GRGR(5) Katje and the Nazis

[calbert at pop.tiac.net]

Michael Perez:

> The Nazis genuinely believed that their economy was being threatened by
> the Jews.  This, of course, was psychotic scapegoating or as Ian cites
> later "phantasy."

No more so than Stalin "genuinely" believed that the Kulaks were 
hoarding grain. It was a convenient cover for various atrocities, a 
convenient "them" for the purpose of mobilizing a fascist populace.

>  Most of America's earliest immigrants were of no
> threat to anyone either, but the relocation and subsequent
> extermination of the people and their means of subsistance (the bison)
> went on regardless of the threat that was imposed.

Though i would not quibble with the idea that the Native Americans 
had cause to do so, there is no end of the historical record of 
indian attacks on settlers. I challenge you to find anything of the 
sort in inter-bellum Germany.

>  The Africans and
> others used as slaves all over the world imported as "sub-humans" so
> that whatever "master race."

Slavery, and the philosophy of humanity which informs it preceeds the 
"Atlantic" slave trade by millenia.

> The Stalinist purges were equally
> scandalous.  On and on throughout history, these things continue. 
> There's always some reason, no matter how disgustingly perverted.  I
> see the special place THE Holocaust is given as equal to the current
> debate here in the US over the idea that "hate crimes" are worse than
> crimes of any other sort.  To dismember someone because they are of
> this race or nationality or another is just as disgusting as doing it
> for no reason at all or just because the victim happened to be
> convenient.

I would suggest that you read the Lacoue-Labarth sequence again, 
perhaps with an open mind.


> I don't see the "crystal palace" reference as being to the
> Kristallnacht ("The Night of Broken Glass," 11/9/38, when Nazi mobs
> smashed Jewish owned shop windows and synagogues in retaliation for the
> assassination of a German diplomat in Paris by a young Jewish man).  It
> is a reference to that icon of Victorian ingenuity, The Crystal Palace,
> that was mostly destroyed by a 1936.  .. As for the "judgment from which there is no
> appeal," I always took this to mean death, I see no overt Holocaust
> reference here.  The same with the "dark hotel," this could be almost
> anything.  The "Ss" is coincidental, IMHO, and does not refer to the
> Schutsstaffeln, it is merely descriptive.

I'll go along with that.

love,
cfa