>Today most German papers are carrying lengthy articles on Finkelstein in
>their cultural section.
>
>Die Welt is giving almost a whole side to three articles, including an
>interview with Finkelstein. Finkelstein. Certainly he says a lot of correct
>things (e.g. about remembering and compensating US, British and French
>crimes in the respective countries), but reading a setence in a conservative
>German paper like:
>"Der Holocaust ist eine ideologische Keule, mit der Deutschland in Schach
>gehalten wird"
>("The holocaust is the ideological club to keep Germany in check")
>makes me shiver. It shows that Finkelstein knows very littles about
>present-day Germany.
Johannes, are you sure this line is from The Holocaust Industry? I read the book, in English, a couple of months ago and don't remember that sentence. It's an ignorant statement, sure, but Finkelstein's analysis doesn't hinge on it. In fact, it complicates some of the other things he says. Early in the book he claims that, before 1967, Germany was disassociated from the Holocaust by American Jewish elites. ("With the inception of the Cold War...American Jewish elites 'forgot' the Nazi holocaust because Germany--West Germany by 1949--became a crucial postwar American ally in the US confontration with the Soviet Union. Dredging up the past served no useful purpose.") And he makes it clear throughout that the Holocaust industry is merely opportunistic: American Jewish elites might selectively demonize Germany for profit (and other reasons), but they have neither the will nor the use to control Germany, "to keep Germany in check." Besides, their masters in the State Department wouldn't allow such an effort.
Finkelstein also admits that he's not very knowledgeable about Germany. The Holocaust Industry focuses exclusively on American Jews and their backers, and in his New Left Review piece on Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners, he writes: "Crucial as it is to fully apprehending the Goldhagen phenomenon, the German reaction will not be considered in this monograph. Deciphering its anomalies would require a much more intimate knowledge of the German cultural landscape than this writer possesses."
Eric