Shalom Auslander on the podcast this weekend

Nazi talk featuring the author of 'Feh'

Why we need to stop calling every antisemitic jerk a Nazi

Late last year, the newsletter startup Substack came under fire when an article in The Atlantic boldly proclaimed the tech company “has a Nazi problem“. Nazis, it was reported, were starting newsletters on Substack and spreading their hateful propaganda. While the existence and quantity of said Nazis remained the core issue, writer Shalom Auslander was struck by something else: were these people actually Nazis?

Auslander wrote a piece for Tablet, in which he argues the word “Nazi” has all but lost its meaning, having been watered down to refer to most people with nationalist, xenophobic, extreme right-wing beliefs. He joins the show to lay out his argument for being more careful with words—especially for the People of the Book—and the danger in making the word “Nazi” synonymous with “racist asshole”.