Joshua Mirth PARADE, Wisconsin

Hitler Analogies Kritik

Table of Contents
Hitler Analogies Kritik...............................................................................................................................1
Table of Contents..............................................................................................................................1
Strategy Notes.......................................................................................................................................5
Framework: ......................................................................................................................................5
Link: .................................................................................................................................................5
Implication: ......................................................................................................................................5
Alternative: ......................................................................................................................................5
Extensions and Answers:..................................................................................................................5
Cross-Examination Questions...............................................................................................................6
NC Shell (313 Words)...........................................................................................................................7
A) Framework...................................................................................................................................7
B) Link..............................................................................................................................................7
C) Implication...................................................................................................................................7
D) Alternative...................................................................................................................................7
Full Cards.........................................................................................................................................8
Link: Invoking the Holocaust in lesser matters is a trivialization...............................................8
The League for Human Rights, 2000,
http://www.bnaibrith.ca/publications/audit2000/audit2000-03.html......................................8
Ethically incumbent not to misuse Nazi “nuclear bomb”............................................................8
Arthur L. Caplan (chair of the Department of Medical Ethics, University of Pennsylvania
School of Medicine, Philadelphia,), “Misusing the Nazi Analogy “, Science Magazine, July
2005, 10.1126/science.1115437 .............................................................................................8
Hitler analogies bad for debate/rational thought..........................................................................8

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BRENDAN NYHAN, “Why the Nazi Analogy Is on the Rise”, TIME Magazine, Thursday,
Aug. 31, 2006..........................................................................................................................8
Realize that invoking Auschwitz doesn't help.............................................................................8
Alan E. Steinweis (Ph.D., North Carolina, 1988, professor at the University of Vermont,
areas of expertise include Nazi Germany, Holocaust, and modern Europe, Director of the
Center for Holocaust Studies),“The Auschwitz Analogy: Holocaust Memory and American
Debates over Intervention in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s”, Holocaust and Genocide
Studies, V19 N2, Fall 2005, pp. 276–289, accessed via Project Muse...................................8
1AR Shell (127 Words).........................................................................................................................9
A) Framework and Link...................................................................................................................9
B) Implication and Alternative.........................................................................................................9
Full Card...........................................................................................................................................9
Ethically incumbent not to misuse Nazi “nuclear bomb”............................................................9
Arthur L. Caplan (chair of the Department of Medical Ethics, University of Pennsylvania
School of Medicine, Philadelphia,), “Misusing the Nazi Analogy “, Science Magazine, July
2005, 10.1126/science.1115437 .............................................................................................9
Extensions...........................................................................................................................................10
Links...............................................................................................................................................10
Comparisons to the Holocaust desensitize us to lesser atrocities..............................................10
Alan E. Steinweis (Ph.D., North Carolina, 1988, professor at the University of Vermont,
areas of expertise include Nazi Germany, Holocaust, and modern Europe, Director of the
Center for Holocaust Studies),“The Auschwitz Analogy: Holocaust Memory and American
Debates over Intervention in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s”, Holocaust and Genocide
Studies, V19 N2, Fall 2005, pp. 276–289, accessed via Project Muse.................................10
Using “Holocaust” to refer to everything empties the term of meaning....................................10
Barbie Zelizer (Ph.D. 1990, University of Pennsylvania; MA 1981, Hebrew University of
Jerusalem, former journalist, President of the International Communication Association, has
been both a Guggenheim Fellow, a Research Fellow at the Freedom Forum Media Studies
Center, a Fellow at Harvard University's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and
Public Policy, and a Fulbright Senior Scholar.) “Remembering to forget - holocaust
memory through the camera's eye”, 1998.............................................................................10
Equating other murders with the holocaust trivializes genocide and is a revision of history....10
YEHUDA BAUER (academic adviser to Yad Vashem and the author of numerous books
and articles about the Holocaust.), “Remembering accurately on Int'l Holocaust
Remembrance Day”, The Jerusalem Post, January 26, 2010 Tuesday.................................10
Trivialization bad............................................................................................................................11
Repeated comparisons to historical events weaken the compulsion to act in the future...........11
Barbie Zelizer (Ph.D. 1990, University of Pennsylvania; MA 1981, Hebrew University of
Jerusalem, former journalist, President of the International Communication Association, has
been both a Guggenheim Fellow, a Research Fellow at the Freedom Forum Media Studies
Center, a Fellow at Harvard University's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and
Public Policy, and a Fulbright Senior Scholar.) “Remembering to forget - holocaust
memory through the camera's eye”, 1998.............................................................................11
Trivializing the holocaust obscures its lessons, makes it ambiguous, and a political tool.........11
IRWIN COTLER ( Canada's Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada from 2003

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until 2006), “Diminishing the Holocaust”, The Gazette (Montreal) January 31, 2009........11
Increased exposure makes us more comfortable with the Holocaust........................................11
Stephen D. Smith (Director, Beth Shalom Holocaust Memorial Centre), United Kingdom,
January-28-2002....................................................................................................................11
Lessons of the Holocaust lose their value if it is overused........................................................11
IRWIN COTLER ( Canada's Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada from 2003
until 2006), “Diminishing the Holocaust”, The Gazette (Montreal) January 31, 2009........11
Poor debate.....................................................................................................................................12
Nazi analogies end arguments by invoking the ultimate evil....................................................12
Anne Applebaum (columnist, worked as the Foreign and Deputy Editor of Spectator
magazine in London, lectured at Yale and Columbia Universities among many others, was a
Marshall Scholar at the London School of Economics and St. Antony’s College, Oxford),
“The Hitler Analogy”, The Washington Post, May 20, 2008................................................12
Indiscriminate invocation of Nazis trivializes moral discourse.................................................12
Walter Wright (Ph.D. Dean of the Department of Philosophy, Clark University, MA, M.A.
and Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University. Teaches Personal Values, Kant and the 19th Century,
the Philosophy of Religion, and Concepts of the Self), “Historical Analogies, Slippery
Slopes, and the Question of Euthanasia”, The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, 2001...12
Scholars on the Holocaust consider comparisons destructive of subtlety in debates................12
Alan E. Steinweis (Ph.D., North Carolina, 1988, professor at the University of Vermont,
areas of expertise include Nazi Germany, Holocaust, and modern Europe, Director of the
Center for Holocaust Studies),“The Auschwitz Analogy: Holocaust Memory and American
Debates over Intervention in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s”, Holocaust and Genocide
Studies, V19 N2, Fall 2005, pp. 276–289, accessed via Project Muse.................................12
ALT: Reject.....................................................................................................................................13
Declare a moratorium on Holocaust analogies..........................................................................13
MICHAEL BERENBAUM ((professor of Jewish Studies and director of the Sigi Ziering
Center for the Study of the Holocaust and Ethics at American Jewish University), Who
Owns the ‘N’ Word?, The Jewish Journal, October 28, 2009 ..............................................13
We owe it to victims to use the Nazi analogy carefully.............................................................13
Arthur L. Caplan (chair of the Department of Medical Ethics, University of Pennsylvania
School of Medicine, Philadelphia,), “Misusing the Nazi Analogy “, Science Magazine, July
2005, 10.1126/science.1115437............................................................................................13
A2's and Random Cards......................................................................................................................14
A2: “It really is comparable!”.........................................................................................................14
Not even Soviet Russia can be compared with Nazi Germany's goal of complete destruction.14
YEHUDA BAUER (academic adviser to Yad Vashem and the author of numerous books
and articles about the Holocaust.), “Remembering accurately on Int'l Holocaust
Remembrance Day”, The Jerusalem Post, January 26, 2010 Tuesday.................................14
No universal lesson of the Holocaust is accurate/sufficient......................................................14
Alan E. Steinweis (Ph.D., North Carolina, 1988, professor at the University of Vermont,
areas of expertise include Nazi Germany, Holocaust, and modern Europe, Director of the
Center for Holocaust Studies),“The Auschwitz Analogy: Holocaust Memory and American
Debates over Intervention in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s”, Holocaust and Genocide
Studies, V19 N2, Fall 2005, pp. 276–289, accessed via Project Muse.................................14

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Denying the uniqueness of the Holocaust converges with denying it altogether......................15

Alan S. Rosenbaum, (Author, professor of philosophy at Cleveland State University), “Is
the Holocaust unique?” Perspectives on comparative genocide, July 1997.........................15
A2: Mentioning and remembering good.........................................................................................15
Distorts the old to compare with the new..................................................................................15
Barbie Zelizer (Ph.D. 1990, University of Pennsylvania; MA 1981, Hebrew University of
Jerusalem, former journalist, President of the International Communication Association, has
been both a Guggenheim Fellow, a Research Fellow at the Freedom Forum Media Studies
Center, a Fellow at Harvard University's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and
Public Policy, and a Fulbright Senior Scholar.) “Remembering to forget - holocaust
memory through the camera's eye”, 1998.............................................................................15
Other Stuff......................................................................................................................................15
Auschwitz analogies replace real thought with vehemence......................................................15
Theodore Dalrymple (British writer, retired prison doctor, and psychiatrist, has written
extensively on culture, art, politics, education, and medicine), City Journal, Trivializing the
Holocaust II, 4/12/2002.........................................................................................................15

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Strategy Notes
The purpose of this brief is to provide an alternate, kritikal offense against opponents citing Hitler,
Nazis, and the WWII Holocaust in debate.
A few things to note about this kritik:
Framework:
It is necessary to communicate to the judge that the kritik, the mindset must be evaluated before the
resolution-based arguments. The way I have framed it in this brief is the “mindsets affect the real
world” argument. There are other ways to convey this, but that seemed most appropriate in context.
Link:
It's implicit in there argumentation. You can't let them get away with saying that “you link by
responding”, or by tying the link into the applicability of the Hitler argument to what you are actually
condoning. There are other ways they could have made the argument, and chose not to. You have no
choice when responding to them, however.
Implication:
Note, it's not an impact, rather it's what the mindset implies. They don't have to actually do anything,
it's sufficient that the mindset is compatible with the undesired ends.
Alternative:
I think the implications are strong enough to justify rejecting all of the opposing side's arguments. You
could possibly make things more palatable by just asking for a rejection of the Hitler-based argument,
but if that's all you want, you probably don't need a full-blown kritik. Also, it's very important to make
sure this doesn't turn into an ad-hominem. It is the mindset of their arguments you are attacking, not
your opponents themselves.
Extensions and Answers:
I'll need to run it a few times to figure out what's needed and what these should say. A few analytical
ones could be written as well. Feel free to post changes.

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Cross-Examination Questions
Q: You said that x was Hitler's motivation, correct?
A: Yes.
Q: Was that his sole motivator?
A: No.
Q: So the issue with Hitler was a little more complicated?
A: Yes.
[this should take out any attempts at tying the k into winning other arguments]

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NC Shell (313 Words)

A) Framework
Judge, no matter who wins this round, our world is no different. But actions in this round, the words
we use, and most importantly, the mindsets we knowingly or unknowingly advocate do have an impact
on the real world, so we should weigh those before anything strictly pertaining to the resolution.
B) Link
I'd specifically like to look at the mindset the affirmative has shown with their example of
(Hitler/Nazis/Holocaust).
According to The League for Human Rights, [quote] “The invocation of Holocaust terminology and
symbols to try to make a point about a much less severe event, or to describe undemocratic or
authoritarian behaviour, is to diminish the importance of the Holocaust.” [unquote] This is exactly
what the affirmative has done...
C) Implication
This misuse has two very serious implications.
First, according to Arthur L. Caplan, chair of the Department of Medical Ethics at the University of
Pennsylvania School of Medicine [quote] “The Nazi analogy is equivalent to dropping a nuclear bomb
in ethical battles. [I]ts misuse diminishes the horror done by [the] Nazi[s] to their victims.” [unquote].
Secondly, according to political scientist and media critic Brendan Nyhan [quote] “Hitler analogies are
bad for debate. They stifle rational thought, paint one's opponents as Nazi sympathizers and reduce
complexity to a simplistic framework.” [unquote]
D) Alternative
However, we don't have to fall into the mindset of trivialization; we can, and should, reject all instances
of it. We need to come to the conclusion voiced by a leader of the German Jewish community: [quote]
“When a decision is correct, one does not need Auschwitz to make it more correct. And when it is
wrong, it is not made better when Auschwitz is invoked.” [unquote] The affirmative's arguments fail to
reject the trivialization of (Hitler/Nazis/Holocaust); therefore, you should reject the affirmative's
arguments and vote negative.

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Full Cards
Link: Invoking the Holocaust in lesser matters is a trivialization
The League for Human Rights, 2000, http://www.bnaibrith.ca/publications/audit2000/audit2000-
03.html
Blatant Holocaust denial is offensive, easily labeled as antisemitism, and looked down upon by the majority of
society. But this year there has been a disturbing increase in a more subtle phenomenon - Holocaust trivialization.
The invocation of Holocaust terminology and symbols to try to make a point about a much less
severe event, or to describe any undemocratic or authoritarian behaviour, is to diminish the
importance of the Holocaust not only as a pivotal moment in modern Jewish history but also as a less on for
all humankind. Such trivialization of the Holocaust is offensive and upsetting to the Jewish community. As the
years pass an there are fewer people with first-hand Holocaust experience able to be our living memory and
constant reminder, we must continue to deal with the trend toward the trivialization of the Holocaust in a serious
and consistent manner.

Ethically incumbent not to misuse Nazi “nuclear bomb”

Arthur L. Caplan (chair of the Department of Medical Ethics, University of Pennsylvania School of
Medicine, Philadelphia,), “Misusing the Nazi Analogy “, Science Magazine, July 2005,
10.1126/science.1115437
Sadly, too often those who draw an analogy between current behavior and what the Nazis did do not know what
they are talking about. The Nazi analogy is equivalent to dropping a nuclear bomb in ethical battles
about science and medicine. Because its misuse diminishes the horror done by Nazi scientists and doctors
to their victims, it is ethically incumbent upon those who invoke the Nazi analogy to understand
what they are claiming.

Hitler analogies bad for debate/rational thought

BRENDAN NYHAN, “Why the Nazi Analogy Is on the Rise”, TIME Magazine, Thursday, Aug. 31,
2006
Hitler analogies are, of course, generally bad for democratic debate. They tend to stifle rational
thought, paint one's opponents as Nazi sympathizers and appeasers, and reduce the complexity of
foreign policy to a simplistic appease/don't appease framework.

Realize that invoking Auschwitz doesn't help

Alan E. Steinweis (Ph.D., North Carolina, 1988, professor at the University of Vermont, areas of
expertise include Nazi Germany, Holocaust, and modern Europe, Director of the Center for
Holocaust Studies),“The Auschwitz Analogy: Holocaust Memory and American Debates
over Intervention in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s”, Holocaust and Genocide Studies,
V19 N2, Fall 2005, pp. 276–289, accessed via Project Muse
Over time, a historicized Holocaust may well lend itself less to simple-minded analogizing and cynical
instrumentalization. We can hope that American politicians and the American public will come to the
realization recently articulated by a leader of the Jewish community in Germany: “When a
decision is correct, one does not need Auschwitz to make it more correct. And when it is wrong,
it is not made better when Auschwitz is invoked.”

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1AR Shell (127 Words)

A) Framework and Link
Before I address the negative's arguments, we should take a look at the mindset behind these
arguments, specifically (his/her) point about (Hitler/Nazis/Holocaust). Implicit in this argument was
the mindset that it is acceptable to invoke analogies to (Hitler/Nazis/Holcoaust).
B) Implication and Alternative
This has dangerous implications. As Arthur L. Caplan writes, [quote] “The Nazi analogy is equivalent
to dropping a nuclear bomb in ethical battles. [I]ts misuse diminishes the horror done by the Nazi[s] to
their victims, it is ethically incumbent upon those who invoke the Nazi analogy to understand what
they are claiming.” [unquote]. We need to recognize this misuse of the holocaust in the negative's
argumentation and reject those arguments as both harmful to rational debate and disrespectful to those
who suffered by voting affirmative in today's debate.

Full Card
Ethically incumbent not to misuse Nazi “nuclear bomb”
Arthur L. Caplan (chair of the Department of Medical Ethics, University of Pennsylvania School of
Medicine, Philadelphia,), “Misusing the Nazi Analogy “, Science Magazine, July 2005,
10.1126/science.1115437
Sadly, too often those who draw an analogy between current behavior and what the Nazis did do not know what
they are talking about. The Nazi analogy is equivalent to dropping a nuclear bomb in ethical battles
about science and medicine. Because its misuse diminishes the horror done by Nazi scientists and doctors
to their victims, it is ethically incumbent upon those who invoke the Nazi analogy to understand
what they are claiming.

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Extensions
Links
Comparisons to the Holocaust desensitize us to lesser atrocities
Alan E. Steinweis (Ph.D., North Carolina, 1988, professor at the University of Vermont, areas of
expertise include Nazi Germany, Holocaust, and modern Europe, Director of the Center for
Holocaust Studies),“The Auschwitz Analogy: Holocaust Memory and American Debates
over Intervention in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s”, Holocaust and Genocide Studies,
V19 N2, Fall 2005, pp. 276–289, accessed via Project Muse
For Peter Novick [historian and author], such gestures are more problematic. Using the Holocaust as a
yardstick for comparison, Novick argues, can actually desensitize Americans to atrocities of lesser
magnitude than the horrific events of the Second World War. During the crisis in Bosnia, some Jewish observers
objected to comparisons with the Holocaust, asserting that such analogies trivialized the latter. For example,
Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen claimed that comparing Bosnia to the Holocaust was “like
calling a traffic cop a Nazi for ticketing your car.” American officials picked up on such arguments and
used them to justify their decision to stay out of the conflict.

Using “Holocaust” to refer to everything empties the term of meaning

Barbie Zelizer (Ph.D. 1990, University of Pennsylvania; MA 1981, Hebrew University of Jerusalem,
former journalist, President of the International Communication Association, has been both
a Guggenheim Fellow, a Research Fellow at the Freedom Forum Media Studies Center, a
Fellow at Harvard University's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public
Policy, and a Fulbright Senior Scholar.) “Remembering to forget - holocaust memory
through the camera's eye”, 1998
This is vividly seen in the recycling of two terms most directly associated with atrocity-Holocaust and genocide.
The term Holocaust has been widely overused, to the point that it no longer displays a direct link with the
events that originally thrust it into the public eye. Now invoked "by people who want to draw public attention to
human-rights abuses, social inequalities suffered by racial and ethnic minorities and women, environmental
disasters, AIDS, and a whole host of other things," the word "has become flattened [so that] any evil that befalls
anyone anywhere becomes a Holocaust." The word Holocaust describes arguments for and against issues as
wide-ranging as free speech, arms sales, and activities against terrorism. In a sense, then, the
failure to invoke lexical choices to describe atrocity is an emptying of the original term.

Equating other murders with the holocaust trivializes genocide and is a revision of history
YEHUDA BAUER (academic adviser to Yad Vashem and the author of numerous books and articles
about the Holocaust.), “Remembering accurately on Int'l Holocaust Remembrance Day”,
The Jerusalem Post, January 26, 2010 Tuesday
There is ground for deep concern about repeated attempts to equate the Nazi regime's genocidal
policies, with the Holocaust at their center, with other murderous or oppressive actions, an equation
that not only trivializes and relativizes the genocide of the Jews perpetrated by the Nazi regime,
but is also a mendacious revision of recent world history.

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Trivialization bad
Repeated comparisons to historical events weaken the compulsion to act in the future
Barbie Zelizer (Ph.D. 1990, University of Pennsylvania; MA 1981, Hebrew University of Jerusalem,
former journalist, President of the International Communication Association, has been both
a Guggenheim Fellow, a Research Fellow at the Freedom Forum Media Studies Center, a
Fellow at Harvard University's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public
Policy, and a Fulbright Senior Scholar.) “Remembering to forget - holocaust memory
through the camera's eye”, 1998
In each case, the media give meaning to new instances of horror by contextualizing them against earlier
brutality. Yet in so doing, they flatten the complexity of the original event and create a macabre
continuum of barbaric acts that both mainstreams atrocity and shocks much of the public in to stupefied
inaction. In the Washington Post's view, at each "new ethnic eruption, the cry of 'never again'-never
another uncontested genocide-rings weaker." All of this suggest that the act of bearing witness may no
longer compel responsibility.

Trivializing the holocaust obscures its lessons, makes it ambiguous, and a political tool
IRWIN COTLER ( Canada's Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada from 2003 until
2006), “Diminishing the Holocaust”, The Gazette (Montreal) January 31, 2009
When the Holocaust is misconstrued and trivialized, and its name invoked in the face of all
kinds of suffering, its lessons become obscured, its teachings become ambiguous, and its
invocation becomes political. Indeed, the political consequence, if not the intent, of this scurrilous indictment
is clear: If Israel is a Nazi state it has no right to exist - in fact, there is an obligation to dismantle this Nazi state
and delegitimize its supporters. This is why Lilleng's Nazi analogy chastising the Jews and the calls from protesters
to murder the Jews are equally offensive to the paradigm of Holocaust remembrance. The latter overtly displays the
genocidal hatred of the Nazis, while the former implicitly rationalizes this response. If we cannot unite and
deplore such distortion, then we have forgotten the Holocaust indeed.

Increased exposure makes us more comfortable with the Holocaust

Stephen D. Smith (Director, Beth Shalom Holocaust Memorial Centre), United Kingdom, January-28-
2002
The danger is that of trivialization. The more the Holocaust is exposed to society, the more
people may feel able to deal with it.

Lessons of the Holocaust lose their value if it is overused

IRWIN COTLER ( Canada's Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada from 2003 until
2006), “Diminishing the Holocaust”, The Gazette (Montreal) January 31, 2009
There's a third lesson - one that emerges not so much from the Holocaust itself as from its aftermath. This lesson is
that remembrance requires active effort and reflection. For the relativizing pressures of contemporary events are
great, and the lessons of the Holocaust risk losing their value if the tragedy of the Holocaust is
invoked to fit every case of moral outrage. In short: if everything is another Holocaust, then
nothing is - and the Holocaust itself becomes nothing as well.

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Poor debate
Nazi analogies end arguments by invoking the ultimate evil
Anne Applebaum (columnist, worked as the Foreign and Deputy Editor of Spectator magazine in
London, lectured at Yale and Columbia Universities among many others, was a Marshall
Scholar at the London School of Economics and St. Antony’s College, Oxford), “The Hitler
Analogy”, The Washington Post, May 20, 2008
I am not, I hasten to add, arguing here against the public discussion of history: If the Nazis were being invoked
more generally -- in warnings, say, about the unpredictability of totalitarian regimes -- they might be a useful part
of a number of discussions. Unfortunately, Nazi analogies nowadays are usually deployed to end
arguments, not broaden them. Once you inject Hitler or the Third Reich into a debate, you have
evoked the ultimate form of evil, put your op-opponent in an indefensible position -- "What, you're opposed
to a war against Hitler?" -- and for all practical purposes halted the conversation. Invoking the Nazis also
changes the tenor of a debate. There may be good, tactical reasons for choosing not to negotiate with Hezbollah or
the Iranian regime, for example (the best reason, usually, is that the relevant diplomats are fairly sure negotiations
won't work). But calling opponents of this policy "appeasers" distorts the debate, giving tactical choices a phony
moral grounding. In reality, circumstances do change, even where "terrorists and radicals" are involved, as this
administration in particular well knows.

Indiscriminate invocation of Nazis trivializes moral discourse

Walter Wright (Ph.D. Dean of the Department of Philosophy, Clark University, MA, M.A. and Ph.D.
from Vanderbilt University. Teaches Personal Values, Kant and the 19th Century, the Philosophy of
Religion, and Concepts of the Self), “Historical Analogies, Slippery Slopes, and the Question of
Euthanasia”, The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, 2001
As Courtney Campbell says, "Its [the Nazi analogy's] occasional indiscriminate invocation
constitutes a cheapening or trivializing of moral discourse ... to characterize an opponent as a "Nazi" or to
accuse a person of advocating Nazi-like proposals represents a radical indictment or even a
denial of his or her humanity."

Scholars on the Holocaust consider comparisons destructive of subtlety in debates

Alan E. Steinweis (Ph.D., North Carolina, 1988, professor at the University of Vermont, areas of
expertise include Nazi Germany, Holocaust, and modern Europe, Director of the Center for
Holocaust Studies),“The Auschwitz Analogy: Holocaust Memory and American Debates
over Intervention in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s”, Holocaust and Genocide Studies,
V19 N2, Fall 2005, pp. 276–289, accessed via Project Muse
With a small number of exceptions, scholars with expertise on the Holocaust kept their distance from the policy
debates described in this essay. Scholars, and historians especially, often look askance at the
mobilization of historical analogies in contemporary political debates. They are reluctant to make what
they see as a sacrifice of intellectual subtlety and depth in order to engage in the public discussion, a
reluctance reinforced by the fear that their own complex positions might become associated with the crasser ones
expressed by journalists and politicians. The danger here, of course, is the one encapsulated in the old cliché about
scholars who prefer to float above the fray while remaining beside the point. Whether we like it or not, politicians
and pundits will continue to mobilize (or reject) historical analogies for their own purposes, and if scholars do not
endeavor to lend a modicum of nuance and sophistication to the debate, then who will?

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ALT: Reject
Declare a moratorium on Holocaust analogies
MICHAEL BERENBAUM ((professor of Jewish Studies and director of the Sigi Ziering Center for the
Study of the Holocaust and Ethics at American Jewish University), Who Owns the ‘N’
Word?, The Jewish Journal, October 28, 2009
We make all too trivial comparisons between the Holocaust and contemporary anti-Semitism. We employ rhetoric
of the Holocaust all too easily, all too cheaply. John Roth admonished us: “Handle with care!” Rabbi Irving
Greenberg established a principle of authentic expression after the Holocaust: No statement,
theological or otherwise, can be made that cannot be made in the presence of burning children.
In our world, very little is handled with care in the public sphere. In our world, there is precious little humility that
would suggest awe before an event of such magnitude. Let us declare a moratorium on Holocaust
analogies. Those who invoke the analogies of the Holocaust demonstrate how little they
understand of that time and place — and more importantly, of our time and our place.

We owe it to victims to use the Nazi analogy carefully

Arthur L. Caplan (chair of the Department of Medical Ethics, University of Pennsylvania School of
Medicine, Philadelphia,), “Misusing the Nazi Analogy “, Science Magazine, July 2005,
10.1126/science.1115437
There are many reasons why a practice or policy in contemporary science or medicine might be
judged unethical. But the cavalier use of the Nazi analogy in an attempt to bolster an argument
is unethical. Sixty years after the fall of the Third Reich, we owe it to those who suffered and
died at the hands of the Nazis to insist that those who invoke the Nazi analogy do so with care.

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A2's and Random Cards

A2: “It really is comparable!”
Not even Soviet Russia can be compared with Nazi Germany's goal of complete destruction
YEHUDA BAUER (academic adviser to Yad Vashem and the author of numerous books and articles
about the Holocaust.), “Remembering accurately on Int'l Holocaust Remembrance Day”,
The Jerusalem Post, January 26, 2010 Tuesday
There can be no doubt as to the crimes of violent and often murderous oppression by the Soviet
regime of and in the countries of Eastern Europe. In the Baltic states, occupied by the USSR in 1940-1941 and
1944-1989/91, for in-stance, tens of thousands of local residents were exiled, many of whom died, and most
returned only much later, broken in body and mind, while thousands of others were imprisoned and were killed or
died in prison. Local communists, and they were numerous, ruled these countries and blindly obeyed orders from
Moscow, but did not plan the annihilation of any Eastern European national groups as such. Among the exiled,
tortured and killed people, Jews were much more numerous than their percentage in the population. This was brutal
and murderous oppression, but not genocide either toward them or toward the other ethnic groups. It must be said,
though, that a certain proportion of the persecuted in the immediate postwar era had in fact been Nazi
collaborators. However, to compare this with the murder of many millions of Europeans by the
Nazi regime is a distortion of history.

[Later, in the same context]

Of course, German postwar plans were not known to the future potential victims. The other nations
were to be de-stroyed, "as such," but the Jews, were - all of them - to be annihilated, not only in
Europe, but also everywhere on Earth (there is plenty of evidence for that). As far as the Soviets are
concerned, with all their brutality, they did not plan any-thing similar.

No universal lesson of the Holocaust is accurate/sufficient

Alan E. Steinweis (Ph.D., North Carolina, 1988, professor at the University of Vermont, areas of
expertise include Nazi Germany, Holocaust, and modern Europe, Director of the Center for
Holocaust Studies),“The Auschwitz Analogy: Holocaust Memory and American Debates
over Intervention in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s”, Holocaust and Genocide Studies,
V19 N2, Fall 2005, pp. 276–289, accessed via Project Muse
But while there has been a pronounced tendency to examine contemporary events through the historical lens of the
Holocaust, there has been no agreement on the lessons to be drawn from it. Perceived lessons of the
Holocaust have been used both to justify American military intervention and to oppose it by the
left and the right, by Jews and non-Jews, by those who were sincere in their invocation of the
historical precedent and by those whose uses of it were more purely instrumental.

Hitler Analogies Kritik 14{15}

Joshua Mirth PARADE, Wisconsin

Denying the uniqueness of the Holocaust converges with denying it altogether

Alan S. Rosenbaum, (Author, professor of philosophy at Cleveland State University), “Is the Holocaust
unique?” Perspectives on comparative genocide, July 1997
Nevertheless, when Holocaust denials are considered in tandem with another set of recent tendencies to
"normalize," historicize, relativize, marginalize, and trivialize the reality of the Holocaust, the debate
seriously intensifies. In this sense, efforts to deny its uniqueness converge with attempts to deny its
existence altogether.

A2: Mentioning and remembering good

Distorts the old to compare with the new
Barbie Zelizer (Ph.D. 1990, University of Pennsylvania; MA 1981, Hebrew University of Jerusalem,
former journalist, President of the International Communication Association, has been both
a Guggenheim Fellow, a Research Fellow at the Freedom Forum Media Studies Center, a
Fellow at Harvard University's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public
Policy, and a Fulbright Senior Scholar.) “Remembering to forget - holocaust memory
through the camera's eye”, 1998
But while the continual references keep atrocity in the public imagination, they also abandon it
there. Employing familiar terms in so many new contexts of barbarism flattens the original term's
resonance and denies the complexity of the events to which it refers. In other words, the media may fail to clarify
the meaning of each new instance of brutality they cover. As reporter Meg Greenfield recently lamented, an
overuse of these verbal cues blunts meaning: "it hides it, blurs it, or at least makes it remote by several
degrees from immediacy and truth."

Other Stuff
Auschwitz analogies replace real thought with vehemence
Theodore Dalrymple (British writer, retired prison doctor, and psychiatrist, has written extensively on
culture, art, politics, education, and medicine), City Journal, Trivializing the Holocaust II,
4/12/2002
What lies behind this trivialization of Auschwitz as a standard of comparison? After all, one task of public
intellectuals is to put important matters into moral and historical perspective. False analogy obscures real thought,
clouding reality in a fog of false emotion. The problem is that so much of what modern intellectuals write and say
seeks more to establish their right-mindedness and breadth of sympathy than to elucidate truth. It is hardly
surprising, then, that vehemence of expression should be mistaken for depth of feeling, and depth
of feeling for genuine thought: and of course, no metaphor could be stronger or more vehement than
one that invokes Auschwitz. Only the vehement feel truly or deeply: and so an inflammatory usage of
Auschwitz as analogy sets in.

Hitler Analogies Kritik 15{15}