Fugazi made this very interesting point:
The issue of qualifications and credibility is worth addressing. For instance, Goldhagen has a PhD from a prestigious university and look at how bad his work is (see earlier post).
I remember reading somewhere (and as usual, I now can't find it again) a piece by someone pointing out that when you look at the editorial boards of the proliferating "Holocaust" academic journals, you see a lot of people with qualifications in religious studies, Jewish studies and holocaust studies, but not a lot of history PhDs. This would certainly explain the air of religious mystery they bring to the subject.
The great bulk of that which is published on the big H belongs to categories other than historiography; biography, memoirs, endless moralising, philosophising and theologising.
I propose the following terminological distinction:
Holocostology refers to historiographical writings, e.g, Hilberg, Browing et al.
Holocaustianity refers to the subject of all those other writings, in particular the last three sub-categories - the moral-philosophical-theological.
I have quite an interest in this sort of stuff because it is very revealing as to the deeper function of the H. We are all too familiar with the financial/political uses of the H but I think the deeper function, the re-description of the moral universe is the most insidious and pernicious of all. I am building up a collection of this kind of stuff and will present extracts over time.
Here are a few examples;
'In 1951, the Knesset chose the 27th Nisan as Yom ha-Shoah; the date was chosen to commemorate the ghetto fighters - it was chosen to be as close as possible to the date of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising as well as the massacre of the Jews by the Crusaders, “forefathers of the Nazis”.'
then,
'It was because of the death of the six million, according to Rabbi Nurrock, the head of the committee [the Knesset committee to over see the whole business], that “we have been privileged to have our state.” '
(very interesting, however it gets better)
'The date chosen inaugurates a series of three closely related commemorations. Yom ha-Shoah is soon followed by the Memorial Day for the Fallen in Israel’s Jewish Wars. At sunset on that day, Independence Day celebrations begin, and the traditional mythic pattern of catastrophe and redemption is forcefully reaffirmed.'
and,
'It may well be that, in Yosef Yerushalmi’s terms, the Jews, as in the wake of the expulsion from Spain, are awaiting a new metahistorical myth to give meaning to the Shoah, in the same way the Kabbalah’s cosmic myth gave meaning to the previous catastrophe.'
Very clearly we are dealing with a religious myth, a founding national myth (Israel), and a myth that conforms to a long-standing mythic pattern; catastrophe and redemption,as well as something Kabbalistic (bit like Hilberg's Fuhrer order transmitted telepathically, I suppose!). There are plenty of parallels to be found in the bible where equally fantastic claims are made in similar (mythic) circumstances, e.g. the parting of the Red Sea, the falling of the walls of Jericho etc.
But this is a myth that extends beyond the Jews, he quotes the German sociologist and political philosopher Juergen Habermas;
“There [in Auschwitz] something happened that up to now nobody considered as even possible. There one touched on something which represents the deep layer of solidarity among all that wears a human face; notwithstanding all the usual acts of beastliness of human history, the integrity of this common layer has been taken for granted . . .Auschwitz has changed the basis for the continuity of the conditions of life within history - and this not only in Germany.”
this is very sinister for he is suggesting a discontinuity within human existence - "life within history". This must have huge consequences if it is taken seriously. Auschwitz becomes a kind of existential-moral year zero. Now we really are in the upper reaches of holocaustian theology!
Then he cites Baudrillard
'As Jean Baudrillard recently mentioned, we may be facing "a collective attempt to hallucinate the historical truth of evil . . . a desperate attempt to snatch a posthumous truth from history, a posthumous exculpation."
Friedlander again,
"Neither is the mind left at rest when pondering the relationship between the traditional Christian attitude towards the Jews and the “Final Solution”. Does Christianity bear a historic responsibility for the Shoah, or should Nazism be considered as a fundamental revolt against the “Judaeo-Christian” interpretation of the sense of human life and history?"
Well, he has already described the Crusaders as the 'forefathers of the Nazis' so we may suppose that he is trying to implicate Christianity, as distinct from the churches, in the 'responsibility' for the 'Shoah'.
Clearly another function shows itself in these extracts; the H is used to attack Christianity itself. The H is an attempt to supplant Christianity with another religious myth, this time with the Jews themselves playing the role of the crucified Christ!!
All quotes taken from;
Saul Friedlander in 'The Shoah in Present Historical Consciousness" from Memory, History, and the Extermination of the Jews of Europe (Bloomington,: Indiana University Press, 1993).
in ed. Michael L. Morgan A Holocaust Reader: Responses to the Nazi Extermination OUP, NY and Oxford, 2001; 276 - 290
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O.k, so this kind of thing is not exactly dealing with the historical facts which characterise our central concern here, but it is nonetheless important to Revisionism as is the question of financial and political exploitation. The vileness of the H lie is apparently without limit, it infects and pollutes everything from the post-war world order right through to fundamental theological and philosophical questions.