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Justice is Still Catching Up With the Nazis
The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice: At 96, a former death-camp secretary has just been arrested and charged.
The word “Nazi” gets thrown around more often today than ever before. People disputing the outcome of the 2020 election are “Nazis”; people disputing the outcome of the 2016 election are “Nazis”.
People who support border control and voter ID are “Nazis”; People who support vaccine mandates and health-status passports are “Nazis.”
Those who oppose abortion are “Nazis”; those who advocate for abortion are “Nazis.”
People with political ideals incompatible with one’s own are too often labeled Nazis in the modern age. It has become kind of a catchall term for any degree of bigotry or intolerance, even when no actual physical violence is involved.
The word has become a euphemism, a stand-in, an avatar, a bit of hyperbole thrown in for dramatic effect here and there. The phenomenon has even gone so far as to label the world’s only Jewish state, and the Middle East’s sole Democracy, a “Nazi state,” which is, needless to say, as mind-numbingly ironic as it gets.
The word “apartheid” gets applied to Israel more and more these days as well, as if 20% of Israel’s population wasn’t Muslim and Palestinian, and as if…