After AOC Rant, Holocaust Museum Speaks Out: 'Unequivocally Rejects' Holocaust Analogies
Democratic socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York recently compared America’s migrant detention centers to the Nazi-run concentration camps where millions of Jews died during the Holocaust.
To put it bluntly, she got slammed for that disgusting comparison.
But Ocasio-Cortez has not changed her tune or apologized for her comments.
Rather, AOC doubled down on her ignorant stance over and over again.
I am not optimistic that Ocasio-Cortez is willing to listen to any reasonable source who criticizes the foolish nature of what she said, though she certainly ought to be.
So who might have enough credibility that AOC would actually listen to them?
Who might get AOC to stop saying things like, “The United States is running concentration camps on our southern border?”
How about the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum?
Well I, for one, think it would be worth listening to one of the foremost authorities on language surrounding concentration camps.
“The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum unequivocally rejects efforts to create analogies between the Holocaust and other events, whether historical or contemporary,” the museum said in a statement Sunday.
“That position has repeatedly and unambiguously been made clear in the Museum’s official statement on the matter — a statement that is reiterated and reaffirmed now.”
The museum was referring to another statement from Dec. 12, 2018, titled, “Why Holocaust Analogies Are Dangerous.”
The piece, authored by Holocaust historian Dr. Edna Friedberg, makes a powerful argument.
“The Holocaust has become shorthand for good vs. evil; it is the epithet to end all epithets,” Friedberg explained.
“And the current environment of rapid fire online communication and viral memes lends itself particularly well to this sort of sloppy analogizing. Worse, it allows it to spread more widely and quickly.”
“This oversimplified approach to complex history is dangerous.”
“Careless Holocaust analogies may demonize, demean, and intimidate their targets,” Friedberg warned.
“But there is a cost for all of us because they distract from the real issues challenging our society, because they shut down productive, thoughtful discourse,” Friedberg added.
“At a time when our country needs dialogue more than ever, it is especially dangerous to exploit the memory of the Holocaust as a rhetorical cudgel. We owe the survivors more than that. And we owe ourselves more than that.”
While AOC and her progressive buddies continue to use inflammatory language to describe the situation at America’s southern border, they are refusing to fund many of Trump’s border policies, which would actually alleviate the crisis.
Hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants are pouring over the border and, though they are being apprehended at an unprecedented rate, Border Patrol agents are not equipped with sufficient manpower or facilities to deal with this crisis.
But the Democrats have chosen their response.
Rather than actually provide resources or propose solutions to that would achieve meaningful border reform, they have chosen to tweet, grandstand and throw gas on the fire.
They believe the problem can be exploited for political gain.
And they’re willing to wring every bit of political capital they can from the crisis.
AOC may never apologize for using the phrase “concentration camps” as “rhetorical cudgel.”
But the rest of us see exactly what she is doing.
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