The perils of false equivalences and overstatements are the shameful trivialisation of the darkest chapters in human history.
A few days back, former “60 Minutes” correspondent Lara Logan was dropped by her talent agency for comments she made about Dr. Anthony Fauci, White House chief medical adviser.
Logan said the following during an appearance on “Fox News Primetime” on November 29th:
“This is what people say to me, is that he (Fauci) doesn’t represent science to them — he represents Josef Mengele, the Nazi doctor who did experiments on Jews during the Second World War and in the concentration camps
And I am talking about people all across the world are saying this, because the response from COVID, what it has done to countries everywhere, what it has done to civil liberties, the suicide rates, the poverty — it has obliterated economies,” she added.
United Talent Agency said that Logan’s comments were “highly offensive” and “unacceptable” comments.
Logan also hosts “Lara Logan Has No Agenda” on Fox Nation.
Fauci is demanding that Fox News sack Logan for her comments.
Logan has not appeared on Fox News since the above comments were made. Also, new episodes of her Fox Nation show have not been aired. Warm Springs Production, which produces her series, has distanced itself from Logan.
But is Logan the only one?
Since 2015, many in the media and showbiz have compared President
Trump and his MAGA movement to Hitler and Nazism respectively.
Former Hollywood star Arnold Schwarzenegger compared the US Capitol riots on
January 6th, 2020 to Nazis in a prolonged rant on social media.
The Washington Post carried an article with
the headline “It’s not wrong to compare Trump’s America to the Holocaust”.
An Oxford study claimed
that President Trump had more psychopathic traits than Hitler.
Billionaire Charles Koch said then-candidate Trump’s proposal to register all Muslims in the US, which was never implemented
was “reminiscent of Nazi Germany”.
Filmmaker Spike Lee said President
Trump 'will go down in history with the likes of Hitler' in New York Film
Critics speech
Plastic "Trump Cards" that are memorabilia to demonstrate their support for President, was alleged to resemble Nazi insignia merely because the cards display a right-facing gold eagle.
The BBC carried news of a random German citizen
comparing President Trump to
Hitler.
Instances such as there are myriad, yet none of the people
making comparisons suffered many reactions.
The reason Logan faces severe backlash from liberal news
organizations is that she is a fierce critic of the Biden administration.
She recently criticized Biden for the chaotic withdrawal
from Afghanistan and for leaving military weapons
with terrorists. She was deeply critical of US foreign policy of unending
wars and nation-building projects of faraway countries. She had also slammed the
Biden administration’s mismanagement and misuse of Covid-19.
The liberal mob was probably looking for an excuse to ‘cancel’
Logan. That opportunity came in the form of her comments that liberal Fauci
worshipers probably self-combusted upon hearing.
But beyond the whataboutery and the disparity in reaction to
the comments let’s examine the validity and accuracy of these comparisons.
From 1933 to 1945, in Nazi Germany, an entire group of people
was systematically discriminated against, persecuted, and murdered merely for being
Jewish. The Nazis constituted legal measures to expel the Jews from society and
strip them of their rights and property while engaging in incitement, abuse,
terror, and violence.
Over 6 million Jews were
murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust.
Over 11 Million including
Jews, Gypsies, Poles, people with disabilities, Jehovah's Witnesses,
homosexuals, the dissenting clergy, and other political adversaries were
murdered and displaced because of Nazi genocidal policy.
This was one of the darkest chapters in human history.
To compare the Trump administration to the Nazi Regime besides
being historically incorrect is preposterous, it is also insensitive to the 11 million-plus victims of the Nazis.
Historians have said that the worst crime scene of the Holocaust was
Auschwitz. The
worst among the killing centers in Auschwitz was at Birkenau. The most
terrifying murderer in Birkenau was Dr. Josef Mengele, making him one
of the worst and most sinister of mass murderers in the history of mankind
When prisoners arrived at Auschwitz, Mengele and
his "doctor" colleagues "selected" for slave labor those
who appeared "fit". The others, the vast majority,
were immediately murdered by gassing in specially designed asphyxiation
chambers.
Mengele was notorious for performing grotesque pseudo-medical
experiments on children and adults alike, especially twins.
Mengele often injected one twin with mysterious substances and
monitored the illness that ensued. He applied painful clamps to children’s
limbs to induce gangrene, injected dye into their eyes, and gave them painful spinal
taps.
Mengele was a psychopath and his experiments were
an excuse to subject the Jewish people to torture and humiliation.
Dr. Fauci may be ignorant, incompetent, corrupt, and
narcissistic but he is not even remotely close to the incomparably evil Mengele.
There are very few humans who have the dubious distinction of being compared to Mengele.
The comparison that Logan made, much like the comparison
between Nazi Germany and the US under the Trump administration, was ludicrous,
historically inaccurate, and above all insensitive to the victims of Mengele.
Slavery, the Holocaust, or 9-11 were unique not just in their
occurrences but the indelible impact if left on society and culture.
These darkest chapters in history must be mentioned only after
thoughtful and empathetic consideration.
When the killing of a sole African American is compared to slavery, it trivialized slavery. When 9-11 is compared with a break-in of a
government building, it belittles the impact of those coordinated terror
attacks. If a government is compared with the Nazi regime for wanting to protect its borders or deporting illegal aliens, Nazism is trivialized.
It also helps bigotry, because if everything is bigotry,
nothing actually is.
The consequence of these false equivalences is people are
de-sensitized. It could lead some, especially the younger, to think that if a
commentator can overstate by comparing Fauci to Mengele, perhaps the individual
was overstating Mengele's crimes.
These false equivalencies are a product of lazy commentators
and pundits, whose vocabulary, intelligence, and imagination have gone bankrupt
after years in the business.
It is time for personnel in the media from the liberal
commentators at the Washington Post to Lara Logan on Fox News to act responsibly
and stop these frivolous false
equivalences.
The least the victims deserve is respect.
As for Lara Logan, Fox News should ask her to apologize and then
reinstate her. She was careless but not malicious.
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