Holocaust as metaphor

[Paul Mackin]

the Brock defection has made the far right a mite nutter than usual is all.

            P

----- Original Message -----
From: <KXX4493553 at aol.com>
To: "Pynchon-L" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Friday, June 29, 2001 1:13 PM
Subject: FWD: Holocaust as metaphor


> Washington Times, June 27/01
> "Holocaust deniers are at it again" by Jonah Goldberg
>
>      The Holocaust deniers are at it again.
>      I'm not referring to the people - usually ignorant and evil, but
> sometimes sophisticated and evil - who after finding their "political
> agendas" terribly inconvenienced by the fact that Nazi Germany
> systematically murdered millions of people, including 6 million Jews,
simply
> deny it happened. I get e-mail from these people all the time, and I
haven't
> a single good word to say about them, except - thankfully - they are
> irrelevant and, therefore, relatively harmless.
>      But there are other Holocaust deniers out there who, though not evil,
> are infinitely more harmful precisely because they are so relevant. These
> are the people who enlist the Holocaust into virtually every cause.
>      On Tuesday, Donald Berwick of the Institute for Healthcare, wrote an
> op-ed for The Washington Post in which he invoked the story - now subject
to
> some historical revisionism - of Denmark's response to the Nazi assault on
> the Jews. The way the story goes, Denmark's king insisted that if Jews had
> to wear yellow stars, then so would he and all other Danes. Berwick
> summarizes the moral of the tale: "If some Danes are under siege, then all
> Danes are under siege. So, for now, we are all Jews."
>      Berwick then seamlessly slides into the assertion "Now we all have
> AIDS" - and goes on to insist that the CEOs of the big pharmaceutical
firms
> face the same moral choice as Denmark's king, and, therefore, they should
> make AIDS drugs "free" to everyone. Whether you appreciate the
> well-intentioned stupidity of this idea, or not, is irrelevant. The fact
is
> that a disease - any disease - is not the Nazi Holocaust.
>      The problem with such analogies - and they are very, very common - is
a
> profound moral one. The essential fact of the Holocaust isn't that large
> numbers of people died and the world did little to stop it. It's that
large
> numbers of people were murdered (in what was considered the most
"cultured"
> and "advanced" nation on the most "enlightened" continent) and the world
did
> little to stop it.
>      AIDS, however, does not murder people. Neither does typhoid,
> tuberculosis, cancer or any other disease. The moral context is completely
> and unalterably different. To equate the Holocaust with some cold,
> impersonal force removes the moral consequences for the murderers, the
> murdered and the bystanders. You might as well say Auschwitz was no
> different than a bad outbreak of influenza.
>      Or take a more famous example. In Al Gore's "Earth in the Balance,"
he
> infamously compared the fight to help the environment to the fight against
> the Nazis. "As clouds of war gathered over Europe, many refused to
recognize
> what was about to happen," he wrote.
>      He then asserts, "Today the evidence of an ecological Kristallnacht
is
> as clear as the sound of glass shattering in Berlin," referring to the
night
> when Nazis destroyed synagogues and Jewish businesses and murdered about
100
> Jews. He went on to note that "much of the world closed its eyes as Hitler
> marched." And those who disagreed with his global warming prescriptions
were
> the equivalent of "Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in Munich."
>      To be sure, those who seek to use the Holocaust for their own
purposes
> often have good intentions, but sometimes it's simply an attempt to
demonize
> the opposition and close off debate. Those who disagree with Al Gore about
> global warming aren't merely "wrong;" they're like people who stood by
while
> Anne Frank was dragged to the camps.
>      Indeed, this abuse of the Holocaust is common and execrable. Jesse
> Jackson once observed: "In South Africa, we call it apartheid. In Nazi
> Germany, we'd call it fascism. Here in the United States, we call it
> conservatism."
>      Congressional Democrats have a long history of comparing Republicans
to
> Nazis. Take one typical example. During the debate over the Republican
> "Contract With America," Rep. John Lewis read Martin Niemoller's timeless
> speech about the Nazi takeover: "They came first for the Communists, and I
> didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews
> ..."
>      Then, with all the gravity he could muster, Lewis intoned: "Read the
> Republican contract. They are coming for the children. They are coming for
> the poor. They are coming for the sick, the elderly and the disabled."
>      This sort of thing is a double slander. On the one hand, it suggests
> that a benign legislative agenda the majority of Americans supported was
the
> moral equivalent of Nazism. And on the other hand, it suggests that Nazism
> was no worse than a program to limit the number of Congressional committee
> chairs and to reduce income taxes.
>      Here's a hint to all people who'd like to use the Holocaust as a
> metaphor: If what you're talking about doesn't involve the organized
murder
> of millions of people in gas chambers, then maybe you should look for
> something more apt.
> Goldberg is the editor of National Review Online
> (http://www.nationalreview.com).
>
>
>
> Kurt-Werner Pörtner
>