Rhetoric & Logic

Exhibit A · Concentration camps, and never again

Verdict · Appropriation · holocaust-appropriation

The U.S. is running concentration camps on our southern border, and that is exactly what they are. … I want to talk to the people that are concerned enough with humanity to say that ‘never again’ means something.

Rhetoric · Instagram Live, 17 June 2019. Border facilities are named with the camp system, and “never again” is spent on that naming. The audience is handed a moral emergency already decided.

Logic · A concentration camp, in the sense she invoked, is a specific historical institution. A border facility can be criticized on its own record. Equating the two requires a premise she does not supply: same purpose, same end, same system. “Never again” was a sentence about the genocide of the Jews. Spending it here borrows that conclusion without establishing the premise. Yad Vashem replied “Learn about concentration camps.” On 24 June 2019 the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum rejected comparisons between the Holocaust and other events, without naming her. An earlier version said the museums answered her by name. They did not.

Source · Instagram Live, 17 June 2019. Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Exhibit B · The lesson she will not take

Verdict · Appropriation · holocaust-appropriation

Not a quotation. She did not withdraw the analogy. An earlier version set that sentence as a quote. The marks are removed.

Rhetoric · The objection is treated as pedantry. The audience is told that quibbling about the word is how one sides with the harm.

Logic · A category error is not a quibble. If the word does not apply, the moral force borrowed from the word does not apply either. Refusing the correction leaves the argument standing on a premise that failed.

Source · U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum statement, 24 June 2019. JTA.