A July 3 Chronicle of Higher Education article by Liam Knox [2] recounts how Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) ignited a firestorm when she compared U.S. detention centers for illegal immigrants to (presumably Nazi) concentration camps. The radical wing of the Democrat party applauded while conservatives asserted that the comparison was specious and cynical.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum weighed in, saying it “unequivocally rejects efforts to create analogies between the Holocaust and other events, whether historical or contemporary.”
Responding to the museum, “scholars” launched an open letter which had collected almost 600 signatures by the time of Knox’s article. The signers justified the comparison because “The very core of Holocaust education is to alert the public to dangerous developments that facilitate human rights violations and pain and suffering; pointing to similarities across time and space is essential for this task.”
I find this to be a dubious, arrogant, and disingenuous proposition.
I found myself asking, “Scholars of what?” Law? Gender, Race, and Identity? Music? Social Work? Art? And what sort of a qualification is it to be a “scholar” of something? Holocaust deniers often describe themselves as scholars….
