I was recently thoroughly, personally, thrashed, for using the term "breastfeeding nazi."    As a result, and particularly at the writer's request, I extended an explanation and apology to all others on Lactnet who might have been offended, or might have misunderstood my using that phrase.    Although the writer admitted she might have over-reacted, the points she made to me were very important, as were some other points that came out as we mutually explored the issue. 

 It shouldn't make any difference, but perhaps for clarity, you should know that she is not Jewish and I am.   Furthermore, while I have never been allied with LLL, I  totally respect and admire both their achievements and many of their members, individually and severally.   She has been extensively involved with LLL.

I will share some of our exchange, as the basis for a request that
we no longer, any of us, in any fashion, in any medium, or at any time, use the term "nazi" when we are talking about people with a zealous, or militant, or abrasive/obnoxious stand about breastfeeding (or anything else).    Over-zealousness, and even much bigotry is not the same as being a nazi.  This designation should be reserved for those who wore brown shirts in WW II, and those who, since then, and even in this day and age, would mimic their stand and be hate-mongerers, and  would  perpretate horrors and atrocities and death upon others, in the name of race, religion, or other imagined superiority.  
 
My thanks, again, (name withheld since I didn't ask permission first to identify you), for reminding me  and reteaching me  "how careful we must be when we write or speak, whatever the subject or the purpose.   One misturn or misuse of phrase  can defeat all the learning, sharing and teaching that could come from a statement, a paragraph, an article, or a book.  

Sincerely,  Chanita, San Francisco 

Excerpts from the interchange:

 "... if you look at what the Nazis did to people and the effect it had, and compare it to being abrasive and obnoxious and doing a number on mothers' close-to-the-surface postpartum feelings, it pales.  To use "nazi" for both minimizes what Holocaust survivors and non-survivors went through, IMO.  For me, anyway, to use the label  "nazi" when someone
aggressively disagrees (or disagreed in the past) with me shows disrespect for those who suffered."  

   "It doesn't prejudice me against anything else you may write or have written on Lactnet."  
 
"  But comparing La Leche League Leaders to Nazis was
extremely offensive and completely uncalled for.  The atrocities the Nazis
committed against the Jewish people and others can in no way be compared to an overbearing breastfeeding advocate, LLL or not.  Your using the term seriously undermined anything else you were trying to say."

" Even those who were steeped in the tradition of remembering [the Holocaust] (either because of it, or in spite of it), can become too cavalier and too easy in their use of language."

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