GRGR: Todorov and Buchanan on the Holocaust

[rj]

The 1996 NYT review of Todorov's book is at

http://search.nytimes.com/books/search/bin/fastweb?getdoc+book-rev+book-r+19166+0+wAAA+todorov

One of the criticisms the reviewer, Neil Gordon, makes is the following:

> On what
>               grounds, for example, can the penal camps of the Soviet Union be compared with the
>               Nazi death camps? Similar totalitarian regimes, the argument runs, give rise to similar
>               consequences. But though the description of totalitarian qualities of both regimes is
>               convincing and the depiction of the processes of totalitarianism dramatic, the conflation
>               of the Communist and Nazi camps never really succeeds. 
>
> To make the comparison, Mr. Todorov must limit himself to a range of experience that
>               stops at ''a threshold of suffering beyond which an individual's actions teach us nothing
>               more about the individual but only about the reactions that unbearable suffering elicits
>               from the human mechanism.'' He concludes: ''From the inmate's point of view,''
>               therefore, ''the Communist and Nazi camps were often identical.'' 
> 
>               But beyond that ''threshold of suffering'' stands something ignored only with difficulty:
>               that there were at the Nazi concentration camps two groups experiencing something with
>               no equivalent in the Soviet penal colonies: the death sentence by fact of race. ''Class
>               enemy'' in the gulags and ''race enemy'' in the camps -- no matter how similar their
>               sufferings, no matter what the psychopathic Stalinist injustice or Kafkaesque madness
>               that lie behind the definition of ''class enemy'' -- are impossible to render equivalent.
>               The differences between the two are never resolved by the objective category of
>               totalitarianism, or by the subjective argument that in both cases, under totalitarianism
>               ''the enemy is necessarily an extreme enemy, against whom a war of extermination is
>               justified.'' 
>

I'm not sure that I agree with this argument that atrocities committed
against a race are somehow more terrible, or more worthy of historical
remembrance, than those committed against a class, any other artifical
division of the *human race*, or, indeed, any individual (as hag points
out.)

More pertinent is the criticism that Todorov is setting himself up as
some sort of moral authority or god, judging this or that individual or
action according to his own moral yardstick as if he possesses an
impervious objectivity that a Jewish historian or victim would not. And,
I can imagine instances when the idea of moral choice in the camps and
under Nazism isn't enough -- *Sophie's Choice* springs to mind.

Another brief review:

http://www.sasquatch.com/~kory/facing_the_extreme.html

> At the end of the book, Todorov offers some observations. He reiterates that contrary to what one might think, moral life did not
> disappear in the camps; despite the best efforts of the captors, the humanity of the inmates was not utterly crushed. For
> Todorov, this is evidence that a moral world always continues to exist for us. More, he would (and does) say that morality
> is not arbitrary; ``the moral act par excellence is `caring' '' (but not merely the solidarity mentioned above)--it is both
> subjective and personal, i.e. involving the relation of one person to another, but not as in heroism or justice. 
>

The underlying maxim of *V.* -- "Keep cool but care" -- seems to me to
be a similar one to Todorov's.

Having glanced at some of the information about Buchanan I am quite
appalled that anyone would seek to intertwine the two points of view.
Buchanan is a racist and anti-Semitic populist garnering electoral
support by appealing to the xenophobic instincts and selfishness of a
portion of the populace. He deserves to be spoken out against loudly and
constantly, and demonstrated to be these things, as the site Spencer
points to does, in order that he never (again?) holds a position of
public authority in your (or any) country. But to dismiss Todorov, or
his advocates, on the grounds that they are Holocaust-deniers who want
to make way for "another book on the Y2K crisis or another autobiography
by a presidential candidate... (i.e. Buchanan)" is both hysterical and
irresponsible (and, yes, ignorant) imo.

best