Cheryl Hines, the wife of presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., shares that the one Kennedy’s statement that drove Kennedy to propose the separation announcement to shield her from abuse was Kennedy’s comparison between the Holocaust and CDC leader Anthony Fauci’s efforts to vaccinate Americans against COVID. Shortly after criticisms arose, Hines took to Twitter and tweeted the following: “My husband’s reference to Anne Frank at a mandate rally in D.C. was reprehensible and insensitive. The atrocities that millions endured during the Holocaust should never be compared to anyone or anything. His opinions are not a reflection of my own.’” Kennedy explained his intention and apologized in this tweet:
Roger Waters, formerly of Pink Floyd, author of arguably the greatest rock opera in the history of that genre, The Wall, was also recently attacked for using Anne Frank as a comparison point. The attack was fierce and indicated that the Israel lobby is still alive and kicking, a presence quickly denied by corporate media. But there is a lobby and it is trying to silence Waters. Why? Because he talks about the situation of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank with moral clarity. More than this, elites of many stripes are desperate to censor his act because it draws attention to the authoritarianism world elites are seeking to impose on the global population—a world of war and want. Shamefully, the Biden Administration has affirmed the lobby’s propaganda. Here is Waters defending himself in a lengthy interview:
I understand why Hines said this, and my comments that follow are not a criticism of Hines. I am not implicating her in anything, albeit her words were quite harsh to her husband. (The attack on Waters is a different matter altogether. I will probably write more on this in the future.) But it does remind me that something needs to be said about using the Holocaust in historical comparison precisely because it has become a reflex among many people who are trying to be good people but don’t understand the importance of comparison in historical and scientific study.
I wrote about this years ago when defending William Robinson, professor of sociology at the University of California-Santa Barbara, who got into trouble for making such a comparison. There I wrote, beware the argument that one can never use the Holocaust (or anything else) as a comparison point for understanding the manifestation of evil. History is full of authoritarian actions for which the Holocaust is representative. History is full of genocidal killing, again, for which the Holocaust is representative. No historical event is the same. To be sure, each have their own idiographic character. At the same time, however, historical events share commonalities just as they share differences, and they must be compared to sort all this out.
The basis for all rational scientific work is the comparison of similar things. Consider that each person is a case, unique in his individuality, but at the same time also similar in many ways to other persons. There are, moreover, groups differences. This is why we use samples from the population with the ability to draw inferences about the larger population and the groups that comprise it. It is same for historical and social analysis using historical case studies. Historical events, e.g., the French Revolution, the American Revolution, the Bolshevik Revolution, etc., are the cases we use in multivariate analysis of the nature of revolution generally. What’s similar? What’s different? That’s why we compare. We’re trying to ascertain nomothetic principles that explain why revolutions happen—and why they don’t happen, or why they’re not successful, and so on. We are also trying to determine if there are nomothetic principle at all in historical and social events and trends.
Understanding the Holocaust specifically requires understanding the problem of authoritarianism and genocide generally, and we do this for a practical reason: to stop authoritarianism and genocide before these horrors happen or early in their development. Indeed, this is a moral imperative. We have clearly not taken the lessons of history to heart, because we can see these things rising again (some of us can, anyway)—and popular understanding of the character of fascism is terrifyingly impoverished.
To say that we cannot compare what the Nazis did in the early period of the development of the nationalist socialist nightmare to today’s situation with authoritarianism and war on a vast scale, i.e., the administrative state and the technocratic apparatus of global corporatism, is to say that we should blind ourselves to fascism. Who would think such a thing? It suggests that somebody doesn’t want us to make those comparisons. Why? Because it interferes with their agenda?
But we said “Never again” in the aftermath of the Holocaust. I thought we meant it. We have to mean it. And that means that no historical case is transcendent, cordoned off from examination, however horrific. Indeed, the more horrific the event or development, the more important it becomes as a point of historical comparison. So beware those who tell you to not think about the things you must think about if we are to make a better world for subsequent generations.
freedom and reason 