[lbo-talk] Nazi Holocaust and American Settler Colonialism (was Ward Churchill. . . .)

Yoshie Furuhashi critical.montages at gmail.com
Fri May 26 11:08:22 PDT 2006


On 5/26/06, info at pulpculture.org <info at pulpculture.org> wrote:
> WC wants to find evidence that the US government did it, because he wants
> to argue that, not only is the genocide of American Indians like the
> Holocaust, he's interested in arguing that Hitler got his ideas _from_ the
> United States.

I agree that Ward Churchill should have cited American Indian oral traditions to argue for narratives of small-pox blankets when he couldn't find written records for them.

But whether Hitler was inspired by American racial politics, including its policies toward American Indians, as well as other examples of colonialism elsewhere, doesn't stand or fall based on Churchill's scholarship or lack thereof. E.g., Jim Craven posted this excerpt from John Toland's biography of Hitler to a mailing list:

<blockquote>Hitler's concept of concentration camps as well as the practicality of genocide owed much, so he claimed, to his studies of English and United States history. He admired the camps for Boer prisoners in South Africa And for the Indians in the Wild West; and often praised to his inner circle the efficiency of America's extermination-by starvation and uneven combat-of the 'Red Savages' who could not be tamed by captivity. (John Toland, "Adolf Hitler" Vol II, p 802, Doubleday & Co, 1976)

<http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/a-list/2003w32/msg00025.htm></blockquote>

The Holocaust and American settler colonialism are not the same, as no two events in history are exactly the same, but there are enough similarities between them to make analytical comparisons worthwhile, even while clarifying differences between them.

-- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list