Although much has already been said, I can’t not comment on Sarah Hurwitz, the former Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama speechwriter, who faults young people (especially young Jews) for applying their power of abstraction in thinking about the Holocaust.
What do I mean by that? Hurwitz thinks (or says she does) that the TikTok generation makes a big mistake by drawing general lessons from the National Socialist regime’s mass murder of European Jews last century. She is dismayed that young people have concluded that powerful bad people, no matter who they are, should not harm weak people, no matter who they are.
So what’s the problem? According to Hurwitz, they were supposed to learn that killing weak people of a particular ethnicity or religion is horrible only when the victims are Jewish. Moreover, they should have learned that Jews by definition can never constitute the oppressor. Therefore, TikTok’ers are wrong to think of the Holocaust when they see videos of powerful Israeli soldiers harming weak Palestinians in Gaza. Or so Hurwitz believes. See for yourself. (By the way, Ms. Hurwitz, in both cases, the mass murderers did not only harm weak, emaciated victims; they made them weak and emaciated in the first place.)
All this perplexes Hurwitz and others in the American pro-Israel constituency. Young people have drawn broad rather than narrow lessons – and she equates that with antisemitism. Of course, this is buncumbe. Abstracting – drawing generalizations—from real events is a virtue, not a vice. It is quintessentially human. Ayn Rand disparaged persons who refuse to abstract as “concrete-bound.” We think in concepts, and we wouldn’t be able to do much thinking without them. Concepts are abstractions. We observe reality, note differences and similarities among entities, and integrate similar things into a conceptual hierarchy (for instance, chairs, furniture, manmade things). This facilitates efficient thinking by economizing on mental units. (Rand explained all this.)
Of course, we can make mistakes. We can misclassify things. We’re not infallible, which is why logic and reason are indispensable guides. If Hurwitz thinks that certain generalizations drawn from the Holocaust are fallacious, let her argue for her opposing position. However, she can’t get away with the libel of attributing those generalizations to “people who don’t really love Jews.” For one thing, many Jews have drawn those generalizations. At demonstrations protesting Israel’s destruction of life and property in Gaza, Jewish participants have held signs reading, “Never Again Is Now.” Hurwitz thinks that “Never Again” means only that Jews should not be persecuted or exterminated. Apparently, she also believes that if officials and military forces of the Jewish state seem to be committing those crimes, it can’t really be so, no matter how it looks. “Who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?” said Chico Marx.
Only an idiot or a demagogue could draw those conclusions. (I’ve drawn an additional lesson.)
Hellbound and Down 