Re: Shaming Redux (was Re: [Fwd: Culture and Technology (was Re: Abortion, Killing etc)]

[Andrew Wayne Austin <aaustin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 30 Aug 1999, Doug Henwood wrote:

>I know you're a big Goldhagen fan, Andy, but just why were the
>Germans such anti-Semites, and why didn't other European countries
>get the idea of gassing Jews?

You are wrong about this, Doug. Anti-Semitism was widespread throughout
Europe, not just in Germany, and it had been for centuries. Eliminationist
anti-Semitism was building throughout the 19th century, and its
exterminationist emphasis predates Hitler and the Nazis. The Croatians,
for example, were so virulently anti-Semitic that their barbarity took
even German soldiers aback. Croatian Ustashi forces burned Jews (and Serbs
and Gypsies) alive at Jasenovac. Bulgarians, Cossacks, Romanians,
Byelorussians, Slovaks, all participated in the mass murder of Jews, only
infrequently under orders from German officers. This was also the case in
Eastern Europe. For example, in the Ukraine and in Lithuania, as soon as
the domestic police forces were brought under control of the German army,
citizens spontaneously began beating Jews to death while German soldiers
watched, such as in the city of Kovno in June of 1941 where thousands of
Jews were massacred in the streets.

The rise of Nazi Germany was the catalyst that enabled eliminationist
anti-Semitism to take its exterminationist form. There was a collective
will about the elimination/extermination of the Jews. Once the machinery
was in place to carry out this will, mass murder emerged as a fully-blown
organic phenomenon. That is what makes the Holocaust so horrifying.
Similar things have been seen in other instances of mass murder. Observers
are typically puzzled how, without orders or coercion, millions of people
can be slaughtered. Researchers like Goldhagen provide an important
element to the explanation, one that has been particularly neglected by
Marxists.

So to answer your question, many other European nationalities had it in
mind to liquidate the Jews. Nazism enabled eliminationist anti-Semitism to
reach its logical conclusion, that of extermination.

Andy