‘Needle Nazis’: Intergroup Conflict and Nazi Analogies in the U.S. during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic marked a moment of intense social polarization in the United States. While part of the population strove to promote mask wearing and mass vaccination, others considered that governments were abusing their power. In the heated debates that followed, analogies with Nazism and the Holocaust proliferated, a practice already common in U.S. politics that then gained renewed prominence. This dissertation examines this phenomenon as an expression of the multiple ways in which societies relate to the past and of its role in social conflict. Drawing on the interpretative framework of Social Identity and Collective Memory, it analyzes its impact on the U.S. press and on the social network Twitter, while tracing the history of polarization and the historical imagination of the American republic.