Getting back to the inappropriate use of the term “Alligator Auschwitz,” I’ve noticed several cases on Bluesky where people have argued, in effect: The facility called “Alligator Alcatraz” is a concentration camp. Auschwitz was a concentration camp. Therefore the two are morally equivalent.

This is an example of the false equivalence fallacy. It claims two things are equivalent on the basis of some similarities while ignoring significant differences. Often, as in the present case, they’re differences of degree. Wikipedia gives the example: “They are both Felidae, mammals in the order Carnivora, therefore there’s little difference between having a pet cat and a pet jaguar.” It’s most likely to turn up in emotionally loaded comparisons. “Overstaying one’s visa and armed invasion are both illegal, so overstayed immigrants are an invasion force.” “Kissing someone without prior verbal permission and rape are both impositions on a person, therefore an unrequested kiss amounts to rape.” “A 5G phone and a nuclear reactor in meltdown both emit radiation, therefore 5G phones are a severe danger to anyone in the area.”

A concentration camp, according to Merriam-Webster, is “a place where large numbers of people (such as prisoners of war, political prisoners, refugees, or the members of an ethnic or religious minority) are detained or confined under armed guard.” Alligator Alcatraz (that really is its official name) is a concentration camp. So were the US relocation centers for Japanese-Americans during World War II. So was Germany’s Auschwitz-Birkenau, where over a million people were systematically killed. That doesn’t mean that the three are effectively the same. Saying that they aren’t the same doesn’t excuse any of them. The evils of Alligator Alcatraz are major, but they aren’t on the scale of mass extermination. Anyone who claims they are will be ignored as a crazy conspiracy theorist.

We can also talk about the false equivalence between Trump and his opponents, as discussed by Aaron Ross Powell. If you’ve read much of my blog over a long time, you’ll notice I don’t hesitate to jump on either Republicans or Democrats. There have been times when one party has been worse than the other, if only because it had more power, but you have to go all the way back to Woodrow Wilson to see the level of power-grabbing which Trump is now engaging in. We have to put aside otherwise important issues to form a broad front opposing Trump’s open defiance of the law and the Constitution. Many libertarians refuse to see a difference and see Trump as just more of the usual. For them, anything but complete liberty is complete tyranny.

There’s a difference between a cold and bubonic plague. It’s fine to point out broad similarities and warn of where a trend may lead, but false equivalences only make an argument less plausible and distract from the worst evils.