Comments
What are you talking about? Everyone knows that all of France joined la résistance.
I tend to follow Jeffery Goldberg's line on this: The Holocaust should only be compared to, well, the Holocaust.
I'm not generally a fan of holocaust comparisons either, because it usually cheapens the memory of the holocaust. But the Roma were the other ethnic group targeted for extermination in the holocaust by the Nazis, so this is, should we say, apropos. I don't know much about this history of Roma in France, but considering France's disgusting wartime behavior, the civil service probably eagerly rounded up any Roma they could find into camps for killing by the Germans.
If we want to discuss French immigration policy, I'm down. But discussing it in the context of the Holocaust (as if being sent back to your country of origin is even remotely akin to finding yourself on a train to Auschwitz or Chelmno or Belzec or Majdanek or Sobibor or Treblinka) is dangerous and foolish.
Next we'll be comparing American immigration policy, which often involves raids, buses and the separation of families, with the Holocaust. Let's not go there.
Holocaust comparisons are clearly over-used. But the sight of French gendarmes rounding up and expelling 'undesirables' positively reeks with historical irony. Both the idea of 'resistance' and the thought of France as anything more than a bastion of nationalism and xenophobia are myths that need discarded.
Comparing something is not the same thing as morally equating it. Nor are all comparisons created equal: France is targeting and deporting an entire people group that it finds undesirable; the US--which has over 45 million Hispanics living within its borders--is not.
If you hate France/don't like their immigration policies just write about that, I don't give a fuck. In fact, I might just join you. (We can talk about the Italians and the Spanish and just how screwed EU immigration policy is as well.) Just don't drag the Holocaust into this. Please.
