-Caveat Lector- From spiked-online
}}}>Begin Column26 January 2001 Exploiting the Holocaust by Mick Hume The Nazi Holocaust is a unique horror, the great crime of the last century. It should be remembered, taught about in schools, and debated by historians. It should not be exploited for political purposes, far less turned into a moral circus. Yet that is what seems to be happening this Saturday 27 January, with the staging of the UK's first Holocaust Memorial Day. Today and tomorrow on spiked, we are publishing articles that take issue with various aspects of the Holocaust Memorial Day and the wider current cultural obsession with the Holocaust. We do so because we think that the slaughter of six million Jews and others in the Nazi death camps is too important an issue to be used in this way. It seems that the further it recedes into history, the more the Holocaust is in the news. The motives behind this fresh obsession with the Nazis' Final Solution have more to do with the present than the past. The Holocaus t has effectively been removed from its historical context, and turned into a cheap political resource to be exploited for all manner of purposes. The Nazi Holocaust has become perhaps the last moral absolute in an uncertain world. It seems ever harder for those in authority to create a consensus about what is right and wrong on issues ranging from child-rearing to GM food. How comforting, then, for the New Labour government to be able to wheel out the Holocaust as one issue where all decent citizens can agree that there remains a clear line between Good and Evil. The official 'Statement of Commitment' for Saturday's events makes clear the attempt to turn our horror at the Holocaust into a kind of national emotional cement. Thus the Holocaust must have 'a permanent place in our nat ion's collective memory', in order to 'reaffirm our shared goals of mutual understanding and justice' and our 'shared responsibility to fight�evils'. How many people will be prepared to participate in the government's col lective guilt trip on Saturday remains to be seen. Talking about the Holocaust in these terms is largely an exercise in self-flattery for societies like the UK and the USA. Uncertain as to what they are supposed to stand for in the post- Cold War world, Washington and Whi tehall have seized the chance to advertise their civilised virtues anew, by contrasting them with Nazi barbarism. The Holocaust Museum in Washington DC highlights George Washington's assurance that the US government 'gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance' (although the history of official American attitudes durin g the Holocaust might suggest otherwise). In similar vein, a UK government press release this week stated that the Holocaust Memorial Day has been 'set up to reflect the UK's commitment to oppose racism, victimisation and genocide'. The message appears to be that we might not be too sure of who we are anymore, but at least we know we're not Nazis. In the run-up to the UK memorial day, the political exploitation of the Holocaust has created the unseemly spectacle of different victim groups squabbling over who has the right to be included. The organisers have been ac cused of having a selective memory for inviting representatives from the recent conflicts in Bosnia and Rwanda, while marginalising other historical victims like the Armenians (not to mention the Iraqis, the Rwandan Hutus or the Serbs). Meanwhile, a row has broken out over the proper place of lesbians and gays in the Holocaust book of remembrance. Everybody, it seems, now wants to claim a piece of the Holocaust - to clamber up the funeral pyre of Auschwitz as a short-cut to the moral high ground of history. However worthy the intentions might be, the net effect of the current obsession with the Holocaust can only be to diminish the meaning of the slaughter of six million Jews. Grouping together the Holocaust with more recent conflicts in Rwanda or Bosnia, under the general heading of 'genocide', creates a false comparison that risks distorting the present and relativising the unique horror of the past. And while drawing parallels between the Holocaust and everyday discrimination or bullying today might seem like a useful tool of moral education, the inevitable result is to make Nazi barbarism appear banal. Worse still, the Holocaust has been turned into a symbol of the evil that is supposedly within us all. It is being exploited as historical evidence to support the anti-humanist prejudice of contemporary society. The offic ial statement on 'Lessons for the future' to accompany the Holocaust Memorial Day even talks about 'the propensity of human beings to murder en masse', and asserts that 'persecution and mass death will almost inevitably f orm a part of the future of human behaviour too'. This depressing and repulsive view of the human condition is perhaps best summed up in the poster campaign used to advertise the Imperial War Museum's Holocaust Exhibition, reviewed elsewhere on spiked today. Beneath a pi cture of the railway lines running into the industrial death camp of Auschwitz, the caption reads 'See what man can do when he puts his mind to it'. It seems as if the final 'lessons of the Holocaust' we are meant to learn today have less to do with the politics of racial inferiority than with the allegedly lowlife nature of the human race itself. Read on: The Holocaust issue Reprinted from : http://www.spiked- online.com/Articles/00000000545D.htm End<{{{ }}}>Begin Article26 January 2001 Howard Jacobson: Holocaust day is 'all so Blairite' by Brendan O'Neill 'Holocaust Memorial Day? It's just a ready-made way of feeling grand about an issue that we don't actually have to do anything about.' Howard Jacobson, Jewish novelist and TV presenter, will not be joining in with the government's commemoration of the Holocaust on Saturday 27 January. 'I was confused about why Labour wanted a memorial day in the first pl ace', he says. 'I have no idea what the Holocaust has got to do with us here in Britain, specifically in England.' But what about New Labour's assertion that remembering the Holocaust has lessons for us all - that it 'provides an opportunity to examine our nation's past and learn for the future', and can 'assert a continuing commitmen t to oppose racism, anti-Semitism, victimisation and genocide'? (1) 'Nonsense', says Jacobson, 'that's what that is. This is the story: there is an avidity of sympathy and suffering around at the moment, and remembering t he Holocaust is an attempt to lock on to that. It's all so Blairite - grab hold of any grand idea of pastoral or primeval suffering and get what you can from it.' For Jacobson, New Labour's plans to commemorate the Holocaust fit perfectly with its image as a 'caring' government. 'Ready-made victims give you an appearance of being caring. That's what this government does - it cares about things. And of course, it doesn't have to spend very much money by caring, or expend a great deal of thought on what things it cares about, or generally inconvenience itself in any way whatsoever. Especially when th ere's something like the Holocaust to remember, which gives the government victims and the ability to "care" on a plate.' Not that Jacobson thinks we should shut up and forget about the Holocaust. On the contrary, he was initially keen on the idea of a memorial day because he thought it would help tackle the relativism surrounding the Holoca ust - where today's civil wars are described as the latest 'holocaust' and where children are taught to reflect on issues such as bullying and racism through the spectrum of the Nazi genocide. 'There has been such an awfu l lot of relativism. People talk about genocide here and genocide there, and this idea that you can't single out one particular genocide because they're all similar.' But Jacobson has no truck with the idea that there have been 'many holocausts', and that holocausts are still taking place around us today. 'There was nothing small about what happened in the Balkans', he says. 'There was nothing small about what the Nazis wanted to do to homosexuals. But there was another, distinct idea in relation to the Jews - the attempt to wipe out a people, to wipe them off the face of the Earth. It was an idea of o verwhelming and terrifying proportions, which I think we have to be very careful not to confuse.' Jacobson's hope that a memorial day would clear up such confusion and give the Holocaust its rightful place in history - as a unique and terrible crime, unparalleled in the twentieth century - has been dashed by New Labou r's claim that 'the type of behaviour demonstrated in Nazi Germany was not a phenomenon limited either to Germany or to the mid-twentieth century', and that 'events in Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda and Kosovo, to name but a fe w, amply demonstrate the propensity of human beings to murder en masse' (2). Jacobson is adamant: 'Listen, I'm not interested in hogging the grandeur of Jewish suffering or anything melodramatic like that - I'm not saying Jews have a monopoly on suffering, or that Jews' experiences during the Holo caust represent a sort of cruelty that no one else has known. But the Holocaust was a very specific event, with very specific aims and objectives, different from every other conflict. To go around comparing it and relatin g it to everything only does the Holocaust an injustice.' This is what worries Jacobson about New Labour's memorial day - not only that it's a cheap shot by a government which hides behind the mask of 'caring', but that it will ultimately denigrate the memory of the Holocaust by turning it into an all-purpose moral 'lesson for today'. 'This government is morally slippery', say Jacobson, 'and now it's making the Holocaust slippery, too'. Read on: The Holocaust issue (1) See the official Holocaust Memorial Day website (2) See the official Holocaust Memorial Day website Reprinted from : http://www.spiked- online.com/Articles/00000000545C.htm End<{{{ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe simply because it has been handed down for many generations. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is written in Holy Scriptures. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of Teachers, elders or wise men. Believe only after careful observation and analysis, when you find that it agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all. Then accept it and live up to it." The Buddha on Belief, from the Kalama Sutta + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + A merely fallen enemy may rise again, but the reconciled one is truly vanquished. -Johann Christoph Schiller, German Writer (1759-1805) + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly. -Bertrand Russell + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Everyone has the right...to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." Universal Declaration of Human Rights + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut." --- Ernest Hemingway <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html <A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html";>Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]</A> http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ <A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/";>ctrl</A> ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
