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:

>Why did the idea of anti-Semitism lead to such a disastrous outcome in
>Germany, but nowhere else? The images, taunts, discriminations were no
>worse in Germany, were they?  Why did Germans act on what others merely
>thought?

Was I not clear in my first post? I wrote then that the Holocaust did not
occur only in Germany and that Germans were not the only perpetrators. The
mass murder of Jews (and Gypsies and other groups) occurred throughout
Europe. Jews were killed as far east as the Ukraine by Ukrainians. I also
explained that the rise of Nazi Germany was the catalyst and the enabler
of exterminationist anti-Semitism. Unlike one-sided explanations of the
Holocaust (including Goldhagen's), my argument includes both the
political-economic and culture-ideologic features. Moreover, the Holocaust
wasn't the first mass murder of Jews. One of the primary targets of the
Inquisitions were Jews, who were held to be demons who fatten little boys
and then crucified. Jews were practically exterminated in the peninsula of
Europe during the height of the Inquisition. To provide an instance, in
1144, 100 Jews were tried for the offense of fattening Christian boys,
found guilty and hanged simultaneously. That alone counts as mass murder.
More often genocide was attempted by forcing Jews to give up their
ethnicity (cultural genocide). Jews were given a choice: conversion or
martyrdom. To avoid death some publicly converted, but secretly remained
Jews. These people were called Marranos, and were a particular target for
the Inquisitors suspicions. The point is that Europeans have been killing
Jews for centuries. Just as the Inquisition enabled anti-Semitism to
flourish in its eliminationist/exterminationist form, so did the Nazi era.
Why is that so difficult to get your mind around, Doug?

It is interesting that Marx emphasizes in Capital that what separates
human beings from bees and spiders is that the former build their cells
and webs intentionally, but that many Marxists wish to deny human agency
or the role of culture-ideology. Wasn't it Engels who said that political
economy determines things only in the final analysis and then only in
broad strokes? Both Marx and Engels argue that at times ideological
motivations can cause mass phenomena relatively independent of political
economy. Where has that sensibility gone? The Nazi regime was, in part, a
master plan for the extermination of European Jewry. Germans, Croatians,
and other nationalists, and this includes ordinary Europeans, had it in
their minds that the Jew had to go long before the Nazis came to power.
The Nazis knew they could pull off an extermination because they were
socialized in the ubiquitous anti-Semitism of Europe--an anti-Semitism that
has seen waves of exterminations of Jews for over 1000 years. Nazis didn't
create eliminationist anti-Semitism; they enabled and pushed it.

>Hardly neglected; a Marxist I know, Norman Finkelstein, says Goldhagen
>is all wet. But we've been here already.

Yes, and I showed then that Finkelstein's critique of Goldhagen is shoddy
scholarship at best, dishonest at worst. But Goldhagen has performed
admirably against his critics, so I will leave the matter there. I have
already spoken on the matter. In sum, Goldhagen's book makes important
advances in understanding the Holocaust specifically and collective
behavior generally. The dismissals of the book have been strictly
ideological.

But I think we should explore how and why Goldhagen made his way into this
discussion. I dispute Wojtek's claims about the importance of ideology and
use the example of the Holocaust. I do not mention Goldhagen in that post.
Based on previous discussions I have been involved in concerning
Goldhagen, you seek to put my point in the context of the Goldhagen
controversy. Is it your contention, Doug, that anti-Semitism did not play
a role in the Holocaust? What is your explanation for how ordinary Germans
were able to mass murder Jews? And why did they select Jews? Coincidence?
To argue that anti-Semitism played a marginal role in the murdering of
Jews is like claiming that blacks in the US South were not lynched because
they were black. It is an incredible argument, Doug. Do you believe that
dragging Goldhagen into the discussion, given all his bad press among the
left, will via some sort of game of association invalidate my argument
that anti-Semitism played a role in the Holocaust? And to what end? Would
it not be more scholarly, If I may use that word, if you were to dispute
the role of anti-Semitism in the Holocaust and support your claim with
logic and evidence, rather than bait me by holding up a maligned Zionist
scholar to dispute my point?

Andy Austin