Waitman Wade Beorn: Historians can and should draw parallels between the 1930s and today

The Holocaust has endured more than enough abusive and absurd comparisons in American political life. Both ends of the spectrum too often seek to draw on its emotional and historical power to advance their completely unrelated agendas. Pat Robertson bizarrely invoked it, saying, “Just what Nazi Germany did to the Jews, so liberal America is now doing to evangelical Christians … It’s no different.” On the other side, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has consistently and shamelessly abused the memory of the Holocaust for its animal rights agenda. A video on its website includes what sounds like Holocaust survivor testimony and is introduced with the words, “From the factory farm to your plate, animals go through the same process that the Nazis put Jews and others through during the Holocaust.”

With such ignorant, irrational and offensive appropriations out there, it is not surprising that many are pushing back against current comparisons with the Trump administration. These rebuttals of the use of Holocaust comparisons in reference to the administration have come stridently from various quarters. The columnist Daniella Greenbaum would prohibit us from “comparing all wrongs, even the ones that Trump carries out, to the evils of Nazi Germany.” She claims such comparisons are “dressing up” current events in “another (significantly crueler) disaster.” A writer for the conservative American Spectator called comparisons “despicable” and “cheap.” American Jews are themselves divided. Some have seen “parallels” between the administration and Nazi policy while others, such as Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, called such comparisons “morally bankrupt” and then doubled down, suggesting that they even “border[ed] on denying the Holocaust.” Nobel Laureate and Auschwitz survivor Elie Wiesel, who died in 2016, once said, categorically, “I don’t compare anything to the Holocaust.” Indeed, some scholars have suggested that the Holocaust as a historical event is unique and therefore incomparable to any other events, past or present.

Is it, though? Can we truly never compare the Holocaust to events in modern politics? The scholarly community has a duty to engage the question. If we truly adhere to the oft-intoned “Never Again,” then we also bear the responsibility of helping others recognize when “again” is now. Shunning comparisons misses an opportunity to mobilize important history for the public good.

Paradoxically, noted historian Richard Evans recently made the somewhat astounding comment (for a historian) in Slate that “it’s very dangerous simply to think in historical parallels.” But parallels are precisely what we should be looking for; parallels do not intersect, meaning that current events do not have to mirror historical ones precisely or in severity to benefit from historical reflection.

Perhaps the most compelling (and useful) rejection comes from Deborah Lipstadt. Lipstadt is a renowned Holocaust scholar and knows precisely what is at stake regarding the uses of the Holocaust as she herself fought and won her battle against Holocaust denier David Irving. She argues in the Atlantic, rightly, that Holocaust comparisons give officials a chance to escape responsibility by shifting the “conversation to the appropriateness of the comparison and the precision of the parallel.” Lipstadt further emphasizes that “it is important … to distinguish between methods and objectives.” She is correct on both counts, and we should take her counsel. However, this does not mean that comparisons between the Holocaust and contemporary situations should be rejected out of hand. Similar arguments were marshaled against comparing the Holocaust to any other genocide, yet there is a growing, rigorous field of comparative genocide studies that does just that. It recognizes that all genocides are unique in their own historical contexts but that all often have elements in common that are instructive for both understanding the past and interpreting the future. Perhaps what we need is not fewer Holocaust comparisons but more comparisons with other genocides. ...