pynchon-l-digest V2 #1673

[Doug Millison]

Of course the Nazi genocide project was special and unique (although 
I have my own reservations regarding what I've read of some Holocaust 
historians who apparently don't like using the term "genocide" to 
describe anything but the Nazi crimes against the Jews), and of 
course it has roots in what came before. That doesn't excuse the 
Nazis or their supporters, however, nor does it in any way mitigate 
the suffering and death that resulted from their crimes -- although, 
often, we see historians who would seek to excuse or minimize what 
Hitler and the Nazis and their supporters did because it's "no worse" 
than what other European countries and the U.S. have done in other 
circumstances; of course they're all guilty and "we" are all guilty 
to the degree that we enable or cover up or otherwise excuse such 
crimes.   Over the years I've mentioned -- and urged Pynchon-L 
participants to read--  _"Exterminate the Brutes" One Man's Odyssey 
into the Heart of Darkness and the Origins of European Genocide_ by 
Sven Lindqvist.  In the preface to this powerful book, Lindqvist 
writes:  "Each of these genocides had, of course, its own unique 
characteristics. However, two events need not be identical for one of 
them to facilitate the other. European world expansion, accompanied 
as it was by a shamelss defense of extermination, created habits of 
thought and political precedents that made way for new outrages, 
finally culminating in the most horrendous of them all:  the 
Holocaust."

Certainly this is territory that Pynchon covers, and it's worth 
noting that he wouldn't be able to write his fictions the way he does 
without the legal and historical and journalistic record of other 
writers, historians, and prosecutors who uncovered the facts and 
connections that he weaves into his fiction -- in M&D, he even pays 
tribute to the crack-pots and others who keep alive stories that the 
mainstream prefers to keep on the fringe.  It seems particularly 
perverse, to my way of thinking, to try to use Pynchon's works, which 
are after all quite specific in their indictment of multinational 
corporations and governments and individuals and the media (for 
inculcating specific "habits of thought" and for misrepresenting or 
covering up) for their complicity in the War (WWII -- and the 
Holocaust; and the War that never ends, with its countless acts of 
genocide and other crimes), as a way to absolve them of their 
responsibility for the crimes in which they participated.

Whether or not U.S. corporations acted within the letter of the law 
in doing business with the Nazis, the nature of their regime was 
hardly hidden, including their racial purity programs, long before 
the U.S. entered the war. Corporations and individuals and 
governments that chose to side with the Nazis made the wrong choice, 
and they are, quite appropriately, being judged for their choices and 
punished for their actions, to the degree to which the facts can be 
known and adjudicated. By explictly linking U.S. and non-German 
European corporations to the Nazis in GR, Pynchon would seem to be 
heaping on them the ultimate insult -- in the process rendering a 
sort of justice with regard to entities that manage to continue to 
reap profits from policies and practices that served the Nazis then 
and serve the Ur-fascists now, you might say -- given the 
paradigmatic nature of the "Nazi" and "war criminal" label that rj 
rightly observes.

rj:
"But it's this
indiscriminate labelling of any convenient contemporary target as "Nazi" or
"war criminal" in order to vilify it and thus usurp its *wholly legal*
political authority or market share which is odious. "


It's a good thing that "legal" and "moral" remain two separate 
categories, isn't it -- at least we can continue to discriminate the 
one from the other, no matter how hard people try to excuse all sorts 
of behavior by hiding behind the "legal" label.

If you're talking about Bush or IBM as targets, it's hardly a case of 
"indiscriminate labelling" to seek historical facts and expose them 
to public view. "Indiscriminate" would imply just picking out 
individuals and companies for no good reason -- certainly not the 
case where there's a historical record that links Bush and IBM to the 
Nazis -- while "labelling" would seem to imply applying a descriptor 
that has no integral connection to the thing being labeled -- and 
that's certainly not the case here either, since we are after all 
talking about historical facts. To insinuate that the author of the 
new book about IBM and the Holocaust might be after IBM's market 
share seems more than a bit hyperbolic, given what's been reported 
about the author and his Holocaust survivor parents and his desire to 
understand how a company with IBM's image of American respectability 
could have helped Hitler. Likewise, to bring to light the facts of 
the Bush family's relations with the Nazi regime would seem to stem 
from an honest desire to know the truth about a family that has had 
an extraordinary impact on 20th, and now 21st, century American 
politics; it might also be seen in a long tradition of paranoia in 
American politics, which of course Pynchon also addresses.

If we see IBM's competitors capitalizing on the new book in order to 
steal market share, or if we see Bush's political opponents 
capitalizing on the Bush family history of involvement with the Nazis 
in order for political gain, rj's point might have some merit.  But 
in fact we see neither.  Having worked in and around the high tech 
business for nearly 20 years, it's difficult to imagine an 
advertising or marketing campaign that would use the IBM/Nazi 
relationship to win market share, although given the bloodthirsty 
habits of corporate marketers I guess there's very little that could 
surprise me.  And certainly we do not see Democrats using the Bush 
family history for political gain -- hell, they won't even step up to 
the plate and use Bush, Jr.'s current Ur-fascist tendencies to score 
political points, probably because too many of them share those 
tendencies.
-- 
d  o  u  g    m  i  l  l  i  s  o  n  <http://www.online-journalist.com>