Re: Holocaust and Anti-Semitism (was Shaming Redux ) Abortion, Killing etc)]

[Andrew Wayne Austin <aaustin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 31 Aug 1999, Katha Pollitt wrote:

>Andy -- I don't think anyone would deny that anti-semitism played a role
>in the Holocaust!  Obviously it did -- otherwise the Jews would not have
>been a target.  The question was whether the Holocaust represented a
>kind of inevitable or automatic flowering of a particular kind of
>AntiSemitism ("exterminationist") that was endemic in the German people,
>or whether  German anti-semitism was deliberately inflamed, and the
>Holocaust  engineered, by the nazi regime, .

I have never claimed nor do I claim today that the Holocaust was
inevitable or automatic. I have argued that German anti-Semitism was
deliberately inflamed and the Holocaust was engineered by the Nazi regime.
You'll get no disagreement with me on the second explanation.

>  People always talk about the Holocaust as if it was so amazing that
>ordinary citizens could be found to do such awful things. They're always
>dragging out theories to 'explain" it by attributing special
>characteristics to the perpetrators and their societies.

This is precisely my point. One explains how ordinary Germans murdered
Jews in much the same way one explains how ordinary Southerners in the
United States lynched blacks. The explanation is unremarkable in this
regard. As I argued before on this matter, a similar event existed
potentially in the US about blacks. There was widespread discussion and
sentiment that blacks should be eliminated from US society, mainly sent
back to Africa. Had the right regime been in place it is probable that a
Holocaust could have happened here. We know for sure that there was a mass
extermination of the Native America. Like the Holocaust, the genocide of
American Indians does not require any special explanation.

This is what I find so amazing about the hostility towards the notion that
it was the ideas Germans held about the Jews that caused them to
exterminate them: the point is obvious, and it is easily grasped when we
discuss mass murder on the African continent or here at home in America.
But when it comes to Europeans, some people suddenly become incapable of
dealing with the truth. How could the masters of civilization engage in
such barbarity? Doesn't progress erase those ethnic hatreds? My original
post to Wojtek was only to point out the importance of ideas in explaining
mass phenomena and to note the blatant contradiction in his thought. His
response was a nonresponse. Doug's response to my post came with
unfortunate baggage. You see, there is a history between Doug and me, and
he is determined to drag that history into any listserv I happen to be on.

>I don't understand this -- genocide and mass murder happen pretty
>frequently in our century. The Armenian massacre, the Khmer Rouge.
>Ordinary Rwandans killed 800,000 fellow citizens in three months, using
>mostly hand-held weapons!

Exactly. Mass murder happens all the time throughout history. Each case
needs to be taken on its own term to understand how such a thing happens.
At the same time, however, it is unremarkable that otherwise "loving" and
"peaceful" people can the next day participate in mass murder. Why should
some extraordinary explanation be applied to Europeans during the first
part of the 20th century? Why does their mass murder need to be specially
rationalized as brainwashing or a conspiracy? This doesn't make any sense
to me... Well, it does make sense, but it is unfortunate that white
Europeans are excused for mass murder while the motives of nonwhite
perpetrators of mass murderers are easily grasped (and exaggerated).

Andy Austin