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I can recall when I first heard the words ‘second Holocaust’ in relation to Corbyn’s Labour party. It was a BBC report (of course), a vox pop.
I initially (naively) thought it would immediately be condemned as an outrageously extreme statement. But no, it was incorporated into the discourse without a pause. It was now legitimate to debate whether a Corbyn-led government would occasion a second Holocaust or not.
Emotional manipulation in politics is of course nothing new, it’s very much the stock-in-trade. People are motivated by *feelings* not *facts*, goes the received wisdom, illustrated by Bush V Gore, in which Gore had all the facts and Bush had all the feels, and Bush won. (Kinda.)
But the extremity of this manipulation, the throwing onto the table of this ‘Holocaust card’ as if in a rhetorical poker game with no upper limit on bets, was new, I think.
The deliberate invoking of one of history’s most horrifying episodes to bludgeon your political opponents with marked a new low in what now passes for ‘political debate’.
It’s the equivalent of someone screaming in your face. It’s a form of emotional abuse. It stifles any debate, any argument. It’s a tactic to disarm rational opposition through sheer force of emotional pressure.
It’s coercive and bullying. It demands acquiescence. It forbids dissent. It closes discussion.
The smearing war has used this abusive technique, not because of the glaring lack of evidence, but instead of it. The laughable paucity of evidence is not accidental: evidence could be disputed, but who can dispute a *feeling*, particularly a feeling about the Holocaust?
Evidence is irrelevant. Evidence would lead to debate, and debate is the very last thing the smearing war wishes to happen. Evidence would be disputed. A far more effective, if much cruder, weapon is emotional bludgeoning, and the more extreme the better.
Hence the invocation of one of history’s most desperate chapters in pursuit of a political vendetta. Hence the implacable screaming, the hysterical over-stating, the performative outrage, the performative fear. Emotional theatre, and the audience are cowed into silence by it.
It seems to have worked.
