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Background
A negative response from many quarters was elicited following Donald Trump's simultaneous bannings by Twitter, Facebook, and many other online platforms on January 8 (apparently lifetime bans, and apparently part of a rolling political purge, with the Trump life-ban from seemingly the entire mainstream Internet being what is called in other contexts a "decapacitation strike"). One was Angela Merkel. This was something of a surprise. She made one of the earliest and clearest rebukes of the coordinated digital un-personing of the sitting US president.
In response to Merkel's criticism of "Big Tech" erasing Donald Trump (and his campaign infrastructure and public-relations capabilities) from the Internet, some anti-Trump people in turn attacked Merkel. This is all as expected. Of interest here is that one of the attacks on Merkel, from a very prominent and active left-wing US Twitter personality, is worth attention.
The Holocaust Tweet
BrooklynDad_Defiant!
@mmpadellan
I disagree with Angela Merkel, who thinks that banning trump's Twitter account was "problematic."
If Hitler had Twitter back then, the Holocaust would've been much, much worse.
Jan 11, 2021
https://twitter.com/mmpadellan/status/1 ... 3341315074
Okay. This Twitter guy, who goes by "Brooklyn Dad," is one of the more successful "Twitter personalities" out there, with 850,000 followers despite not being a "public figure."
Brooklyn Dad's profile says this:
Proud papa. Perpetually pissed.
#BlueWave2020, #Feminist.
#TheResistance, #BLM, #GoJoe!
Author of The Liddle'est President.
Sr. Advisor, @ReallyAmerican1
Onto the Holocaust rhetorical-grenade he tossed in, hoping to do damage to Merkel:
If Hitler had Twitter back then, the holocaust would've been much, much worse.
What does this mean? To what kind of person does this sound persuasive?
Is the Holocaust's place in our culture today such that if you just mention it at all, as if by magic, you win?
This argument, if it is an argument, is so thin as to get people to question whether it is a parody account or a real account.
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The state of Holocaust Belief in the 2020s?
Taking this argument at face value (and not as the rather weak rhetorical joust of endorsing political censorship in our time):
Why would "the Holocaust" have been "worse" if Hitler had had Twitter?
Remember that Twitter is public, amounting to kind of instant public broadcasting service for many of the biggest names, few bigger than Trump with his 89 million followers.
As best I can tell, and in the context of the frenetic political-rhetoric escalation of January 2021, Brooklyn Dad must mean this:
Hitler, armed with Twitter, could have much more easily inspired random attacks on Jews, at any time. This via instant communication with millions of violent fanatical Nazis, who, in this fantasy-scenario, were constantly killing Jews. With Twitter, they'd have killed more Jews, more often, I guess is the idea.
Really this tells me that Brooklyn Dad has no idea what the orthodox Holocaust story even is. He is very likely unaware that mainstream Holocaust historiography now generally agrees there was no "Hitler order" for the Holocaust, so the whole thing is off on all kinds of wrong premises. Brooklyn Dad's idea of the Holocaust is almost as bizarre a fantasy morality-play version of it as you can get, really a black-and-white horror movie, or a zombie movie with Germans as zombies and Jews as the human survivors slowly being hunted down by the zombies.
Is this the state of mainstream Holocaust Belief in the 2020s? If so, Holocaust Belief has really degenerated.
Is there any place within the orthodox Holocaust story for a defense of Brooklyn Dad's comment (that Twitter would have made the Holocaust "much, much worse")? I can't see one. Maybe someone else can.
