[Marxism] Finkelstein in Germany (and other issues of anti-Deutschers, Zionism, etc.)

["Ian Pace" <ian@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

From: "Anna Fierling" <anna_fierling@xxxxxxxxx>


> I haven't followed this thread too closely, so I hope I'm not repeating
> something that's already been discussed. I just wanted to add that this
> tendency within the German left to avoid criticism of Israel--and worse, to
> automatically equate anti-Zionism with antisemitism--is quite broad and
> deep, afflicting many (probably most) on the left and far left. Most
> recently, the German left has been pretty silent while the CDU and others
> whip up hysteria over Iran's participation in the World Cup - and the Green
> party has been at the forefront of demands to ban the team or at least the
> president:
I'm interested in what you can tell me about the German reaction to Norman
Finkelstein's work (I recall you are interested in it?). I got the
impression that both his book 'A Nation on Trial' and of course 'The
Holocaust Industry' were received with quite a large degree of hostility in
Germany. But I'm only getting my information from both Finkelstein's critics
and his sometimes rather beleagured responses (as appear on his website), as
well as some private correspondence. I believe there are three different
books in German on Finkelstein? Without wanting to get into stereotypes, I
thought it's perhaps not totally out-of-place to perceive a
self-flagellating tendency within some aspects of post-war German culture -
would it thus be fair to identify a certain welcoming of Goldhagen's piece
of trash (which Finkelstein comprehensively showed to be fallacious in 'A
Nation on Trial')? And thus leading, perversely, to a hostility towards
anyone who doesn't want to see the issues of the Holocaust and genocide as
being merely about a nation and a culture? What I'm trying to say in a
slightly diplomatic manner is that Goldhagen plays the xenophobic
anti-German card with all his might, knowing how well that goes down amongst
chauvinistic Americans convinced of their superiority of their own culture
and society (and I include liberals in that list), and also knowing that in
Germany itself such harsh stuff against a whole people might be welcomed.
Then Finkelstein tries to refute it, and the response from many German
intellectuals is to tell him not to get in the way of them beating
themselves up?

I suppose I can see why the arguments of the 'Holocaust Industry' (which is
a flawed book, certainly, rather rushed and dodgy in its use of language,
arguably playing into the wrong hands) could never really be accepted in
Germany without giving the wrong message. What are your thoughts on them?

The fear of ever giving anti-German critics the slightest opportunity to
bring up the anti-semitism card seems, from what little I know, to really
paralyse debate on Israel and the Middle East in Germany. The arguments and
evidence that most of Europe, not just Germany, was culpable in the
Holocaust, is irrefutable, certainly, but this becomes hideously
appropriated by both Zionists and liberal and conservative American
pro-imperialists to silence the level of moderate dissent that exists in
Europe against Israel's actions towards the Palestinians. This seems to make
an awful lot of moderate leftists run scared at the first opportunity.

I even remember awful right-wing stuff saying that Germany wouldn't support
the war on Iraq because they loved Arabs simply because Arabs hated Jews,
and that sort of thing. Alas this sort of thing goes down well in the
intellectually subnormal mainstream political culture of the US (and in
Britain as well).

How to fight this sort of thing? How to form alliances with social democrats
and even other moderate bourgeois politicians against the apartheid policies
of Israel when they have such powerful propaganda weapons in which even some
on the far left are complicit?

Solidarity,
Ian



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