The slippery slope of comparing Vaccine Passports to Yellow Stars of David.

I've always found holocaust comparisons to modern politics to be both distasteful and unfortunately common. I mean, not just Trump but every President in my lifetime was compared to Hitler. Red hats compared to brown shirts, cancel culture compared to the silencing of opinions by the Nazi party, every press secretary compared to Goebbels, whatever.

When Libertarians compare vaccine passports to Yellow Stars of David, of course both Ls and non-Ls alike started having conversations about bad messaging and whether it's ever been true that all press is good press. Despite Libertarian cynicism about government power, I don't think Libertarians think that vaccine passports are going to lead to America killing millions of Jews, but it's a bad look to even lean into such hyperbole.

Saying, I don't know... "The proposal as stated by many of it's proponents would combine huge problems for medical privacy concerns with restrictions based on such sensitive information, and would likely not remain limited to this current batch of specific vaccines" is a far cry from breaking Godwin's Law, even if it wouldn't have become as viral.

But it got me thinking... what's a better comparison they could have made? I mean... their argument is that tracking human behaviors with an aim of controlling them and singling out specific groups of people with characteristics the government doesn't like is a boiling frog/slippery slope thing that's got a vast potential for abuse... but comparing it to a precursor program to the holocaust is a really bad look.

And when I tried to think of something that fit better to what they're worried about? There's an obvious example in the modern world that should immediately come to mind to everyone.

China's social credit system.

I mean... the stated goal of vaccine passports is that they could prevent you from going not just onto an airplane or something, but to concerts, sporting events, grocery stores, restaurants, movies... as a way to punish certain groups and coerce behavior the government decided was positive through carrots and sticks.

This is currently happening in the world's most populous country.

But the problem with comparing vaccine passports to China's social credit system is similar to the problem with comparing it to pre-holocaust tracking. Because the CCP is currently running literal concentration camps housing religious and ethnic minorities. They are pursuing genocide through forced sterilizations and eugenics programs. They have been using their social credit system for all of that and to punish and prevent political opposition.

I don't think America's gonna place either Jews or Uyghurs in camps anytime soon. I don't think we're gonna return the Japanese to them either, or Gitmo-ize Americans over health decisions. But anyone who had talked about the government openly wanting to mandate vaccine passports required to leave your house (or go to common places) would have had you labelled a tin-foil hat conspiracy theorist just a year or two ago.