Stop Naziwashing
The Left is engaging in a new dangerous form of whitewashing
Left-wing radicals often accuse Israel of “pinkwashing,” a term used to accuse Israel of “whitewashing” its “crimes” by flouting its gay-friendliness. Israel, they argue, purposefully makes its policies in the West Bank/Judea and Samaria less egregious by broadcasting its acceptance of progressive values. God forbid people should recognize that Israel is an overall leader in liberalism and human rights!
But the Left is guilty of a far more dangerous and now popular form of whitewashing: Naziwashing. Radical leftists position themselves as the heroic crusaders against Nazism, which they inflate as a world threat. In doing so, these radicals cast themselves as moral touchstones who are immune from criticism because, after all, they take a clear stance against one of the world’s worst evils. But this contempt for Nazism is a far cry from the kind held by the likes of Winston Churchill. It’s anti-American, anti-capitalistic, and anti-individualistic in nature, the successor of another evil, Communism.
This tactic needs to be called out and discredited. Naziwashing provides Leftist extremists, Jews included, cover for their desire for immoral rule, in which they would, for example, shut down or physically assault someone (or something) who does not eschew antisemitism or Nazism as fiercely as they deem appropriate. They become self-appointed, righteous vigilantes who should not be punished if, for example, they take a bat against protesters in Charlottesville who made antisemitic remarks. Meanwhile, they wouldn’t dare lay a hand on the Palestinian who slaughtered an Israeli family in cold blood last month during their Shabbat dinner celebration. Palestinians are, after all, victims of Israel’s pink-washed “occupation.”
We then enter the new, insidious phase of Naziwashing: Since Nazism today is the Evil of the World, and Israel, according to their revisionist interpretation, behaves like Nazis for “oppressing” a minority group, taking a knife against regular Israeli “Nazi-sympathizers” is justified, too.
Naziwashing is not new. Visit memorials in former East Germany, and you’ll find the Left has used this tactic since the end of World War II. For example, in Dresden, a Soviet-built sign leading into the Zwinger Palace portrays the Soviet army as Dresden’s “liberators” from both the American-British bomber “gangs” (who bombed the Old Town to bits) as well as the “Fascist Tyranny” – the Nazis. Naturally, the Soviets fail to mention the Dresden firebombing was completed with their full cooperation.
While in East Berlin, the Soviets put up memorials (mostly in the 1980s, in part to draw money from Jewish tourists) condemning the Nazis in no uncertain terms for their brutal murder of the Jewish people, Communism did not grant Jews religious rights, and the East German government was also extremely anti-Zionist. The Communists thus “Nazi-washed” their innate antisemitism and other human rights violations committed under their oppressive, dictatorial Communist rule.
It is not difficult to come out against Nazis, especially since they are universally recognized as evil. No one is going to lose Facebook friends or job opportunities for coming out against Nazi-sympathizers. The miniscule number of literal neo-Nazis in existence will likely not retaliate. In fact, those who truly sympathize with Hitler’s genocide of the Jewish people are radical Muslims who have fantasies of wiping Israel off the map, thus being useful agents against the Zionist “entity.” But come out against radical Muslims, or use the word “Islam” in the pejorative, then get ready to lose Facebook friends or social standing because you are, somehow, ironically, a Nazi sympathizer.
Coming out against Nazis is easy because Nazism, technically, doesn’t exist anymore. Nazis were members of The National Socialist German Workers’ Party, a distinct, German supremacist political party of which not every German soldier was technically a part. Even modern Germans today resent labeling their grandparents “Nazis” if they didn’t officially join the party. This makes me wonder why Germans aren’t coming out in fuller force in ensuring that even their evil history is not being abused for nefarious political purposes. Coming out against “Nazis” today is to engage in an anachronism.
But the Left is wise. They have assumed causes that are universally condemned, like Nazism and slavery, and abusing them to “whitewash” (or “colorwash”) their violent hatred for Jewish political strength (in the form of Israel), America, capitalism and people of white color, as well as their immoral use of force against anyone (or anything) they subjectively, wrongly label a “Nazi.” So… time to call out and stop the Naziwashing. The writer is a journalist and author based in Berlin. Her new novel, Underskin, a German-Israeli love story, is available now on Amazon.