(This takes four to six minutes to read.)
It is rare that I compose any personal essays for this subcommunity, but this particular topic is especially relevant after seeing somebody scold another user for equating ICE with the German Fascists. Before I continue, I should clarify that I am neither Jewish nor Romani, nor have I ever had relatives who perished under the Axis. I am a disabled socialist, but whatever worth that may have I cannot determine for you.
Back when I still had a Reddit account, I wrote this in December 2019:
Third Reich analogies are shit and they should not be necessary to get a point across.
One needs to understand this in its context: I was clearly angry writing that because it was the umpteen thousandth time that I had seen anticommunists compare communists to the German Fascists. There were days when it drove me up the wall because I had seen it so many times.
That being said, one of my biggest Reddit regrets was writing that bit in my comment. Yes, analogies can be crude ways of getting points across (being rhetorical shortcuts), and yes, I would prefer that nobody overuse Third Reich analogies (like the right does). Even so, what I wrote was too harsh: there are times when it is necessary to use Third Reich analogies. If I went up to historians and told them that they should never dare liken Fascist Italy to the Third Reich, they would almost all look at me like I had lost my mind.
More importantly, I do not want anybody to scorn lower‐class people for using them against their oppressors either. In general, I believe that the ways wherein we respond to our oppression should preferably not be controlled; that can only make an already unpleasant situation worse, and besides, we have legitimate grievances. No analogy is perfect, and any of them can break down if you scrutinize them enough, but they still have some benefits. Quoting Gavriel D. Rosenfeld’s ‘Who Was “Hitler” Before Hitler? Historical Analogies and the Struggle to Understand Nazism, 1930–1945’, pages 253–254:
Historical analogies have many virtues. Ever since Aristotle, scholars have recognized the epistemological value of analogical thinking. Analogies are employed in many different cognitive tasks, but they are particularly useful in perception and decision-making.
Because analogies help render complex subjects intelligible through simplification, they have been praised as “vital” analytical tools that help people “make sense of the world.” Historical analogies, in turn, are particularly useful in “retrieving lessons from history.”¹⁴
Some historical analogies have become noted aphorisms—for example, Karl Marx’s comparison of Napoleon Bonaparte with his underachieving nephew, Louis Napoleon, in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte of 1851, which inspired the famous idea that history always happens twice: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.
Beyond being analytically important, analogies also serve a positive psychological function. They provide people with a sense of comfort, solace, and orientation when they are confused by new circumstances. Analogies satisfy the popular desire for familiarity, for “reassurance that history follows a patterned […] course.” People thus welcome analogies that make “the present and future recognizable.”¹⁵ When Leon Trotsky lost his power struggle with Joseph Stalin in the mid-1920s, for instance, he drew comfort by looking to the French Revolution and interpreting Stalin’s ascent as a “Thermidorian” or “Bonapartist” turn in the Bolshevik revolution[].¹⁶
(Emphasis added. Click here for more.)
Pages 254–255:
Historical analogies also have drawbacks, however. For one thing, they are often viewed as simplistic.¹⁷ Analogies are essentially “cognitive shortcuts”; they are substitutes for, rather than expressions of, detailed analysis.¹⁸ Their simplicity, however, makes them tempting for both producers and consumers.
Academic theorists often identify the “repetition” of historical events in order to create “elegant laws and generalizations.”¹⁹ The general public, meanwhile, prefers “brief, uncomplicated, and racy formulations” to those that are more complicated.²⁰ As a result, analogies can “short circuit critical reflection” and lead to “superficial thinking.”²¹
Historical analogies are also unverifiable. They are not facts, but interpretations—ones whose validity is determined by the forces of “rhetorical pragmatism” rather than by any proximity to objective truth.²² It is difficult, therefore, to prove one analogy superior to another.²³
All analogies, moreover, are highly subjective. Because they are emotionally comforting, they can become self-serving. Once they become lodged in the “public mind,” analogies can become “resistant to correction.”²⁴ Skeptics worry that, when analogies are “transformed into law-like statements, [they …] promote a sense of false certainty.”²⁵ Analogies can thus be misleading, insofar as they can cause us to misinterpret the past.²⁶ In some instances, this outcome is unintentional.
Analogies can inadvertently, but nevertheless falsely, convince us that a new event is merely a repetition of a past event. They can cloud our judgment and limit our ability to respond rationally to a new situation. E. H. Carr noted the ironic fact that many Bolshevik leaders in the mid-1920s rejected Trotsky as Lenin’s successor because he looked more like Napoleon than Stalin did.²⁷
Analogies can also be deliberately abused for tendentious purposes. As Arno Mayer has written, they can be used to “persuade, to incite, to alarm, to defame, and to exalt rather than to orient, clarify, and to stimulate critical thought.”²⁸
Yet, as Ernest May and others have shown, political élites have often abused this potential—for example, the U.S. government’s overuse of the “Munich” analogy to justify ill-advised interventions in Vietnam and Iraq.²⁹ To counteract this pitfall, policy-makers should avoid relying on single analogies and instead consult a diverse range of “alternative analogies” for guidance.³⁰
Hence, Fascism’s Jewish victims (especially in the 1930s) often likened the Third Reich’s head of state to numerous biblical antagonists, such as Antiochus IV, Haman, and Pharaoh. These analogies comforted many Jews and helped with their morale, convincing them that the Third Reich would follow a more or less predictable course: the antisemites would once again end up the losers while the Jewish people would eventually get the last laugh.
I need not remind you of how our oppressors abuse and overuse Third Reich analogies (likening, for example, abortion doctors, Palestinians, and us to Fascists). A subject that is more challenging to discuss are the analogies that we make in good faith but could easily provoke disagreements among ourselves.
Take comparing the meat industry to the Shoah, for example. It is interesting to note that, while many discourage comparing the meat industry to the Shoah, many survivors and writers have themselves compared the Shoah to the meat industry. Jack Sittsamer, for instance, said that many Jews marched to the Mielec Airport
Jacques Stroumsa summarized the Reich’s concentration camps as
Here we have a curious case where one direction is more acceptable than its other. Why is this? Because likening the meat industry to the Shoah advances an agenda, and ordinary people are deeply uncomfortable with the implication that they are complicit in oppressing innocent animals. The analogy also works on a flawed premise since nobody ate Jews — to the best of my knowledge — and merely eating an animal is hardly a reliable indicator that you also ‘hate’ the animal.
On the other hand, when you look at how the meat industry restricts innocent animals’ liberty, crams them in abysmal conditions, and slaughters millions of them in mechanical fashions, it is difficult to avoid thinking back to an actual extermination campaign. In any case, the animal abuse in the meat industry is indisputable, even if you disagree that the industry is in and of itself a form of animal abuse.
While I still personally feel that likening said industry to the Shoah is unnecessary, I would approach this by instead offering the comparer examples of the Third Reich’s animal abuse, as it is an empathetic — and educational — way of validating an innocent person’s frustrations. To use a real example: at one point in 2020 I became acquainted with a communist on Twitter who compared the United States police force to the Wehrmacht. While I myself found that wrong, given how the police oppress us I did not bother nitpicking. In fact, it was a nice opportunity for me to share examples of antisemitic neofascists in the police force. As I wrote back in November, ‘When innocent people are upset, prompting them to question their own sanity is not what they need most.’
To conclude, I would personally resort to Third Reich analogies sparingly, if only because that way they feel more notable and more impactful upon seeing them. On the other hand, I think that scolding a lower-class person for reusing them, when she is rightfully upset with her oppressors, would be less productive than showing her real examples of neofascist culture among her oppressors or instances where the Fascists oppressed innocents. When we validate her frustrations with evidence, she not only learns something but benefits from our compassion.
The question is, how often is that "sometimes"? Is it still infrequent enough that white people are willing to accept the tradeoff? Is losing the occasional in-group member an acceptable price to pay for keeping the group privilege? Some violence always bleeds into the in-group from the margins but so long as the group as a whole still benefits sufficiently, will they not still begrudgingly accept it?
"Yes some of you may get caught in the crossfire now and then, but overall most of you will still be better off. That is the bargain we offer."
So far it has worked. But now that the benefits are beginning to dry up, for how much longer will that social contract be accepted? And this applies more broadly to the imperial core population as a whole.
Yeah, the "otherwise" part I wrote is probably not the best way to convey the issue. Just what I could think of in the moment as an example for trying to steer somebody in the right direction. You are right that part of the problem is how it directly benefits white people historically. And as you say, that is not going to stay intact in the same way as the contradictions intensify.
As comparisons to the Third Reich go, I almost wonder about using analog to "first they came for X and I said nothing", as in saying it to white people and noting how the state comes for non-white first. Wonder if any would be moved by that analogy.