Paul Hosford: Rosa Parks and Nazis – why words used in the Dáil matter
Civil rights veteran Rosa Parks. Picture: Taro Yamasaki//Time Life Pictures/Getty Images
When Rosa Parks refused to move seats on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus in 1955, she struck a defining blow in the civil rights movement in the US.
But what many fail to see is that Ms Parks' actions did not solve the issues of suffrage, of equality or of racism. What followed the Montgomery Bus Boycott was a decade of violence, protest and, in too many cases, murder of black Americans.
Ms Parks, who died in 2005, was a giant of the pursuit of equality, whose own government struck back at her and her husband because of her actions.
She was not somebody whose name should be used as a comparator lightly.
So, when Sinn Féin TD for Mayo Rose Conway Walsh said she called Ms Parks to mind when debating whether unvaccinated people should be allowed have pints indoors, she was rightly excoriated and issued an apology – a proper apology, at that.
But it was the latest example of the language of our parliamentarians slipping into the worst, most unjustifiable of hyperbole.
Just a day earlier, Tipperary independent TD Mattie McGrath had said the vaccine passes were akin to Nazi Germany.
Speaking to media on Tuesday, Mr McGrath said: "Is that where we've come to now, back to 1933 in Germany, we'll be all tagged in yellow with the mark of the beast on us, is that where we're going?"
He was challenged on this remark by my colleague Aoife Moore, who told him "there is no similarity" between the Government's current proposal and the horrors of Nazi Germany.
Mr McGrath, however, doubled down on his statement and said there were "huge similarities" between one of the most horrific regimes of all time and not being able to drink indoors without a vaccine in a global health emergency.
Instrumentalization of the tragedy of all people who between 1933-45 suffered, were humiliated, tortured & murdered by the hateful totalitarian regime of Nazi Germany to argue against vaccination that saves human lives is a sad symptom of moral and intellectual decline.
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) July 13, 2021
The Auschwitz Museum in Berlin reacted to Mr McGrath's comments to say the "instrumentalization of the tragedy of all people who between 1933-45 suffered, were humiliated, tortured & murdered by the hateful totalitarian regime of Nazi Germany to argue against vaccination that saves human lives is a sad symptom of moral and intellectual decline."
While it is obvious that many TDs reach for the strongest example they can think of, the Dáil's newest deputy Ivana Bacik hammered home why the language we choose should be tempered.
"My grandfather was imprisoned by the Nazis in Czechoslovakia during the Second World War. For our family, fascism was a real issue. It is not a word that any of us should use lightly in this country or anywhere else."
These horrors, used as examples by our politicians, happened to real people and their after-effects are still being dealt with.
When we use them, or some other terms too freely bandied about in politics recently – apartheid and Stalinism, for example – we undermine both our own argument and the pain and suffering of millions of real people.
There are numerous issues with the workability and the fairness of the Government's proposal on vaccine passports. But that does not make those proposing it mendacious or totalitarian and our public debate is diminished by the suggestion that they are.
