The ‘Holocaust Law’

In terms of human loss, the Holocaust is — unquestionably — the worst event in the history of the Jewish people. Given its history, that’s saying something.

Driven by the unimaginable evil of Nazi Germany, the Holocaust resulted in the systematic murder of an estimated six million Jews, including one million children, eradicating approximately two-thirds of the Jewish population of Europe. Often ignored are the additional three million ethnic Poles similarly murdered by the Nazis, amounting to between 6% and 10% of the total Polish gentile population. Three million of the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust were also Polish.

In 1994, Mike Godwin first defined “Godwin’s rule of Hitler analogies” — otherwise known as Godwin’s law — which states, “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.” This was then used to argue that the online discussion was effectively over once such a comparison was made.

Unfortunately, this Internet-based rule never seemed to make it into the mainstream, with comments like Democratic presidential candidate Robert “Beto” O’Rourke’s “Outside of the Third Reich, give me another example of a Western leader who has called people of one faith inherently defective or dangerous or disqualified from being successful in that country,” barely causing a blip on our society’s “historical hyperbole” radar.

Such absurd and historically ignorant hyperbole is the result of years of intentional association between conservatism and Nazism, as described by Larry Elder in 2016. However, the days of inaccurate comparisons to the Nazi party are slowly being replaced by one far worse — comparisons to the Holocaust. 

In recent years, the Holocaust has become the standard fill-in for any “bad thing” while making a damning political comparison. In June 2018, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez compared the detention of illegal immigrants at the southern border between the United States and Mexico to Nazi-era “concentration camps,” directly invoking “Never Again,” the phrase used to summarize the Jewish community’s attitude toward any threat of future genocide. Singer Linda Ronstadt compared Trump’s immigration policies to that of Hitler under Nazi Germany, saying “It’s going to be like Hitler, and the Mexicans are the new Jews.” MSNBC host compared U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to Nazis in The Holocaust, casting immigrants as Jews: “They are running just like the Jews ran from the Nazis, just like so many other groups are running from persecutions for safety.”

While figures on the Left are free to make such comparisons without fear of consequence, conservatives who make the same assertions are immediately “canceled.” The most recent example is Gina Carano — known for her character on Disney’s The Mandalorian — who shared a screenshot on her Instagram account which read:

Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers but by their neighbors…even by children.

“Because history is edited, most people today don’t realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being Jews. How is that any different from hating someone for their political views?”

While she faces accusations of bigotry and anti-Semitism, it’s important to see such comments for what they are — overwrought and historically inaccurate hyperbole in the pursuit of political gain. Notably, the same political gain sought by Leftists who compare conservatives to Hitler and immigrants to Jews as freely as they breathe or blink.

With this in mind, we need a new Godwin’s law, which informally legislates against the use of the Holocaust to make comparatively petty political statements. Let’s call this the “Holocaust Law:”

Unless the person or event being criticized is demonstrably guilty of enforcing the same physical — not rhetorical, metaphorical or hypothetical — actions as Nazi Germany, resulting in the forced detention or murder of millions of civilians due to personal characteristics, they are not to be compared to the Holocaust.

Following the “Holocaust Law,” the Chinese Communist Party’s forced internment of a reported million Uighur Muslims in the Xinjiang province is “like the Holocaust.”

Preventing illegal immigrants from crossing the border is not.

Ian Haworth is an Editor and Writer for The Daily Wire. Follow him on Twitter at @ighaworth.

The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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