I do not wish to recount all of the sadisms and cruelties that rank-and-file Nazi officers inflicted on my grandfather. But it is beyond doubt that no concentration camp could function without its low-level soldiers. We are now expected to believe that members of ICE, our fellow citizens, are thugs like the Nazis rather than normal Americans facing a deluge of new migrants and struggling to deal with the population flow. We are expected to believe that ICE agents enjoy hurting Hispanic babies, and withholding medical care. This is a slander, and should be rejected by people of any charitable disposition.

Americans can and should protest bad conditions on the border. But activists should leave the Holocaust-appropriating rhetoric out of it. If we are to describe the problem we face, much less solve it, we need to maintain the integrity of our language. It is impossible not to notice that the circle of people being called Nazis these days is getting larger and larger. And if we do not get a handle on our vocabulary, then when the time comes, distant as it may seem, we will have no words left to describe the real thing.