'Nazi' isn't a label to bandy about lightly

I have a friend let's call him Fred who is a labor union business
agent. Over lunch one day he turned the conversation to a difficult set
of negotiations he was pursuing on behalf of a public employees local.
The city administrator with whom he was dealing, Fred said, was proving
to be unusually hostile and hardnosed. Munching pasta and sipping iced
tea, Fred grew increasingly outraged as he recalled this man's surly,
meanspirited behavior.

"The guy Is so bad that it's almost impossible to describe him,"
bristled Fred. "All I can say is... well, have you ever been facetoface
with a real Nazi?"

Fred's remark disturbed me. No matter how bad a cuss the man was, it's
doubtful that he was a real Nazi. Nasty is one thing; Nazi real Nazi
is something else again.

Like Fred, too many people lately are loose and careless in their use of
language related to Nazis and the Holocaust. May 4 was Holocaust
Remembrance Day and this month seems like a fitting time to reflect on
what some of those terms we bandy about really signiiy.

Remember Jolinnie Cochran's hardhitting summation at the O. J. Simpson
criminal trial likening Mark Fuhrman to Adolf Hitler? Well, that kind of
hyperbole is simply the tip of an iceberg.

Overinflated rhetoric

Hardly a day goes by that you don't read or hear some overinflated
Nazibased rhetoric. Newspaper stories and editorials are filled with
references to police officers as storm troopers and jails as
concentration camps. TV newscasts brim with sound bites in which
champions of the cause du jour condemn their opponents as fascists.

It happens all across the political spectrum. Conservative Rush
Liimbaugh delights in characterizing militant feminists as feminazis.
Liberals arguing against welfare reform often raise the spectre of
genocide. And everyone from immigrantrights advocates to

The National Rifle Association to Mafia godfathers likes to pin
the label Gestapo on one or another despised federal law enforcement
agency.

While this name game may seem silly and even laughable it's also
insensitive and insulting deeply disrespectful of the anguish and
horror suffered by millions of human beings more than a half century
ago.

What's driving this linguistic intemperance?

An easy answer, as usual, might be the news media. Not too long ago,
there was a big splash over World War II 50th anniversary events. More
recently, we've seen a crush of stories about Swiss banks and Nazi
gold.

All this is fueling memories for one generation of Americans and
creating new awareness for another. So our minds are suddenly filled with
horrific thoughts and images of the Holocaust.

But the root cause probably runs deeper. It is related, in my judgment,
to the rising tide of victimization which, many so called, analysts say,
is running through contemporary American society.

We are becoming a people immersed in selfpity over our every problem
and shortcoming. So why not climb aboard the martyrdom bandwagon? What
better way to define our misery and suffering than to draw analogies to
the most heinous and barbaric episode of the 20th century.

I say it's time to call a halt; to quit tapping the Holocaust for easy
epithets and fearful metaphors. Nazism was an evil so overwhelming that
it defies comparisons; the Holocaust was a tragedy so apocalyptic that
its name should never be taken in vain. To cast it into frivolous,
everyday language is to deprive it of meaning and, ultimately, of
message.

Speak out

Not only should we bite our own tongues, but we should speak out
whenever we hear someone else fling about Nazi and Holocaust labels.

During that lunchtime conversation with my friend, Fred, I failed to do
that. And I've regretted it ever since.

You see, when Fred asked me that question have you ever been
facetoface with a real Nazi? I could have truthfully answertd yes;
yes, I have.

It happened long ago In Vienna. I wasn't quite 4 years old and some men
with swastika armbands were systematically ransacking my family's home.
It's an experience seared in my memory ever since. It's something that,
even today, I don't take lightly and I don't think anyone else should
either.

A longtime California journalist, Eric Shuman is a copy chief at ANG
Newspapers and lives in Dublin. [Note: ANG owns the Oakland Tribune]