JustASC

Interesting split among Jewish activists: 185 rabbis and other Jewish leaders urge world-wide boycott of Summer Olympics in Beijing:

We remember all too well that the road to Nazi genocide began in the 1930s, with Hitler’s efforts to improve the public image of his evil regime. Jews should not be party to the whitewashing of such a regime.

But the ADL is opposed to a boycott:

While there is no doubt that China has an extremely poor human rights record and that its actions in Tibet and Sudan are to be condemned, we believe that asking the Jewish community to engage in a boycott of the games could be counterproductive and would not produce any tangible result.

In calling for a boycott, some have drawn parallels with the Berlin Olympic Games of 1936. We believe that these comparisons are inappropriate. China is a complicated society that is changing and opening up in many ways, and one simply cannot equate the Beijing Olympics with those games in Nazi Germany on the eve of the Holocaust.

[UPDATE: I wasn't sure what I thought of this issue, and then I figured out what was bugging me. Implicit in the ADL statement is what I'll call the Nazi Standard: If a country's behavior doesn't rise (or sink) to the level of the Nazi Holocaust, we must be hesitant to use tactics that we would have applied against Hitler.  (I don't mean to single out the ADL -- the rabbis also applied the Nazi Standard in their statement.)

That's placing a very high bar on Jewish advocacy -- implying that we should call for extreme measures only to the degree that an issue stands up to the most exteme comparisons. And it hobbles our ability to judge a crisis on its own merits. So China is not engaged in genocide, just repression, human rights abuses, stifling the press, silencing its opposition. If the Nazis win the gold medal for World's Worst Totalitarians, we need a way to talk about the silver and bronze medalists.

I haven't made up my mind about the boycott, but let me propose that we have the conversation without referencing Nazism, and limiting the debate to China. Is it a bad player? Would there be a symbolic or tangible benefit -- measured in the improvement of conditions for those living under Beijing's thumb -- if a boycott was in place? Will individuals and countries compromise their own principles by taking part?

Slate had a good piece about the boycott, and asked questions like these.

The one question not to ask is this: Are [fill in the blank] as bad as the Nazis?]