You can tell a lot about a person by their reaction to traffic wardens. Those of a mellow, reflective bent may find their minds drifting to the Beatles’ affectionate pursuit of Lovely Rita, the meter maid. Otherwise, the sight of ticket wardens in sensible shoes and with expressions of fixated intent prowling our city centres can trigger a more visceral response. They’re more than jobsworths. They’re traffic Nazis!
The word Nazi is trivialised
If you’ve been habitually stung by plastic pouches left under the wipers you may see no problem in that. Just as spectres of the Third Reich are summoned to blast grammar Nazis or lockdown Nazis, isn’t this the best way to describe extreme and unnecessary enforcement? And it’s only a word. Should it even matter?
Yes. It should. Since words matter. Not least in the language of the Holocaust. The singular and bleakest moment in human history, when all the rules of civilised engagement were warped, distorted and rebranded in a monstrous ideology which dispatched six million Jews to their deaths.
Thanks to the Nazis, men, women, children, and babies were thrown into gas chambers. Disappearing in smoke on an altar of grotesque racial hatred. Framed this way, surely it casts traffic wardens and lovers of precision syntax in a more favourable light. Yet the word Nazi is freighted with more than the evocation of brutalising monsters. It exists as a reminder of how unchecked bigotry can lead to state-sponsored mass murder. It’s why the word should – must – be ring fenced by its context. It should not be frivolously and disproportionately summoned to glibly express extreme displeasure at, say, cafes which insist on closing at 5pm, or draconian returns policies on sales goods. Or used as a pocket tool for those who get angry about decisions made which contravene their beliefs or circumstances. Surely the English language – the language of Shakespeare, Harry Potter, well, you’ve seen the film – is rich enough to offer other forceful descriptions? Yet repeatedly it happens. As does labelling an opponent “worse than Hitler”, or saying a policy is “like Nazi Germany”.
But there are greater dangers in deploying such a trite approach to language. Today marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp where 1.1 million people were murdered during the Second World War. With the passing of time and the demise of our community of Holocaust survivors, we inch away from the primary sources and expert witnesses who can provide heart-stopping testimony of those indescribable years. Of course there are books, films and – one day, perhaps – the erection of a Holocaust memorial and learning centre beside the Houses of Parliament. But as time passes, memories get fainter.
Meanwhile, the danger is that the murder of six million Jews as well as gypsies, homosexuals and political dissidents in Nazi concentration camps will be forgotten. This risks leaving a vacuum for the heinous practitioners of Holocaust denial to reroute the narrative for their own antisemitic purposes, not least at a time of spiralling and unprecedented antisemitism.
Of equal danger is ignorance. Young people have consistently been shown to underestimate the numbers murdered by the Nazis, or have a limited understanding of the mass slaughter which took place. One 2019 poll carried out for the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust found that one in three people knew little or nothing about the Holocaust. Five per cent of UK adults polled didn’t even believe the Holocaust took place; one in 12 thought that its scale had been exaggerated.
That’s not to say they are ignorant of the swaggering insignia of swastikas, jack boots, or Adolf Hitler. But the devil – quite literally – is in the detail, and it is being egregiously overlooked. Meanwhile, the word Nazi is trivialised so the subject becomes trivial.
It’s understandable that in the quick-fire culture of modern communication, there is an unseemly pursuit of swift ways to analogise displeasure, even when it comes to arguing over a semi colon. Casual terminology rooted in the Holocaust is a gift that keeps on giving.
Yet 80 years after Auschwitz disgorged the pitifully few who had survived its unceasing appetite for death, the battle to make people understand how society can implode when extreme powers of the State, and the enthusiasm for antisemitism goose step together, goes on. How can we achieve this if we distract from and demean the memory and message of the Holocaust by universalising the term Nazi? If we are to memorialise the slain and honour the survivors, we can do better than that. Remember their suffering. Remember it’s only a parking ticket.
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