That word, more than any other word that I can think of, is just laden with various miserable connotations and implications and political and psychological resonances. The word is semiotically rich. For reasons that could not be more obvious, it resonates deeply with almost everyone.But, when we talk about Nazis, just who are we talking about?
Among academic historians the meaning of the term is limited to people who were members of the National Socialist German Workers Party between 1920 and 1945. No one can be a "Nazi," i.e., a member of the Nazi Party, who was not a member of the party while it existed.
Nonetheless, words are slippery. Would one hesitate to call a neo-Nazi with a bald head and a swastika tattooed onto the back of the neck a "Nazi"? I would not hesitate for a moment. And presumably neither would she.
Or, let's take the hypothetical case of a businessman in the United States who believes in a biological hierarchy of races, but who keeps that belief mainly to himself because he possesses something resembling normal intelligence. And let's say that he considers black people and brown people and Jewish people and all non-white people to be basically inferior. And let's say, in his imagination, he would very much like to see white people organize themselves politically around "whiteness."
Would it be fair to call such a person a "Nazi"?
He is not a member of the Nazi party, because the party is long gone. As soon as Eva - who as it turns out may very well have been Jewish - gobbled down that cyanide in the Führerbunker, the party was over. Yet I think that any reasonable person would agree that the attribution "Nazi" is appropriate for such a person.
Now, let's take things from a specifically Jewish perception for a moment. Prior to the Holocaust what the Nazis did was demonize and defame the tiny Jewish minority in Germany. We represented about 1 percent of that entire population and, just as in the Middle East today, the hostile majority population yammered at one another that Jews have too much power and that we have nefarious plans to take over the universe and that we are secretly subverting the well-being of perfectly innocent children and nuns.
What I would suggest is that when anti-Semitic anti-Zionists and Israel Haters in places like Daily Kos or the UK Guardian or the Huffington Post or the New York Times or the European Union malign the tiny Jewish community in the Middle East then they are acting as "Nazis." They are behaving essentially as the National Socialists behaved prior to the slaughter. And just as the original Nazis honestly believed that what they were doing was right and good and just, so do the anti-Zionists, BDSers, and malicious Europeans.
And this is what slays me.
It is as an alleged matter of "social justice" that the western left kicks the Jewish people in the teeth.
