Whatever its cause, moreover, disproportionate attention to the Holocaust is intellectually distorting. Nazis atrocities must never be forgotten. But there’s something wrong when they’re just about the only things Americans know about Jewish or European history, both of which include ample evidence of the best human capacities as well as the worst. Nor is there anything to celebrate when Americans are much better acquainted with foreign events than with our own past, which includes its horrors as well as its triumphs.

The neglect of other events, periods, and regions has damaging political consequences, too. Greene and other populist opponents of COVID restrictions have been rightly criticized for comparing mask requirements or vaccine mandates to Nazi policies. But American thinking on foreign policy is seriously distorted by the respectable habit of identifying every authoritarian ruler as another Hitler and every territorial dispute as a second Munich. Historical analogies are a valuable tool of political reasoning. But they don’t work if you only know one case for comparison.

Foreign policy isn’t the only area where our obsession with Nazis is an obstacle to clear thinking. During riots in the summer of 2020, progressives denounced federal agents deployed to protect courthouses and other government installations as Trump’s equivalent to “Brown shirts [sic].” There were legitimate concerns about violations of civil liberties, but it’s not fascism to try to stop violent attacks on public property.