The phrase “Never Again” is a floating signifier—flexible enough to carry different meanings for different audiences while remaining specific enough to galvanize various political actions, depending on the context and speakers. “Never Again” is used in different political projects and has the capacity to change the roles of actors and events in them with each signification. The phrase organizes the relations between past and future so that the past, the Holocaust, marks the present as a warning from a future in which Germany fears a holocaust-like repetition. The October 7 Hamas attack on Israel informed the use of “Never Again” within a symbolic landscape of moral calls to protect Jews and Israel as belonging together. The article analyzes the use of the phrase “Never Again is now” between October 2023 and July 2025 in a Bundestag resolution, monuments, and in projects commemorating state violence that referenced the Holocaust.
Irit Dekel (Sun,) studied this question.