Boris Didn't 'Play The Hitler Card' In Vain. And, As Jews, We Should Not Monopolise History

I was annoyed when a friend used Godwin's Law to criticise Boris Johnson's comments. Godwin's assertion that, "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches," is often synonymous with Strauss' Reductio ad Hitlerum ('reduction to Hitler') - which can be very dangerous. One  has just to hear the insult "TwitterNazi" to be infuriated. However, as I pointed out,  this criticism misuses Godwin's Law: just as the Honourable MP John Mann did not accuse former Mayor Livingstone of being a "Nazi Apologist" in vain,  Boris' slight comparison should not be interpreted as an ad hominem argument without substance. Boris was not using the Hitler analogy as an easy joke (he finds the EU Project neither funny, nor does the criticism he faces make such a remark "easy") or as an extreme example just because of the length of the EU debate. The original criticism of his comments is insubstantial in spite of its argument. 

And "The danger, as time goes by," wrote Howard Jacobson, "is that we will tire of hearing about the Holocaust." He was not writing about Boris Johnson's comparison of the EU Project to Hitler and his Nazis, but rather an introduction to Primo Levi's "If this Is A Man". He was pondering how the memory of the Holocaust is (sometimes unwillingly) preserved and obliged to each individual; how certain individuals may find it difficult to "[take] the medicine, especially when we don’t accept that we are sick." There are those who tire of hearing about the Holocaust (too often, they believe): equally there are those who do not want it's memory to be used in vain. Vanity is not the cause of Boris' argument.

Firstly consider the argument that drawing upon the memory of the Holocaust or its architects is morally compromising in the context. There are those who would say that this is "hysterical", and those who would argue that it is not relevant. Indeed, there are those who would argue that the atrocities and human killing ("the demolition of men" with which Levi was himself preoccupied) which the Holocaust caused are not comparable to the building - or remaining part - of an economic union and peaceful union which has not seen a war since World War Two (which was a part of the Holocaust). Both will be shown to be wrong in turn. Argument one assumes that a psychological or emotional factor negatively and unnecessarily influences the use of history in such a debate; but such an argument itself includes an equally influential emotional factor of which it accuses the other side - there is an emotional or psychological fault which, wrongly and unjustly, believes it should have control over this history. Argument two suggests that a comparison can't be made because people aren't being killed for the latter; however, the Union which some seek to protect and remain in is very explicitly suggesting proposals to build a European Border Dorce to secure itself against war, immigration and terror (the latter of which includes Isis, who similarly wants to affect genocide).

"Out" campaigner Jacob Rees-Mogg recently said as much. Offering analysis of how the EU Project was a "deliberate, malevolent attempt to force people to do what the British electorate didn't want", he asked attendees of his speech to the Adam Smith Institute, "is your country Europe, or is your country the United Kingdom? Is it a bureaucratic, Napoleonic-code state - or is it a free state where everything that isn't specifically prohibited is allowed?" He added that "We have abrogated our democracy to a state - but that state is a failed state."

Realising the current "state" of things (pun intended) is indeed important. In his 2013 Introduction, Jacobson further argued that "Recollection has not been worn away by years and controversy nor subsumed under the necessity to take a long view of historical events . In much of this book, immediacy does the work of theorising and education." In the current context, taking a long term view (of the past) is NOT betrayed by a view of the present; nor does it blind how we see the future. Immediacy is doing the work because laws are being passed by the EU, members of the public and powerful groups are mentioning the past (from Johnson to Obama and Cameron), and plans for a European Border Force are being proposed or planned. Therefore, to identify today that EU Bureaucrats are using state power (and trying to manipulate consensus in favour of "ever closer union") is as current a view as could be. It also means that remembering how the Nazi's tried to orchestrate society and power through government apparatus is morally required.

BoJo is not sick. Actually, he is trying very morally to offer a sustainable solution - a cure, not a medicine - to a European Project which is trying to affect what Lord Lamont branded "not naturally one entity." His, and fellow campaigners', comments are rather edifying. We should applaud him, not demoralise him, for using "historical fact" as IDS decisively defended. And we should, most importantly, not assume control over the past; we risk alienating other people of their equal obligation to "Never Forget" otherwise. 

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