The misuse of the Holocaust in calls for political action.
After the Shabbat service today, lunch conversation turned to the current political situation in the U.S. -- the legal erosion of civil liberties, the doublespeak surrounding government use of torture -- and the potential some congregants saw for the U.S. to be the site of a Holocaust. At one point, someone said, "This is Nazi Germany in 1932."
I didn't participate much in the discussion, which effectively replaced the usual peace of mind I get from going to services with a state of anxiety and fear. But as I was heading out to the car, something interesting occurred to me.
Jews have a strong tendency to draw parallels between contemporary atrocities -- massacres, abuses of totalitarian regimes, society-wide persecutions -- and the Holocaust. We're not the only group to do this, and it's not a surprise: after all, this is our paradigmatic human horror, our paradigmatic genocide. It makes sense that we would use it as a frame of reference, and that we would bring it up when we're trying to inspire political action in the context of apathy.
As a rhetorical tactic used in discourse before a Jewish audience, it's also a really counter-productive move.
I don't think there's anyone culturally or religiously Jewish who didn't grow up hearing the echoes of the Holocaust, seeing its shadows around them. For lack of a better term, it's a kind of shared ethnic PTSD. It was fairly distant from my own family -- they all emigrated during WWI -- and I still felt the weight of residual trauma, even in childhood.
Bringing up the Holocaust when you're trying to incite Jews to action is like telling a group of domestic violence survivors that they need to start marching in women's rights protests or, in ten years, the laws that make it illegal for their partners and husbands to beat them will be overturned. As an argument, is it potent and compelling? Hell yes. But while you're making that intellectual appeal, you're pressing the emotional buttons that will make those women want to go home, triple-lock their doors, and never want to be alone with a man in the room again.
I may be projecting here, and I acknowledge that. My anxious responses are more hair-triggered than most. But we -- and here I'm not referring to Jews, but to people in general -- don't tend to admit how many of us, faced with even the hypothetical choice between risking personal safety to protest systematic oppression and keeping silent in hopes that we'd go unnoticed, would chose quiet survival over righteous action. Take any group with a history of trauma and victimization, and it takes a lot less to flip them back into survival mode.
If you want to inspire political action, there are key emotional reactions that you want your argument to inspire. Outrage. Righteous anger. Empowerment. Fear isn't on the list.
Maybe bringing up the Holocaust has the right effect on non-Jewish listeners, but I'm guessing I'm not the only Jew whose first response to the idea of living in the time and place where that kind of violence is occurring -- whether aimed at me or at another group -- is fear.
We need a new rhetorical strategy, and I don't know what that is, but we need it sooner rather than later.
I didn't participate much in the discussion, which effectively replaced the usual peace of mind I get from going to services with a state of anxiety and fear. But as I was heading out to the car, something interesting occurred to me.
Jews have a strong tendency to draw parallels between contemporary atrocities -- massacres, abuses of totalitarian regimes, society-wide persecutions -- and the Holocaust. We're not the only group to do this, and it's not a surprise: after all, this is our paradigmatic human horror, our paradigmatic genocide. It makes sense that we would use it as a frame of reference, and that we would bring it up when we're trying to inspire political action in the context of apathy.
As a rhetorical tactic used in discourse before a Jewish audience, it's also a really counter-productive move.
I don't think there's anyone culturally or religiously Jewish who didn't grow up hearing the echoes of the Holocaust, seeing its shadows around them. For lack of a better term, it's a kind of shared ethnic PTSD. It was fairly distant from my own family -- they all emigrated during WWI -- and I still felt the weight of residual trauma, even in childhood.
Bringing up the Holocaust when you're trying to incite Jews to action is like telling a group of domestic violence survivors that they need to start marching in women's rights protests or, in ten years, the laws that make it illegal for their partners and husbands to beat them will be overturned. As an argument, is it potent and compelling? Hell yes. But while you're making that intellectual appeal, you're pressing the emotional buttons that will make those women want to go home, triple-lock their doors, and never want to be alone with a man in the room again.
I may be projecting here, and I acknowledge that. My anxious responses are more hair-triggered than most. But we -- and here I'm not referring to Jews, but to people in general -- don't tend to admit how many of us, faced with even the hypothetical choice between risking personal safety to protest systematic oppression and keeping silent in hopes that we'd go unnoticed, would chose quiet survival over righteous action. Take any group with a history of trauma and victimization, and it takes a lot less to flip them back into survival mode.
If you want to inspire political action, there are key emotional reactions that you want your argument to inspire. Outrage. Righteous anger. Empowerment. Fear isn't on the list.
Maybe bringing up the Holocaust has the right effect on non-Jewish listeners, but I'm guessing I'm not the only Jew whose first response to the idea of living in the time and place where that kind of violence is occurring -- whether aimed at me or at another group -- is fear.
We need a new rhetorical strategy, and I don't know what that is, but we need it sooner rather than later.