Thread by @SethAMandel

1. Why do we care so much about this? I’ll explain, briefly, why it touches a nerve. There are two types of Nazi comparisons. One is “Trump is Hitler.” This bothers ppl but it does not make the Jewish community recoil, genuinely pained.

2. I think that’s what caught AOC so off guard. She was used to Democrats comparing Republicans to Nazis her entire adult life (mine too), so she feels like she’s being targeted here because of who she is, not what she said. I get it. But it’s wrong. Here’s why.

3. It’s because she made the second kind of Nazi comparison: that which compares victims. And here’s where you get into trouble. We carry around the stories and scars of what happened to our family. It’s recent, the wounds are still fresh, and it’s all very real.

4. Years ago I accompanied a survivor of Majdanek on her first time back at Majdanek. I’ve stood in front of the ash pit with ppl who were supposed to end up in it. Looked at the shoes of ppl who weren’t as lucky as to survive—knowing their friends and relatives were among them.

5. When you say “Trump is a fascist” you’re insulting Trump. When you equate a migrant holding facility, of ppl trying to get in to this country (because it’s not actually a totalitarian hellstate), with Auschwitz, you’re minimizing and erasing our suffering and trauma.

6. That’s why there was the reaction to her saying “Never Again.” Despite all the gaslighting, no she wasn’t talking about the Boer War, you dopey stenographers. If she wanted to make the comparison about FDR, she would have. Stop it.

7. This is why the peerless Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt pushed back so hard. Jewish suffering *and* our very slogan of survival were being appropriated for cheap political point scoring. The comparison is utterly nonsensical.

8. Now, in a normal situation, a person who actually cared about protecting minorities and being an “ally” would say: “Ah, I didn’t realize the pain this would cause the Jewish community. I didn’t intend that, and I don’t deserve to be demonized, but I certainly will stop it.”

9. Instead, she went jury shopping! She presented herself as the true victim and she went looking for Jews or historians who would support her. I can’t quite wrap my head around how bonkers this behavior is for an adult.

10. “But this Jew over here says it’s fine” is cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. You have this outpouring of pained outrage, and all she cared about was justifying herself at their expense. The bad faith here is mindboggling.

11. It’s just amazing to me to see this. Ppl in large numbers say they’re deeply pained by what she’s saying because of their personal experiences. Her response is “but this person here isn’t upset by it.”

Ahem. So what? Like I said, completely bonkers.

12. She genuinely doesn’t care who she steps on on her way up. It’s pathological. And the ppl saying “oh you’re playing semantics when ppl are suffering.” What have you become? How did politics so thoroughly rot your soul? I don’t have the time or patience for it.

13. The heartlessness is astounding. Not to mention that the “why are you talking about this when I want you to talk about that” is among the most obnoxious ways to use this site. My god the entitlement.

14. Anyway, point is that this is what’s going on, and AOC has been made aware of it, and continues anyway. It’s a free country, she’s free to do so. But at this point she has made clear she’s doing it intentionally. Make of that what you will. /fin