[lbo-talk] Finkestein hangs Marty P out to dry

Angelus Novus fuerdenkommunismus at yahoo.com
Wed Oct 18 12:07:49 PDT 2006


Michael McIntyre wrote:


> So, Angelus and MPug, a couple of questions:
> (1) Was Norman right or wrong about:
> (a) Joan Peters?

Yes (he was right).


> (b) Daniel Goldhagen?

"right" or "wrong" seems a strange way of posing the question in this case. I do not know of Finkelstein successfully challenging Goldhagen's factual material, merely his thesis. And Finkelstein's counter-thesis, that there was no widespread anti-semitism in Germany, and that Jews themselves were responsible for whatever anti-semitism there was, is, as the natural scientists say, "not even wrong."


> (c) Alan Dershowitz?

I don't know. I would have to read what Finkelstein has to say about Dershowitz. I really do not want to spend what little money I have on material by Finkelstein, however.


> No more of this, "forget what he says, he
> objectively serves an
> objectionable function" crap.

The Chomsky worldview summed up neatly. Forget objective social structures, ideology, fetishized relationships, historical context, social interests. Just the facts please.

A left that reads Chomsky and Finkelstein rather than Marx or Lukacs deserves to lose, and lose badly. There are enough right-wing populists promoting foreshortened models of capitalism as merely the rule of sinister Jews, greedy corporations, and unscrupulous governments. If you go in for that sort of thing, at least become a Haider or Buchanan supporter and get it in undiluted form.

Rolf Surmann, an exemplary Antifascist researcher in Germany, and who once called Finkelstein "Germany's favorite Jew," has this to say about the role that Finkelstein plays in German discourse:

http://www.hagalil.com/archiv/2001/05/finkelstein.htm

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