearest demonstratation of a type which includes more than just The N Word: a slur so powerful that we must take extreme care with it.

White people must maintain the practice of never speaking The N Word even when we have no malice in it, like singing along to a hip hop song in a room alone. We must not use it to make unmistakably anti-racist statements like “the word ‘n███r’ is offensive”. We must not use it, period. Suggesting possible exceptions invites trouble. There are too many white people looking to rationalize getting a racist thrill from speaking it. We must not ask Black people to contempate arguments that golly, it might be justified in this situation.

A white person saying The N Word reaches right into Black people and hits a deep wound, context be dammed. Knowing that, we know that a white person using The N Word has made a racist choice to say something which they know will offend. It is an attack.

The N Word is unique in many ways, but it is not unique in being so severe that we have cause to prohibit its use so absolutely. We do not need to catalogue all of the slurs in that weight class to understand how comparing Jews to Nazis counts among them.

The Nazis built murder factories out of pure hatred for us, killing off half of us, and the only thing that stopped them from killing even more of us was reducing their entire society to rubble. So comparing us to them cuts deep. It does antisemitism, even when innocent of any antisemitic intent or sentiments.

Some may defend comparing Israelis or ‘zionists’ or particular Jewish groups or individuals to Nazis. Or comparing the Nakba or the genocide in Gaza to the Shoah. Or comparing Israel to Nazi Germany as a historical irony. Or some other roundabout comparison justified by claiming “I only compare people to Nazis when they act like Nazis”.

No. We recognize that “I’m not calling all [people in group X] [slur]s, just ones who act like [slur]s” is a rationalization of using the slur.

Some defend these comparisons by saying that right now opposing genocide trumps every other concern. No. That too is a rationalization of antisemtism.

I have real sympathy for people who are not raging bigots making these mistakes. It is unfair that the righteous and currently urgent cause of Palestinian liberation must walk through a minefield where it is genuinely difficult to make sense of what constitutes antisemitism which one must avoid.

Israel hardliners disingenuously reject any criticism of Israel as “antisemitism”.

Cunning antisemitic bigots coyly make their case without explicitly referencing Jews.

People who really are not talking about Jews still stumble into antisemitic narratives.

Weird Jewish cults accuse other Jews of antisemitism while doing it themselves.

Even sophisticated social justice advocates get tripped up by the particularity of antisemitism.

Et cetera. It is weird out there. So take comfort in this one rule being simple.

Never. Compare. Jews. To. Nazis.