When people want to make parallels and comparisons to facist leaders or human rights atrocities, they always leap to the Holocaust despite more recent examples that illustrate their point better without referring to a very specific systematic oppression. Why? Jews don’t matter.

Jewish trauma, pain and oppression is only ever worth talking about to emphasis how extreme you think something is. How many of these people have spoken out against the anti-semitism in the past or supported Jewish causes openly? How many have sat down and really listened

to Jewish discourse? Because from what I can see, people only ever care to reference the suffering of the Jewish people when it suits their own political narrative and decide our lived experiences are grand ways to demonise your opposition.

When Jews dare speak up about it, we are told “Jews aren’t the only victims of the Holocaust!” When there’s a Jew that differs from our opinion and doesn’t mind radical comparisons, we are accused of not understanding our own community. 1) the Holocaust and Nazi ideology was

founded entirely on anti-semitism and anti-semitism is what allowed it to gain popularity. 2) This shows a complete lack of interest in listening to Jewish discourse and further yet a total misunderstanding of our culture. The term Israel (a term that is 2,000 years old and does

not automatically make it the same as the current political state) means “to wrestle with god” in Hebrew. Throughout our religious history and shared culture, we have been taught to wrestle with our own creator and taught to questions everything. This is what Jewish culture

was built on.

These two points contribute towards the “shut up Jew” phenomenon wherein Jews appear to be one of the few minority groups the majority, and even other minorities, have a pass at shutting down. Often, it’s unintentional but intended or not, is rooted in the

hatred of Jews that is baked into the foundation of every society on earth that the Jews dared to try to find refuge in.

Jews are either told to shut up or pitted against each other (often leading in pointless disputes due to the other cultural factors taking play within

separate Jewish communities).

Jews also suffer with internalised anti-semitism and find it reasonable for the genocide of us to be compared to current day events because the majority has essentially already told us to be quiet and agree for so long. The discourse largely within

the current community displays that the use of Holocaust comparisons is largely seen as offensive (substituting the word “bigot” and “facist” to the most extreme of example at the expense of 6 million deaths), which would be known if those who enjoy throwing the term around

would listen to the community rather picking up on token individuals, some of which haven’t had the same lived experience as Holocaust survivors and their descendent.

Jews have historically been used as political tokens. Once one is found to be useful, they are played for

political gain. No one really cares about them or their struggles or their history, only that they agree with them.

This isn’t new. People find Jews that agree with them, use those Jews to their advantage to pit them against other Jews. And many of those they use suffer with internalised anti-semitic beliefs because we’ve been told to “shut up about the Holocaust” or constantly schooled by

gentiles on our own history.

So, if you throw these terms around and referencing someone who gave you “the pass”, you’re promoting the historical practice of using Jewish individuals as political tools and admitting you only really care about us when we can suit your narrative.