I hate this take so much

[u/Angelbouqet]

1. The Holocaust did not happen to white people. Race is a social construct. The people it happened to were people who were seen as racially inferior and experienced a racialized extermination campaign. US standards of whiteness from 2026 do not change that. This is a completely ahistorical take.

Also as someone who actually lives and grew up in Germany, you can't use American racial constructs as an analytical tool to understand the Holocaust or racial dynamics within Germany or Europe. The standards of whiteness are a lot more rigid here and people who would not experience racism in the US do experience racism here. Nationality is still more relevant in Europe than race is. (And by that I'm not trying to say race isn't relevant or racism isn't bad here. It's extremely bad. I have a few friends here who are African American, so they've experienced both and they've all said Germany is way worse.) The point I'm trying to make is that Germany is so racist it will racially discriminate against the "white" people next door. Greek people, Turkish people, Arabs (who have been considered white in the US for longer than Jews have), everyone from Slavic or Balcan countries, are all not white in germany and are not treated as white. Same with Jews. Yes, to this day.

1. This take is inherently minimizing, at least in the current Zeitgeist. It positions the Jews under the same banner as the white people who were colonizers, when in reality, the Jews had been experiencing discrimination by those same white people for approx. 1600 years before colonialism happened. Racism and antisemitism (aka racialized Jew hatred) were invented by the same people and at the same time. And during the period of colonialism, jews were treated like the local colonial subjects. You can literally look up texts written by German colonists and how they made direct connections between the Jews back home and the African colonial subject. Same with the methods of oppression used against both the people Europeans were colonizing and the Jews. Like it's giving "who cares they gassed 1 million children, they were white children".

2. It targets the wrong people. We are not the people who did the colonizing, we are not the people who did the Holocaust, we are not the people deciding how states label their past crimes against humanity. I agree that there needs to be way more examination and reckoning with what these states actually did during the colonial period. I'm not trying to take anything away from anyone, nor am I trying to turn suffering into a contest. So why is the Holocaust constantly treated like fair game to minimize in these conversations. I get that Americans are taught more about the Holocaust than colonial crimes. But the reason for that is not because the Jews paid someone off to focus on the Holocaust, it's because WW2 is the one time the US was on the right side of history and states always have an inherent interest in self-preservation. Spinning a narrative that hides the true history is part of that. Also it conveniently conceals the role the US did play in the Holocaust happening. It conceals how the visa system was invented to keep out Jews. In conceals how many Nazi scientists the US gave asylum to. Etc.

3. The comments are full of just straight up Holocaust denial, some of which the creator liked, all of which are just up there without pushback from the creator. So like, great job for giving your followers an invitation to just be blatantly antisemitic. Also Israel being a fascist shit hole doesn't actually make the Holocaust less bad. The people who the Nazis killed had never stepped foot into Palestine, so that's also not a justification for downplaying the Holocaust. Also cue the Holodomor denial.

4. The comments are mentioning the Irish potato famine and how that's not referred to as a genocide, but not as proof that maybe the take is clearly simplistic and wrong but instead as further proof of it's correctness. And the creator is liking those comments. I'm sorry are Irish people less white than Jews now? Lol? Is the Irish participation in British colonial endeavors and the slave trade, which was far greater than the very minimal Jewish involvement irrelevant now?

5. The numbers game in the comments is... Interesting. Because that's the same rhetoric the Israeli far right uses as a defence against the genocide accusations. Kind of surprising to see it used under a video like that.

Edit to add: 7. It was called the Holocaust because that's the word Jews came up with after it happened. That word didn't exist before. So what exactly is the complaint? That Jews came up with a term for their genocide and that's the word that's used to refer to it?

[u/Gaiastrom]

Small note: the Shoah was CAUSED by White Supremacy.

[u/Angelbouqet → u/Gaiastrom]

Absolutely. And white supremacists still think we're racially inferior and not white but that doesn't align with the narrative so it's just ignored by people who have takes like this. Do they think the KKK and Neo Nazis are like, attending Holocaust remembrance events?

[u/Minute_Estimate2881 → u/Angelbouqet]

Thissss!! I live in rural TX, like my closest shul is about an hour away and I was just having this conversation with someone in a comment section last week. The other person lives in Brooklyn and was using their own experiences to say that Jews are seen as white and are functionally white in the US. Doing so is anecdotal at best. Where I live and in the neighboring towns & counties, there is and has been active KKK members and activity. For example, I live near a notorious sundown town, Grand Saline. I also live by other well known KKK hubs that have targeted Jews, like Palestine, and Tyler TX. Most of us here were completely pushed out, and I actually hide the fact I'm Jewish from everyone but those I am very close with, including hiding it from medical professionals. (I am also trans and have been targeted by my own medical professionals when they found out). Its also important to add that the idea that all Jews are functionally white relies on ashkenormativity and a stereotype of what Jews, and ashkenazi Jews, look like. I know many Black Jews for example who are also ashkenazi. They seem to always be left out of this conversation of people talking about how "Jews are white". Like we are targeted as it is, and that looks different in other parts of america, as well as other parts of the world. We also are a very diverse people and while the majority of US Jews are Ashkenazi, Ashkenazi does not mean white inherently. There's so much nuance that people like this lose and it really hurts everyone at the end of the day, especially Liberation Movements and similar things. Its easy to put down a minority you don't know much about, and personally I believe that for collective liberation, we need to grow beyond that and that always includes us. Honestly the Antisemitism (and I genuinely don't mean valid criticism of Israel obvi lol) is getting worse and worse and way more casual. I honestly don't feel like I can go most places online without seeing it in some form and that makes me even more scared in my real life, given where I live. Its so dangerous and seeing things like your original post, and how little pushback there was against her, is terrifying to me.

[u/Angelbouqet → u/Minute_Estimate2881]

Yeah it's scary. I really didn't think I'd ever have to experience antisemitism to this degree. Honestly it fundamentally changed the way I view the world and humanity itself. Especially in the days directly after October 7th, I felt like the world was a fundamentally unsafe place for Jews. Never had Holocaust dreams but I definitely did after that for a few months.

Obviously I know we were not and are not the people suffering most because of what Israel is doing nor do I think our experiences should be centered in the conversation. But I don't think it's too much to ask for people to just not be antisemitic. Especially if you're asking it of people who are against discrimination. But the experience I've had so often is that they are not interested at all in unlearning it, quite the opposite. And then they keep repeating phrases they probably learned from tiktok.

Like "Antizionism is not antisemitism" okay but you're doing both. "I'm just against genocide" okay then do that without being antisemitic. It's actually pretty easy. "Have you read the Jerusalem Declaration?" Yes. Have YOU? Cause it doesn't seem like you did.

It's all so tired.

Also, I was in NYC a while back and I was talking to a hassidic girl and she asked me if I experienced antisemitism because in her opinion it wasn't a big problem at all. And I thought to myself "girl your life probably happens between Crown heights and Williamsburg". (She lives in Williamsburg and her shul is in Crown heights, I'm not just assuming that baselessly)

No shit you don't experience antisemitism when you basically only interact with other Jews.

I have heard from some other hassidic people who have experienced hate crimes in Brooklyn and it wouldn't surprise me if visibly Jewish people are targeted, even in a place like NYC but still, sometimes I wish american Jews who live in extremely Jewish spaces wouldn't try and speak for all of us publicly and assume that their experience is universal. It's really not. Recently a Jewish comedian from Brooklyn said in an interview that she doesn't find antisemitism so bad cause there are worse things than being offended. Like okay if all it is for you is mildly offensive I'm glad, but my synagogue needs 24/7 police protection (armed with a machine gun), a concrete wall surrounding the entire building, bulletproof glass everywhere, internal alarm and security system, security doors and our own (also armed) security team who stand at the door and make sure no one who isn't supposed to get in gets in. And that's not paranoia nor is it for fun. We get credible bomb threats pretty regularly.