Lib=?ISO-8859-1?B?6Q==?=ration article on Edwin Black

[jbor]

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>From: Michel Ryckx <michel.ryckx at freebel.net>


> Question: was the IBM system used in the Dora camp?

I don't think that it matters whether or not the computers were located
on-site at the Lagers or in Berlin. The line of argument goes something like
this: establish a connection between a company (eg IBM), a political figure
or family (eg the Bushes), or indeed a critic (eg Paul de Man) or literary
interpretation, and Nazism, and in that way you will discredit them for all
perpetuity. The hidden agenda is in the promotion of some alternative
company or political figure/clan or critic or interpretation (or, indeed,
simply the author of the alleged exposé himself.) The Nazis were "evil"
therefore IBM ( ... etc ) is "evil". QED. It is a strategy which is
simplistic and manipulative and quite offensive in its reduction of WWII and
its consequences to the status of rhetorical instrument, to the mouthpiece
of propaganda.

And, it is, of course, far removed from the sophisticated spectacles of
history revealed in Pynchon's novels, the way in which technologies and
multi-national corporations and social and political systems generated from
the "Industrial Revolution", for example:

    "By 1945, the factory system - which, more than
     any piece of machinery, was the real and major
     result of the Industrial Revolution - had been
     extended to include the Manhattan Project, the
     German long-range rocket program and the death
     camps, such as Auschwitz.It has taken no major
     gift of prophecy to see how these three curves
      of development might plausibly converge, and
                before too long. ... "
                                 (T. Pynchon, 1984)


best (and welcome back -- send my regards to Montana Wildhack!)