A group of men who lived and died during the Holocaust. This is what we now compare with people asking to be treated with dignity under the law.
I had to make a hard decision last week and it is still weighing on me. I had to unfriend a very close friend of nearly thirty years, someone who I look at as family, someone who every time I am back home I must visit and catch up with, my little sister in life. This was due to her blatant racism that had become a daily obstacle to our friendship. Despite years of overlooking her rants because she had "had a hard life and didn't have the chances to grow and learn as a person.", I could do this no longer. I felt sorry for her, yet I respected her because she was openly racist in a world where so many often pretend to not be in words while exhibiting it in actions.
"At least she is honest about it.", I told myself.
She makes these posts calling out all of the "negroes, thugs, and Mexicans" for any and everything that she sees as an issue. How they dress, where they live, and who they are had become far more a problem in her life than any of the issues she really faced. Her final post that caused me to end a lifelong friendship was a petition calling upon President Obama to name #BlackLivesMatter a hate group, her reasoning-- "They are thugs who are going around killing everyone so that they can take over America. It is no different than the holocaust."
This is where I take issue with anyone-- The Holocaust has now become the go-to word for any form of injustice or even simple offense in this world. Mike Huckabee uses it often to describe what is happening when a Christian is asked to mind their own business instead of interfere with politics or not serve gays in their pizza shop. When the Colorado bakers lost their case being fined over $130,000 for publicizing the names and home address of the lesbian couple who requested a cake be made for their same-sex wedding, we all heard Huckabee proclaim that this was no different than the Holocaust in Nazi Germany. Each day I read on Facebook that the case in Kentucky where Kim Davis was jailed for refusing to uphold the laws of our Constitution is equal to what was happening during the Holocaust.
What exactly was the Holocaust? My memory of learning about this event must be less than accurate based on all these comparisons. So, I looked it up to see what exactly was The Holocaust and how it has been repeated in our nation.
From the Greek word for "sacrifice by fire" to Webster's definition as, "the mass murder of Jews under the German Nazi regime during the period 1941–45. More than 6 million European Jews, as well as members of other persecuted groups, such as gypsies and homosexuals, were murdered at concentration camps such as Auschwitz."
In 1933, the Jewish population of Europe stood at over nine million. Most European Jews lived in countries that Nazi Germany would occupy or influence during World War II. By 1945, the Germans and their collaborators killed nearly two out of every three European Jews as part of the "Final Solution," the Nazi policy to murder the Jews of Europe.
Although Jews, whom the Nazis deemed a priority danger to Germany, were the primary victims of Nazi racism, other victims included some 200,000 Roma (Gypsies). At least 200,000 mentally or physically disabled patients, mainly Germans, living in institutional settings, were murdered in the so-called Euthanasia Program.
From the earliest years of the Nazi regime, German authorities persecuted homosexuals and others whose behavior did not match prescribed social norms. German police officials targeted thousands of political opponents (including Communists, Socialists, and trade unionists) and religious dissidents (such as Jehovah's Witnesses). Many of these individuals died as a result of incarceration and maltreatment.
How is it in modern society, in the Age of Information, how are people now able to ignore the sheer horror of the real Holocaust while erasing the lives of millions who were murdered equating these horrific events with a baker being fined for breaking the law or a county clerk being jailed for breaking the law? How is it that seemingly intelligent people are able to hear the words #BlackLivesMatter then say out loud and in print, "Saying black lives matter is no different than burning 6 million people alive in an oven", and do so without any voice or any thought telling them they may be crazy?
This year we have seen police officers seemingly killing at random. Over 500 people have been killed by police this year already, that number is expected to reach over 1,000 by January.
We have witnessed over 250 mass shootings in public areas, killing over 300 people.
This year has brought with it the murders of 20 transgender women in America.
More than one million people were killed at Auschwitz in Poland, the majority were Jews and the former extermination camp is the world’s biggest Jewish cemetery.
Yet the Great and New Holocaust that we all hear of each day is the Holocaust against white people who have been made late for work by a protest after a black woman died in police custody. The Modern Holocaust that we are facing is an elected official being held in contempt of court for violating her duty as a government worker. The Holocaust that is happening in America today is a baker being asked to bake a fucking cake.
As far as events on American soil, there has been one event which is comparable to the Holocaust, that would be slavery. Between 1525 and 1866, in the entire history of the slave trade to the New World, according to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, 12.5 million Africans were shipped to the New World. 10.7 million survived the dreaded Middle Passage, disembarking in North America, the Caribbean and South America. Yet today, the only comparison that we hear between the enslavement of Africans in America is that the Confederate flag is in danger of being removed from government facilities in a move that is equal to that of Nazi Germany.
Not to mention the death of millions of Native Americans at the hands of European settlers which is estimated to have reached over 80 million people. A full on genocide we now celebrate with turkey, football, and domestic violence is so widely ignored that it barely even made it into this post.
When did words stop having meaning? At what point did we give up on intelligence simply opening ourselves up to allow the events of Nazi Germany to be a synonym of the basic offenses that we face in comparison?