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How did a careless comparison by a BBC sports presenter, between the language of the UK government about migration and the language of Germany in the 1930s (i.e. Nazism), lead to a bitterly

polarised debate on social media and in the press? And why did it continue to escalate, even after the Lineker affair fizzled out? It all started with a tweet by Gary Lineker about the

government’s immigration policy: “This is just an immeasurably cruel policy directed at the most vulnerable people in language that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s, and

I’m out of order?” The first half of the tweet is unexceptional. Many people are deeply unhappy about the immigration policies of successive Conservative Home Secretaries, in particular,

Priti Patel and Suella Braverman. These concerns are well-meaning. It could have all stopped there. Instead Lineker went on to compare their language with that of “Germany in the 30s”. This

was totally unnecessary and led to a set of increasingly nasty exchanges on social media, which also focused on the comparison between the Government and the Nazis. People continued to

compare the Government immigration policy with the Nazis, ignoring requests by Jews and organisations who promote public understanding of Nazism and the Holocaust to avoid such comparisons,

as at best unhelpful and at worst offensive and misleading. Karen Pollock, Chief Executive of the Holocaust Education Trust, wrote in The Times on 10 March, “However passionately we feel

about important and pressing issues of the day, comparing those current concerns with the unimaginable horrors of the Nazi period is wrong.” “Let’s calm down,” she wrote, “remember history,

and keep Nazi comparisons out of political rhetoric.” The actress Tracy-Ann Oberman wrote, “Please Stop using Nazis/Nazis terminology to discuss anything you don’t like or disagree with…

It’s so disrespectful. Please find better words.” On 11 March, Alastair Campbell compared the BBC cuts in its classical music output with Nazi Germany in the 1930s: “Amid the noise re

@GaryLineker another disastrous move by the BBC in response to the Tory government political pressure and cuts – the abolition of BBC Singers and cuts to BBC orchestras. This is another

resonance with 30s Germany – the assault on culture and the arts.” Then came the real low point. Suella Braverman visited Rwanda to discuss the deportation of illegal immigrants. This

triggered two different photoshopped images of her. First, a picture of her on her own, laughing against the background of buildings in Rwanda, clearly implying that she was insensitive to

the suffering of immigrants and refugees who might end up being deported to Africa. Edited out of the photo were two Rwandans beside her, who were laughing with her, apparently sharing a

joke. Then, much worse, a version of the photo of her laughing was superimposed on a famous image of Auschwitz, implying that she was not only indifferent to the suffering of migrants, but

also to the victims of the Holocaust. This is an altogether different category of nastiness. At the time of writing I have just seen this post on Twitter by a well-known comedian: “Who

called it the ‘Rwanda Migrant Housing Policy’ and not ‘Reichmove’?” There are a number of notable omissions from many of these comments and images on social media. First, I may have missed

them, but I haven’t seen any Jews comparing the UK government with the Nazis. Quite the opposite. Jews have led the attack on these comparisons, pointing out how offensive and unhelpful they

are. Second, from Lineker and Campbell to these doctored photos, this is all part of the growing debasement of social media. Third, critics of the UK government rarely if ever mention that

both Priti Patel and Suella Braverman were themselves refugees fleeing persecution. Ms Braverman is also married to a Jew, Rael Braverman, who lost members of his family in the Holocaust.  

Fourth, this is also part of the growing polarisation of British political life since Brexit and the 2019 election. Since then, it is not enough to express concern about specific government

policies. Now it is apparently acceptable to claim that they are vile human beings, completely indifferent to, even gloating about, the worst forms of human suffering, rather than to make

any kind of careful argument about their policies. On Sunday, Kenan Malik, often an interesting and thoughtful commentator, wrote an article in the Observer under the title, “‘Stop the

boats’ does echo the language of the 30s.” He began, “It has become a familiar political pas de deux. One side draws an analogy between some current policy or practice and 1930s Germany, as

if Nazis provide the only measure of moral degradation. The other side uses outrage at the analogy as a shield to protect itself from having to justify that policy’s immorality in its own

terms.” Right from the beginning we are in muddy waters. Yes, one side is drawing an analogy between some current policy and 1930s Germany. But “the other side” isn’t using “outrage at the

analogy … to protect itself from having to justify that policy’s immorality in its own terms”. They are “using [ sic ] outrage at the analogy” because the analogy is wrong: it is

historically misleading, it is offensive and it is exploiting the suffering of millions trapped in Nazi-occupied Europe, who were then killed, in order to score cheap points against the

current UK government. Suella Braverman, and Priti Patel before her, are not comparable with the Nazis and to imply that they are does no justice to the complexities of the debate about

immigration. But as Malik goes on to argue later in his article, the more interesting comparison is not between today and the language or the policies of the Nazis in the 1930s, but between

today and the language and policies of western governments in the 1930s – Britain, the US, the dominions and France, among them. Malik is right to quote Louise London’s important book,

Whitehall and the Jews 1933-1948: British Immigration Policy, Jewish refugees and the Holocaust (Cambridge University Press, 2000) . He could also have quoted Paul R. Bartrop’s powerful

book, The Evian Conference of 1938 and the Jewish Refugee Crisis  (Springer International Publishing, 2018), Richard Breitman and Allan J. Lichtman. FDR and the Jews  (Harvard University

Press, 2013) , the work of the British scholar Tony Kushner and Ken Burns’s new three-part series, The US and the Holocaust (PBS, 2022), still available on BBC iPlayer. The work of these

people, and many others, has dramatically changed the way we think about immigration policies in the 1930s and during the first year of the war. The latest phase of the debate about

immigration in Britain has got off to a bad start. It has become too personal, too nasty, full of silly comparisons with the Nazis. When Lineker and Campbell saw thoughtful people who know

about history saying the comparisons they were making with Nazi Germany in the 1930s were inappropriate, why didn’t they apologise? Why not say that they were concerned about our immigration

policy and BBC cuts but that on reflection it was not helpful to compare these with Nazi Germany? Wouldn’t that have been the right thing to do? It’s time to stop making comparisons between

British government policies and the Nazis — once and for all. A MESSAGE FROM THEARTICLE _We are the only publication that’s committed to covering every angle. We have an important

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