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> In 1920 records were kept about beeing a jew. It was perfectly ok, no harm done, some record no one cared about. In 1942 those records became mortal

As a legacy of this, the US government doesn't count Jews in the census. (And, to preserve nondiscrimination values, doesn't count other religious denominations either.)

Interestingly, the census does enthusiastically collect race data on everyone. This is logically incoherent; racial groups (such as the Jews, actually) are at least as much a natural target of extermination efforts as religious groups.



It’s hard to understand how things that are harmless today can be prosecuted tomorrow. Imagine a drugstore keeping a list of its customers who have diabetes... or AIDS.


Having AIDS was stigmatized right from the beginning, because it was obvious right from the beginning that if you had AIDS, you were gay.

(It was also stigmatized because it was a lethal disease that spread by unclear means, but that seems less relevant to the topic at hand.)




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