Ideological Funhouse: Rightwingers defending Hitchens from Antisemite Charge

[Jim heartfield]

In message <001c01be57df$e0438f00$9eba8482 at nsn2>, Nathan Newman
<nathan.newman at yale.edu> writes
>BTW  aside from Hitchen's usual iconoclasm in praising a devil (Irving) to
>bash a media icon (Goldhagen), Hitchens Holocaust comments seemed quite
>reasonable.  Hitchens point that Hitler and the Nazis never received an
>electoral majority and their vote was falling when Hitler seized power
>serves Hitchens broader point of arguing that evil is not some sort of
>specifically German national disease but a general virus of humanity.

Would this be a case of 'Ideological funhouse: Nathan defends Republican
Stool-pidgeon of anti-semite charge'?

I agree with Hitchens and, if I understand him, Nathan. The arguments
put up against Daniel Goldhagen's book 'Hitler's Willing Executioners'
were entirely reasonable, and correct.

Goldhagen's book is a version of the 'Collective Guilt' thesis, first
developed by the German emigre aristocrat Lord Vansittart. The thesis is
that the German people as a whole were responsible for Fascism, and
therefore are not to be trusted with democratic self-government.

'Collective guilt' was the ideological justification of the occupation
and division of Germany by the Allies after the Second World War. It
minimised the guilt of those specifically responsible for the holocaust,
and justified the introduction of oppressive security and governmental
institutions under Western tutelage.

'Collective Guilt' has long been endorsed by Zionists, because it
tallies with the idea that Jews can only be safe in an independent
state, and that all gentiles are in their nature anti-Semitic.
-- 
Jim heartfield