We Are All Nazis and Communists
I am surrounded by Nazi fascists and the disciples of Soviet Communism. Or so the current state of discourse in America would have me believe. The reality is that I don’t personally know a single fascist and I only know a small handful of dangerously misguided souls who are taken in by the promise of a workers’ paradise. Throngs of angry people online are nevertheless convinced that every other person with whom they interact is a wannabe KGB or Gestapo recruit. They are more than happy to attach the labels of leftwing or rightwing totalitarianism to distant friends, the uncle who talks too much politics at Thanksgiving, and even their own grandmothers. This rhetoric has not come out of nowhere. It developed over time. I’m old enough to remember when President Obama was cast as a Communist dictator. Whatever the cause – the advent of social media, unresolved political issues, or anxiety about the future – the hyperpartisan and angry politics that characterize the present moment tend to multiply the bogeymen we perceive in the shadows cast by every post or comment with which we disagree.
As a Jew I have the lucky distinction of being simultaneously smeared as both a Nazi and a Communist (or globalist). In the imagination of white supremacists and some on the far-Right, Jews bear collective guilt for the crimes of communism. This goes back to the propaganda pushed by the actual Nazis, which falsely equated communist Bolshevism and Judaism. For many on the progressive Left I am deemed a fascist unless I pass a purity test. I can prove that I am not a Nazi by joining the empathetic social justice crowd in justifying (if not outright celebrating) the ritualized violence perpetrated by “the resistance” against my fellow Jews and others in Israel. If I refuse to renounce my traditional culture, my history, and basic solidarity with my family and community, then I am also, apparently, a fascist.
Jewish people are not alone in being subjected to the constant hyperbolic barrage of political epithets. If you voted for Trump you’re a fascist. If you aren’t sufficiently offended by the American Eagle clothing company running an advertisement with a blonde actress then you are also a fascist. But if you don’t think your neighbor should have to sell her house to pay for cancer medication then you’re a Communist. If you include your pronouns in your email signature then you also might be a Communist (or at least a socialist or globalist). At the end of the day, far too many people project the images of Hitler and Stalin on anyone and everyone who is meaningfully to the right or the left of them.
Of course, very few of us support establishing a dictatorship of the proletariat or repealing anyone’s citizenship based on racial blood purity. While there are real Nazis and Communists, there just aren’t very many of them. Somewhat ironically, then, one of the things that our society does share in common with Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia is our enthusiasm for mislabeling those we disagree with as a fascist or a communist. In “Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin,” Timothy Snyder notes that the Nazis and Soviets had a “shared binary logic…Hitler called his enemies Marxists and Stalin called his fascists. They agreed that there was no middle ground.”
If we do not want to emulate the political culture of Nazism and Soviet Communism, let’s stop using these words as a catch all to demonize anyone who holds a contrary position. Save the labels for the real thing.
