SOLOMONIA

finds it disconcerting that I don’t believe in the moral uniqueness of the Holocaust. He leaves it to others to refute me, but he has a go at it anyway, pointing to anti-Semitic statements by the Palestinian Authority as evidence that the Holocaust is part of a history of anti-Semitism that isn’t over yet. (He also takes issue with Clayton Cramer‘s claim linking the prominence of the Holocaust to the media influence of Jews — though I don’t think Clayton’s saying what you think he’s saying there.)

Now, the Holocaust is special in various ways. Unlike most other atrocities, it has a specific and important anti-Jewish element, which makes it relevant to modern anti-Semitism. Obviously, it had a racial element (like some other atrocities, but not all), so it’s relevant to race relations generally, and people being singled out because of an accident of birth has its own emotional impact, as does people being singled out because of the cultural or religious community they belong to. It was more systematic than some other atrocities, which gives it special importance as an illustration of what an evil government can do if it puts its mind to it (so it may have more relevance as a cautionary tale for, say, the design of political systems). It had its particularly horrific elements — camps, ovens, and the like — which makes it particularly spine-chilling. And it took place in a highly developed, industrialized country that didn’t have much previous history along those lines, so it’s a good illustration of how quickly things can go sour and therefore how important it is to guard against this sort of thing even where you don’t think such vigilance is necessary.

But none of that is moral uniqueness. A serial killer may kill more grislily than someone who’s in it for the money; a lynching may be more shocking, or may tell us more about deep political issues, or may be more socially harmful in some sense, than a random drive-by shooting; but all of the above are immoral because they snuff out an innocent life. The same right is violated in each case. Similarly, the reason it’s immoral to kill 6 million Jews is because doing so involves 6 million acts of murder. Do I care any extra that they were killed because they were Jewish, or that their killing was systematic? Yes, in various senses, but not in the moral sense.

UPDATE: Thanks to readers Don Meaker and Reid Palmeira who agree with me. Don thinks the Holocaust is (wrongly) considered more important than, say, Stalin’s killings because leftists believe (or, at least, historically have believed) that fascists are more evil than Communists. Reid thinks it’s (perhaps understandably) considered more important because there was more contemporaneous reporting of it in the West. A third reader writes, in all capital letters, “I HAVE BEEN READING THE BLOG SINCE THE BEGINNING AND FOR THE FIRST TIME I DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU ARE SAYING.”