Many on my feed are understandably outraged by this essay, which they feel is a cynical misuse of the memory of the Holocaust, deployed in a contemporary political debate for which it is entirely unsuited.
I don't think they're seeing the whole picture.
1/9
Let's start by looking at this gem, also from the NYRB, from 2023 that ostensibly argues AGAINST the use of the memory of the Holocaust as a way of making sense of a current event.
2/9
It's signed by all the "genocide scholars" that would become rockstars in the ensuing months, and at first glance, it would appear that the two articles contradict each other (which is allowed) and show a cynical preferece for Holocaust analogies only when convenient.
3/9
But a closer read shows something else. These articles are not arguing opposite things at all, and are in fact entirely consistent with one another.
What unites both pieces is an unbridled resentment at Jews for the "luxury" of the Holocaust and its memory.
4/9
Both essays are centered around claims that powerful Jewish figures are gatekeeping the trauma of the Shoah in order to exploit it. And both go to great lengths to imply, not with much subtlety, that today's Jews are the real Nazis anyway.
5/9
Both pieces make some incredibly weak arguments about current events: The 2023 piece gives a potted history of the conflict, and flips its own argument on its head in just four paragraphs at the end in order to slip in the Israelis-as-Nazis meme. The 2026 piece can't seem...
6/9
... to distinguish immigration policy from extermination. But skip the weak arguments. Both pieces can't conceive of Jewish memory of the Shoah as anything but a feint. This is deep ontology of "genocide studies" and much progressive thought on race and social justice.
7/9
Both go straight to hysterical condemnations of Israel. The new piece even has a "Jewish American activist" imagined as moral equal of Nazi murderer of the disabled because he used the word "retard" in a tweet condemning a poor Holocaust analogy.
8/9
So yeah, it's hilariously hypocritical that it is somehow the peak of sophistication both to be indignant at Holocaust analogies AND to reach for them at the first challenge.
But don't be distracted by the hypocrisy. The larger argument is insidiously coherent & consistent.
9/9
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