Holocaust/Nazi Analogies

[ShyGuyInChicago]

Many current events and laws and issues have been compared to the Holocaust and Nazis. Some of them include eating animals, banning gay marriage, the healthcare debate. Many of these comparisons have been condemned because they are not only offensive to Holocaust survivors and their families but they are said to trivialize, cheapen, belittle, diminish, minimize, and degrade the actions of the Nazis.

Are Holocaust analogies ever accurate?
Can using such analogies over and over again cause people to take the Holocaust and other genocides less seriously and increase the likelihood of another genocide ocurring?

Explain.

[Dorsum Oppel]

/godwins law

I don't think that playing down the holocaust will cause another genocide to occur. However, I DO NOT condone making light of the holocaust. Can you nazi how hurtful it is? Anne frankly, I won't stand for it. *tsk tsk*

[ShyGuyInChicago]

I found this to help.

Representative Alan Grayson trivializes Holocaust

by Robert S. Siegel on October 2, 2009

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Did Representative Alan Grayson (D-Fl) really compare U.S. health care to the Holocaust?
He did, in a speech on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Look folks, the Nazis launched a war that claimed 22 million lives, 6 million of whom were Jews, murdered as part of a ruthless, mechanized process that may make the Nazis the most evil rulers in history. I am tired of ignorant people tossing around terms associated with Nazi’s and genocide on any subject that just happens to make them angry. I don’t care if the perpetrator is screaming about fem-a-Nazis, raising chickens, calling Bush a Nazi, or comparing Obama’s actions to Nazi indoctrination.
Don’t trivialize the Holocaust and the Nazis and the torturous deaths of the 6 million Jews and the Nazi terror that destroyed millions more; their deaths were not trivial to millions of people around the world.
Don’t cheapen the word Nazi or the term Holocaust because those terms are needed when the fight is against real Nazis to prevent another real Holocaust. There will be more genocide. We know this because there has been genocide under Stalin, Pol Pot, and Milosevic. If Grayson succeeds in cheapening death by genocide with his sleazy political games he will have contributed to those future deaths.
Don’t use Nazi comparisons unless you are referring to a systematic, state sponsored, persecution and mass murder of human beings.
If you have to equate actions taking place in the U.S. to something done by the Nazis in order to make your political point or generate ratings, then you are far too shallow-minded to deserve to make your point.
That Grayson did this from the floor of the House of Representatives makes it all that much more reprehensible. Why haven’t the people of central Florida undertaken a recall movement? Why hasn’t the House censured him?
Enough already.

http://mindyourowndamnbusinesspolitics.com/wordpress/2009/10/02/representative-alan-grayson-trivializes-holocaust/comment-page-1/

[Rutherford The Brave]

/godwins law

I don't think that playing down the holocaust will cause another genocide to occur. However, I DO NOT condone making light of the holocaust. Can you nazi how hurtful it is? Anne frankly, I won't stand for it. *tsk tsk*

That was very funny actually, dispite being awful.

[Dorsum Oppel]

That was very funny actually, dispite being awful.

Funny/awful is my specialty. In fact, it's reich up my alley.

[Amnesiac]

No, Holocaust analogies are never accurate. Calling people Hitler or Nazis is never appropriate, I disapprove of people calling Obama Hitler as much as I disapprove of people calling Bush Hitler.

Funny/awful is my specialty. In fact, it's reich up my alley.

:D

[ericboi]

The murder of Jews by the Nazis stands alone in human depravity. There isn't any analogy because of the scale of the destruction and the systematic way it was perpetrated. The Nazis actually held a top secret conference in Wannsee, Berlin to plan the best way of killing the most Jews. Their goal was simple .... eliminate all Jews from from Europe and the world, if possible. There was no strategic or economic rationale to do this. It was nothing more than blind racial hatred. They prepared detailed planning doucuments in Wannsee that survived the war. There have been other genocides but not like the Holocaust.

[Dorsum Oppel]

The murder of Jews by the Nazis stands alone in human depravity. There isn't any analogy because of the scale of the destruction and the systematic way it was perpetrated. The Nazis actually held a top secret conference in Wannsee, Berlin to plan the best way of killing the most Jews. Their goal was simple .... eliminate all Jews from from Europe and the world, if possible. There was no strategic or economic rationale to do this. It was nothing more than blind racial hatred. They prepared detailed planning doucuments in Wannsee that survived the war. There have been other genocides but not like the Holocaust.

It's horrible. Surely we're not goering to do it again. You can get any fuhrer that this level of hate.

OKAY I PROMISE I'M DONE.

In all seriousness, I think that comparing someone to the nazi's just instantly means you lose the argument. It's just an over-used stretch. Although as you can see, it's not a moral issue, nor does it spell impending genocide. Honestly, some of my family was killed in the holocaust for harboring jews, but making nazi jokes isn't out of mein kampfort zone.
I really am done this time.

...until I think of more puns.

[Sith Lord 13]

There are times it's appropriate. See Kosovo or Sadam's treatment of the Kurds.

[huginnmuninn]

Mao Tsedong,Joseph Stalin,and Hideki Tojo are the only people i would ever compare to Hitler. And the massacres that they caused are the only ones i would ever compare to the holocaust

[Magus]

Sadam Hussein?

He killed his own people, the lingo-ethnic group of Kurds, demolished other denomination(Shi'te) ceremonies(which I think the only thing that he did right), he killed his own family, he used Chemical weapons against innocent people, he invaded Iran, and invaded Kuwait and claimed it as the 19th state of Iraq.

From his day to the day of his death, he is perhaps responsible of the death of hundred of thousands of people constituting(excluding able men) women, children, weak and the elderly.

However, they did have Chemical and Biological weapons, but not Nuclear weapons(If you remember that Israeli attack on Saddam's nuclear plants).

[Rutherford The Brave]

Mao Tsedong,Joseph Stalin,and Hideki Tojo are the only people i would ever compare to Hitler. And the massacres that they caused are the only ones i would ever compare to the holocaust

Kim jong? Seriously, the guy has had everyone in North Korea by the short hairs.

[Dorsum Oppel]

Yeah, but nobody else had such a cool mustache. I mean, that stache just dripped nefarious, no wonder he's göring to be claimed the most evil man alive.

[Rutherford The Brave]

Yeah, but nobody else had such a cool mustache. I mean, that stache just dripped nefarious, no wonder he's göring to be claimed the most evil man alive.

I thought you were done?

[Dorsum Oppel]

I really am done this time.

...until I think of more puns.

In the case of these uber bad bros, sure, a comparison to hitler is fine and dandy. But I've heard the cigarette companies being compared to nazi's. Which isn't reasonable.

[dead]

Yeah, but nobody else had such a cool mustache. I mean, that stache just dripped nefarious, no wonder he's göring to be claimed the most evil man alive.

It's a Charlie Chaplin Mustache, so are you saying Charlie Chaplin is a evil man too?
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