Thread by @yonatanzunger

Comparing #HolocaustMemorialDay this year and last is an excellent illustration of what's changed in the past year. I've never seen so much anti-Semitism voiced by people with major public platforms this openly before.

We have some things on the extremes, like Poland's lower house of parliament passing a bill criminalizing discussing Polish involvement in the Holocaust, or Julian Assange explaining how it was really about Slavs, not Jews.

Or Ken Livingstone going on Iranian state TV to discuss whether the Holocaust is being exploited to oppress others.

We have some of the more "traditional" bullshit, like Mike Pence trying to turn the Holocaust into some kind of Christian apocalyptic / martyrdom myth — but that's just what Dominionist prats *do*.

May as well provide some links for these, for the curious. Livingstone:

External Tweet loading...
If nothing shows, it may have been deleted
by @daverich1 view original on Twitter

Poland:

External Tweet loading...
If nothing shows, it may have been deleted
by @Yair_Rosenberg view original on Twitter

Assange:

External Tweet loading...
If nothing shows, it may have been deleted
by @JulianAssange view original on Twitter

Pence:

External Tweet loading...
If nothing shows, it may have been deleted
by @VP view original on Twitter

We have the New York Times running pieces about the importance of Steve Miller, a powerful and fervent advocate of Nazi ideology today, on #HolocaustMemorialDay .

And there's more, much more. I'm not counting the usual Nazis who invariably come out of the woodwork; what's significant here is that there are people with major platforms coming out on this day, for this day, and getting support.

If you wonder why this is so important: The Holocaust didn't start with people being rounded up and being dragged into camps. It didn't start with the murder of the disabled. Before any of that, it started with a press campaign.

The Nazis made certain questions part of the "normal" political discourse: Are Jews people? Do the disabled have a right to live? Are the Roma people?

But they didn't phrase the questions so crisply. They would say, "these people are why we have crime." "These people are what weaken our economy." "These people weaken our country." And if anyone debated that, it simply legitimized that it was a valid question to ask.

And today, we're hearing one of the classic American political refrains, adapted to this: "Don't politicize the Holocaust." (!!!)

External Tweet loading...
If nothing shows, it may have been deleted
by @EgSophie view original on Twitter

In America, we hear versions of this phrase every time there's a mass shooting ("Don't politicize the tragedy!"), on MLK day ("Don't politicize Martin Luther King!"), on any number of occasions which might make us stop and reflect.

In every case, that phrase has a singular meaning: "If we talk about this seriously, people might notice that my own ideology doesn't sit well at all with what we might talk about. DON'T TALK ABOUT IT."

For mass shootings, this comes from the NRA, whose ideology has become "we must never discuss the rights of [white] people to own guns."

(Only white ones. Remember when Philando Castile was killed by a cop for saying he had a legal CCW? Remember what the NRA said?)

But hearing it on Martin Luther King day a few weeks ago, and on Holocaust Remembrance Day yesterday, is new. It reflects that a now-mainstream political movement has an ideology which, if you examined it in any detail, reads like Nazism.

And this is not a coincidence. A few months ago, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 14% of Americans were neutral to favorable on Nazism *when described by that name*.

centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/wp…

When asked about Nazi ideals, like "protecting and preserving America's white European heritage," levels of support went into the 30's.

No aspect of the rise of Nazism in American politics has been subtle. Compare these two pictures, one from whitehouse.gov, one from the Nazis:

Or this regular news feature — "The Criminal Jew," highlighting crimes committed by Jews, again published by the Nazis — to the VOICE reports now published about "crimes by immigrants" by ICE.

Or straight-up look at what Trump has called for. This is something I wrote back in late 2015, when he called for removing 11 million people in two years. Did anyone *listen*?

medium.com/@yonatanzunger…

Trumpism is nothing more than Nazism with a worse haircut. It is an ideology of strengthening the "nation" by purging it of all those who "weaken" it. Immigrants. Muslims. The disabled. Queer people. Trans people. Brown people. Black people. Jews.

And it can be recognized as such both by its ideology — here's a refresher on what Nazism actually means, for those who don't know — and by the way in which it openly embraces and emboldens avowed Nazis. (Or "good people on both sides," as Trump put it)

extranewsfeed.com/nazism-what-it…

It is no coincidence that on #HolocaustMemorialDay, Nazis with platforms were speaking loudly and openly. It is no coincidence that fellow travelers of the Nazis, with platforms, were using that day to express anti-Semitism without concern for their reputations.

In the past few years, but most of all in the past year, Nazism has re-risen as a political ideology. It has made the questions of who among us is human a subject for "legitimate" news to discuss. All the filth of our past is coming back to haunt us.

We must give this foul ideology no more quarter today than we did then. //