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

andie nachgeborenen andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com
Fri May 26 14:59:41 PDT 2006


Annoying the Jews would be another purpose . . . .

I'm not sure there is any constructive political purpose served by the comparison. I'm no defender of the idea that the Holocaust, construed narrowly (and inaccurately) as merely Judeocide, was specially and uniquely wicked. Comparative studies of genocide (like Holocaust so construed) and non-genocidal mass murder and ethnic cleansing seem to me perfectly legitimate). But as Kelly has emphasized, in the game the WC is playing, there an implicit acceptance of the idea that Holocaust/Judeocide was uniquely wicked, and an anachronistic standard for earlier crimes against humanity. In addition, there's the "more-oppresseder-than-thou" game going on (something parodied nicely in a couple episodes of the Sopranos I saw recently), which is really dull.

The Holocaust is political WMD -- before setting it off in a political discussion you have to be pretty damn sure of the point and that the inevitable hullabaloo than ensues will be worthwhile, also bringing it up tends to shut down thought and engage raw emotion, which is a reason to avoid the analogy.

jks

--- Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol at jhu.edu> wrote:


> Yoshie:
>
> 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.
>
> [WS:] And what would be the analytical purpose of
> such a comparison other
> than attaching the emotionally charged label
> "fascist" to certain historical
> events in the US?
>
> Wojtek
>
> ___________________________________
>
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>

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