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CounterPunch
November
25, 2002
Counterfeit
Courage:
Reflections on "Political
Correctness" in Germany
by NORMAN FINKELSTEIN
This past month I was invited, for the second
time in as many years, to present a book in Germany. Last year
Piper published The
Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish
Suffering and this year Hugendubel put out Image
and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict. In
significant respects, the receptions differed: The Holocaust
Industry generated much public interest, Image and Reality
relatively little. No doubt the reason is that Germans have
a huge stake in the legacy of the Nazi holocaust but rather little
in a just resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict. It would
seem that this order of priorities, although understandable,
is to be regretted. The Nazi holocaust, however horrific and
even if forever a part of Germany's present, is--except for the
handful of survivors--fundamentally a historical question. The
persecution of the Palestinians is, by contrast, an on-going
horror, and it is, after all, the crimes of the Third Reich that
are used to justify this persecution. In the first instance,
moral action by Germans is no longer possible; in the second,
it plainly is.
Precisely for this reason I actually
looked forward to the recent German trip. I made no secret last
year of my conflicted feelings about promoting The Holocaust
Industry in Germany. Many close friends and comrades counseled
against it and--much more important--I was quite certain that
both my late parents would have disapproved. Germans, I was
told,  could
not be trusted to honestly debate Jewish misuses of the Nazi
genocide (the subject of The Holocaust Industry). In
addition, the huge media interest in my book prompted questions--in
my opinion, legitimate--about whether I myself wasn't becoming
a beneficiary of the industry I deplored. Ultimately I decided
that, notwithstanding the real moral risks entailed, I should
go to Germany, a decision which, in retrospect, I don't regret.
In the case of the new edition of my
book on the Israel-Palestine conflict, such reservations seemed
less pertinent. The post-war German generation had just redeemed
itself by voting into power a coalition with a resolute anti-war
platform. If Germans weren't now ready to honestly debate the
Israel-Palestine conflict, when would they be? And no real danger
lurked that this book would provoke a media circus if for no
other reason than that it wasn't an easy read. Nonetheless,
I arrived in Germany with high hopes that just as The Holocaust
Industry somewhat succeeded, I think, at breaking a harmful
taboo, so my new book would perhaps break the taboo on German
public discussion of Israel's brutal occupation. With Palestinians
facing an unprecedented catastrophe in the event of a new Middle
East war, the stakes loom particularly large.
To judge by a steady stream of email
correspondence and many conversations, it seems that The Holocaust
Industry did stimulate a sober--and much-needed--debate among
ordinary Germans. (A handful of neo-Nazis exploited the occasion
but, as the dean of Nazi holocaust scholars, Raul Hilberg, observed,
German democracy is not so fragile that it can't tolerate a few
kooks coming out of the woodwork.) It's still too soon to gauge
the popular reaction to the Israel-Palestine book. What can
already be discerned, however, is the persistence among politically
correct Germans of a pronounced animus to my work.
The nadir in the relentlessly ugly campaign
of ad hominem vilification after publication of The Holocaust
Industry was probably the article in a major German newsweekly,
Der Spiegel, claiming in all seriousness that each morning
after jogging I meditated on the Nazi holocaust in the company
of two parrots. Either Germans had suddenly become engrossed
by the (imagined) private life of an obscure Jew from Brooklyn,
New York or--what seems likelier--the personalized attack on
the messenger was a deliberate tactic to evade confronting the
bad news that the Nazi holocaust had become an instrument of
political and financial gain.
During this last trip to Germany, a major
state television station, ARD, suggested that I was a publicity
hound peddling used goods. This same program wanted, however,
to stage a confrontation between me and the Israeli exhibitors
at the  Frankfurt
Book Fair, and to have me denounce on camera a famous Israeli
author--both of which I refused to do. It would surely have
garnered lots of publicity but I found distasteful the idea of
a slugfest between Jews for the amusement of Germans. Even among
the politically correct crowd some nasty habits apparently die
hard. It is widely known in Germany that both my late parents
passed through the Nazi holocaust. This family background has
also been shamelessly seized on by politically correct Germans
to ridicule and dismiss me as unstable.
Such venomous attacks on a Jew and the
son of Holocaust survivors are altogether unique in German public
life which is otherwise ever so tactful and discreet on all things
Holocaust. One can't but wonder what accounts for them. In
fact, the Holocaust has proven to be a valuable commodity for
politically correct Germans. By "defending" Holocaust
memory and Jewish elites against any and all criticism, they
get to play-act at moral courage. What price do they actually
pay, what sacrifice do they actually make, for this "defense"?
Given Germany's prevailing cultural ambience and the overarching
power of American Jewry, such courage in fact reaps rich rewards.
Pillorying a Jewish dissident costs nothing--and provides a
"legitimate" outlet for latent prejudice. It happens
that I agree with Daniel Goldhagen's claim in Hitler's Willing
Executioners that philo-Semites are typically anti-Semites
in "sheep's clothing." The philo-Semite both assumes
that Jews are somehow "different" and almost always
secretly harbors a mixture of envy of and loathing for this alleged
difference. Philo-Semitism thus presupposes, but also engenders
a frustrated version of, its opposite. A public, preferably
defenseless, scapegoat is then needed to let all this pent-up
ugliness ooze out.
To account for Germany's obsession with
the Nazi holocaust, a German friend explained that Germans "like
to carry a load." To which I would add: especially if it's
light as a feather. No doubt some Germans of the post-war generation
genuinely accepted the burden of guilt together with its paralyzing
taboos on independent, critical thought. But today German "political
correctness" is all a charade of pretending to accept the
burden of being German while actually rejecting it. For, what
is the point of these interminable public breast-beatings except
to keep reminding the world: "We are not like them."
It can also be safely said that politically
correct Germans know full well that, more often than not, the
criticism leveled against Israeli policy and misuse of the Nazi
holocaust is valid. In private conversation (as I've discovered)
they freely admit to this. They profess to fear that, if Jewish
abuses become public knowledge, it will unleash a tidal wave
of anti-Semitism. Is there really any likelihood of this happening
in Germany today? And isn't vigorous and candid debate the best
means to stem an anti-Semitic tide: exposing the abuses of the
Jewish establishment as well as the demagogues who exploit these
abuses for nefarious ends? What politically correct Germans
really fear, I suspect, is the loss of power and privilege attendant
on challenging the uncritical support of all things Jewish.
Indeed, their public defense of the indefensible not only breeds
cynicism in political life but, far from combating anti-Semitism
among Germans, actually engenders it. Isn't this duplicity typically
credited to a dread of, or a desire to curry favor with, a presumed
all-powerful Jewry? One also can't help but wonder what thoughts
run through the heads of politically correct Germans about Jews
when the ones they typically consort with, prostrate themselves
before in unctuous penance, and publicly laud are known to be
the worst sort of hucksters.
The challenge in Germany today is to
defend the memory of the Nazi holocaust and to condemn
its abuse by American Jewish elites; to defend Jews from malice
and to condemn their overwhelmingly blind support for
Israel's brutal occupation. But to do this requires real moral
courage--not the operatic kind that politically correct Germans
so love.
Norman Finkelstein is the author of The
Holocaust Industry and Image
and Reality in the Israel-Palestine Conflict.
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