When the hallowed turns hollowed

On Jan. 25 — ironically, just two days before International Holocaust Remembrance Day —Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz stood at a press conference and committed a travesty of a blunder, adding yet another entry to his already extensive repertoire: invoking the story of Anne Frank to advance a personal political agenda.

His particularly pathetic performance put a glaring spotlight on a problem that has been growing for quite some time, and one that has now been allowed to manifest publicly in a government official.

It’s a swastika in a political sticker on a pole, out in the open, placed intentionally for all to see. An occurrence by no means unique, as one can easily pass by at least three of them any given day.

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It’s the inevitable label of “Nazi” issued to many, Jews included, for simply having the gall to defend basic realities in the world.

And it’s the corrupted confidence to post the nauseatingly false equivalence of Alex Pretti with The Last Jew in Vinnitsa.

How did we get to a point where evoking symbols loaded with death has become vernacular? How did we get to a point where such macabre mockery is not only second nature, but seen as righteous?

Everyone knows about classic Holocaust denial from the right and the modern Holocaust inversion of the left.

But there’s another phenomenon taking place that is potentially worse, as it has crept into and become normalized in mainstream society, not simply spewed from the fringes. This is the gradual and grave dilution of the Holocaust through universalism: an insidious process of belittlement, with harm that is far from trivial.

Let’s start by stating what should be obvious:

There is never an appropriate time to call someone a Nazi unless one is an actual Nazi. To do so is egregiously wrongful in both facts and morals, ensuring a dual disservice to both past and present, as careless belittlement dilutes meaning and reality.

Yet the grotesque glossing over and perversion of Holocaust rhetoric has become alarmingly endemic, through a skyrocketing of accepted hyperbole that has transformed the most serious human offenses into political barbs. The rotten cherry on top is that Jews are by no means immune to participating in this sloppy behavior, making such historical manipulation even more grotesque.

As a result, a Nazi has diminished into a label for anyone who dares to disagree with the perpetually offended. So Immigration and Customs Enforcement becomes the Gestapo. Illegal immigrants are now in the same situation as Jews in the 1930s. Detention facilities are analogous to concentration camps. Legal war or regulations are resultingly genocide. “Never again” is hashtagged and plastered onto any cause du jour.

With this pervasive overuse and abuse, it isn’t difficult to understand how drawing swastikas in public became acceptable.

Yet none of this is acceptable or comparable. Someone who holds a different set of beliefs or political registration does not a Nazi make. A pompous politician or United States president is not equivalent to Hitler, no matter how much one dislikes him. Deporting noncitizens is not in the same universe as rounding up Jewish citizens. Detention facilities are not for the deliberate extermination of their inhabitants. Retaliation against terrorist aggressors will never be in the realm of a genocide.

Ironically, those against the sin of appropriation are seemingly A-OK with co-opting Jewish history for their own purposes. But if one’s personal cause has merit, it should be able to stand by itself, not sloppily propped up by another. Disrespecting a nearly unmatchable horror of history brings no respect to anything else — especially not the individual attempting such moral fraud.

So why is it that the Holocaust does not receive the respect it deserves?

The societal failure of universalizing the Holocaust has proven that Holocaust education has not been universally successful, assuming it has been attempted at all. For too many who experienced any education, it appears to have only been a memorization of when and who, while crucial takeaways of why and how have been lost. Stark truths of depth of hate and enormity of destruction have either not been properly conveyed or sufficiently ingrained, so hard realities have waned into soft metaphors.

The objective reality of the Nazi Party is watered down to a subjective concept of personally abhorred politics. Naturally, a Holocaust widens to perceived injustice against any vague group, versus the industrialized extermination of a very specific one. Anne Frank is mercilessly tokenized to a generic darling of victimhood and quoted for emotional effect without respect to the circumstances referenced. The oft parroted, “it didn’t start with gas chambers,” factual yet diminutive, tends to only demonstrate a serious lack of understanding for how and why it did truly start, frequently becoming simply a vehicle to lead into a completely inappropriate analogy. And with the consistent equalization of other demographics slaughtered by Hitler’s regime, it’s been far too easy to lapse into an egalitarian fantasy of targeting that no longer centers Jews in their own genocide — all sadly proving that any shallow homage afforded is often covering a deep lack of respect to the subject.

But it isn’t just that education has seemingly failed. It was an inevitability of a society providing it whose standards have as well. When crimes of humanity become colloquial, we’ve got a real problem: the exposure of the depth of human narcissism and entitlement to cheapen one of the worst events in history by weaponizing it for political grievances.

Given second-to-none Jewish determination and success at rising above the victimization thrust upon us, Jewish trauma of the past is all too often viewed as acceptable to passively diminish or actively exploit in the present.

On one hand, things that are specific to Jewish experience are often expected to share their uniqueness and importance with other groups, instead of being recognized as significant on their own. One only needs to look at the Blue Square campaign to see this in action: Once a campaign strictly for fighting Jew hate soon became one that included fighting all hate. Or that fascinating pattern of how often antisemitism just cannot be uttered without “Islamophobia” in the same breath. Why wouldn’t Jews be expected to not only accept sharing their targeted trauma, but to move out of the way entirely?

And with hallowed-turned-hollowed definitions as up for grabs as integrity, it makes sense that others would actively steal such trauma to manipulate for their own movements and agendas, as it’s infinitely easier to push such irrationality and immorality when warping reality has already become standard practice.

This historical and moral vandalism shouldn’t just register as offensive; it should be acknowledged as darkly reckless.

Such fast and loose cosplay isn’t just degrading to what the Nazis’ victims lived through and died from. When sacrosanct events are allowed to be diminished from their essential singularity, not only is permission given for continued disrespect of the past, but the bar is dangerously lowered for the future.

If any person can be a Nazi, a Nazi now means nothing. If anything can be the beginning of a Holocaust, or the Holocaust itself, the actual Holocaust fades into nothing. So do its unique lessons. And that might be the real point.

Toleration for the continued misuse of language will lead to the abuse of what it represents for other purposes until society simply has no use for it any longer.

Stripping the core from the historical event also strips its promised assurances. Guilt can be minimized along with safeguards. And when past and present antisemitism don’t have to be taken more seriously than a metaphor, future repetition of its crimes becomes more than one.

But the Holocaust will never be a metaphor for anything else. It was a horror of horrors singular in itself, deliberate in its destruction, and ages in the making. So much in society is up for discussion, but this cannot be without losing more than we can afford of our grip on both reality and humanity. As survivors fade and we are left with words for memory, the world must honor its promise to never forget the desecration it once allowed by refusing to allow tolerate any further desecration. PJC

Sarah Kendis is a musician living in Pittsburgh.