Nazi, the Power of Words

This piece was written on or around January 6th, 2021.

What images are conjured up when one hears the word “Nazi”? Perhaps they are pictures of Adolf Hitler, standing haughtily before a sprawling army of jack-booted soldiers, with red flags adorned with swastikas waving defiantly in the breeze. Perhaps the images are of the buzz-cut scalps of southern American white men, chanting “white power” like a vignette from American History X. But perhaps, those images are now of Americans wearing red caps with white writing on them, waving red, white, and blue flags while marching on the capitol rotunda in violence. They wear slogans of white supremacy on their clothes and tattooed on their skin. They follow a strong-willed and bombastic leader with a vitriolic tongue, and declare their unending allegiance to his whims. A wildman, standing in mocking triumph over the seat of democracy in our nation, seeking to subvert the very processes that make us American. That wildman is the new Nazi, and he is just as evil, dangerous, and violent as the jack-booted soldiers of yesteryear. Right?

Words are important. They can be full of deep meaning, bringing to life feelings of endearing, happiness, longing, and nostalgia. Inversely, they can pull our minds deep into sadness, hatred, vengeance, and evil. There are words in the modern English vernacular that are considered taboo, like the ubiquitous “N-word”. This word is complicated, but in general it is known as a demeaning slur bound up with historic sentiment and racist implication. For whatever arguments we might make about the power we give to words, it would not be unreasonable to assume that most Americans will not utter the N-word lightly, especially depending on the company present. That word is important for its implications and historic meaning. We can even examine another word, “Love”, as an example of a beautiful word similarly bound up with meaning. Depending on its usage, love represents the best and deepest feelings of good will. Love is the analog for that indescribable feeling we have for the people closest to us. Love is an important word.

But what happens when those words lose their power? In our first example, it is not reasonable to claim it has lost all its power, but in some circles it has certainly lost its sting. Many in the Black community use it as a term of comradery, and sometimes even endearment. It is important to remember the aforementioned complexity of that word, but it is fascinating to examine its evolution in popular culture, especially in music. Likewise, and to a much larger extent, the word “Love” has lost nearly all its power in the common vernacular. In the same conversation we might say we love our spouse, love our country, and love ice cream, with the same enthusiasm. Of course, because of the nuance of human communication, it is usually easy to insinuate the intended meaning behind the usage of words, but it still serves as an example of the diminishing power of certain important words. Now, what of that very first word in question, “Nazi”? What power does it have? To some degree, it is used as a pejorative for anyone overbearing or fascistic in their beliefs, even in a jocular sense, like Seinfeld’s “Soup Nazi”. More commonly, it seems, the word Nazi is used as a meaningless cudgel, bludgeoning political enemies for their disagreements. Unsurprisingly given the relation, it is quickly joining the dreaded “Hitler Comparison” in that section of powerless language that loses all meaning and implication.

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Nationalsozialismus, or Nazism for short, was a system of political thought during the 1930s in Germany, authored by Adolf Hitler and others. The people who ascribed to this massively authoritarian system were called Nazis, and from 1933 to 1945 they perpatrated the most heinous acts of genocide, the most aggresive acts of war, and the most subversive campaigns of propaganda the world had yet seen.

The Holocaust saw the industrialized murder of six million Jews, killed by gas, firing squad, hangings, and much more. These acts were committed by Nazis.

The Eastern front of World War 2 was the deadliest conflict in human history, with at least thirty one million people killed in the span of four years. The people who started that war were Nazis.

In Germany in the thirties and forties, three hundred thousand people with disabilities, including children and infants, were unceremoniously murdered during Aktion T-4. The perpetrators of Aktion T-4 were Nazis.

Josef Mengele was a doctor who performed horrifying experiments on human subjects, including vivisection without anesthesia and the attempted conjoining of twins via surgery. Many of his victims were children. Josef Mengele was a Nazi.

In 1943, at the tiny village of Khatyn in Belarus, twenty six homes were razed to the ground, and all one hundred and fifty six inhabitants of Khatyn were forced into a barn and burned alive. Women and children were among those murdered. The raiders that destroyed Khatyn and murdered its inhabitants were Nazis.

In 1944 in Malmedy, Belgium, eighty four American POWs were murdered by members of SS Division Leibstandarte. The soldiers were mowed down by machine guns and executed with shots to the head. The members of that SS Division were Nazis.

August Landmesser was a German man who ran afoul of the government for beginning a relationship with a Jewish woman, Irma Eckler. Despite this, the two maintained their relationship and had two children together. Twice August was censured for his relationship with Irma, and in reprisal for the second incident the two were separated, with Irma being sent to a string of concentration camps, ending with her execution in 1942. August was eventually drafted into a penal battalion and was killed in action in Croatia in 1944. The men who killed August Landmesser and the woman he loved, Irma Eckler, were Nazis.

Donald Trump is not a Nazi. No matter how much hatred he recieves, or for that matter, deserves, he is not a Nazi. Applying that descriptor to him, much less calling him Hitler, cheapens the words and the grizzly consequences wrought by those who actually were Nazis. Likewise, those who support Donald Trump are not Nazis. Even the ones who might claim the title likely know less about historic Nazism than those that falsely apply the term to their political enemies. The word Nazi is bound up with so much violence and evil and pure hatered that it is no wonder that we lob it at disenters like a hand grenade. But words are important, and that word, Nazi, is of utmost importance because of what happened in the 20th century. All the people mentioned above, every individual story that ended with horror and tragedy, each one is spat upon by the careless usage of such a weighty term. In addition, it serves as a signal for the impressionable and ill-informed to thoughtlessly hate whoever is “deserving” of being called a Nazi. Anything a Nazi says should be ignored and any hopes, dreams, and desires a Nazi has should likewise be ignored. This proves an easy and bitterly careless way to mark any opponent for utter disdain and disenfranchisement. With every person we senslessly label a Nazi, we cheapen the legacy of Nazi attrocity a little more. It is far more useful to refer to our opponents as what they truly are: our opponents. Let their own words be their condemnation when their actions prove them wrong. When the next evil empire rises up, their true name will be all the contempt required, and if we liken all peoples we disagree with to Nazis, we only hurry the next evil’s rise.