[lbo-talk] Germans should stop feeling Holocaust guilt: Ahmadinejad

[jthorn65 at sbcglobal.net]

A little collective guilt might allow the US to both consider honoring its existing treaties with NA's and even 
allow a serious national debate on reparations. What else would help promote such agendas? Collective 
goodwill? Collective guilt would be the quicker route in my opinion. It isn't as if every landowner today 
hasn't directly benefited.

John Thornton


> --- Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> 
>  
>  It'd be nice if the U.S. went through a few guilt
>  rituals for slavery  
>  and Indian genocide. What you call guilt-tripping
>  has kept Germany on  
>  pretty good behavior for the last 60 years.
>  

 

 It's also kept Germany almost completely subservient

 to US foreign policy until very recently and

 reflexively pro-Israel.

 

 Why should, say, Doug Henwood feel guilty about stuff

 that happened in the US in 1850? The German case goes

 way beyond "Germans did some really evil stuff at one

 point in history and it must never happen again." It's

 a collective national myth based on being evil. Kind

 of sick and self-indulgent. (But then perhaps I have

 personal reasons to feel this way, what with being

 German and all.)

 

 Hannah Arendt demolished the whole Mitschuldigkeit

 Cult back in the 1960s. I thought you were against

 notions of collective guilt anyway?

 

 Chris Doss