A brilliant analysis of Holocaust politics by Gilad Atzmon

[zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org]

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http://peacepalestine.blogspot.com/2007/01/gilad-atzmon-brave-new-world-war.html 


Title:  Gilad Atzmon:  Brave New World War


"We respectfully urge your country to co-sponsor and support the 
Resolution on Holocaust Denial that is to be voted on in the General 
Assembly this Friday."


(from a letter to UN ambassadors, Glen S. Lewy, ADL National Chair 
and Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director 23 January, 2007)


The draft resolution proposed by the US "condemns without any 
reservation any denial of the Holocaust," yet, it doesn't single out 
any specific country for criticism. It doesn't take a genius to 
realise that it is Iran's Ahmadinejad who the Americans are after.

Clearly, the new American initiative at the UN, which is aiming at 
transforming the world into a 'Holocaust Denial Free Zone' has very 
little to do with genuine truth-seeking or an authentic interest in 
historical research. The Americans are there to furnish us all with 
the futureless nightmare of hard capitalism. They mistakenly believe 
that they can do so as long they restrict our vision of the past.

[To] be honest, it isn't really Abe Foxman and the ADL that the Bush 
Administration is caring for. And it should be evident that the 
American decision makers could not care less about the notion of 
history or the truth of European Judeocide.

What's it about, then? America wants oil and Ahmadinejad has plenty 
of it. Not wanting to stop there, America also has as its priority 
stopping Iran from joining the nuclear club that they themselves 
lead. Yet, It is rather amusing that America - with all its fleets, 
airplane carriers, cruise missiles, ultimate air power and nuclear 
might - needs the Holocaust to win what seems to be its next war.

I am not a Holocaust scholar nor am I a historian. My primary 
interest is not the story of Auschwitz nor the destruction of 
European Jewry. But I am very interested in Holocaust politics, in 
the range of discourses that employ Auschwitz. I happen to ask, how 
come America, once the leader of the 'free world', finds itself 
engaged in 'global thought policing'?

It is clear beyond doubt that America foreign affairs needs a 
popularity injection boost. American ideological hegemony is in a 
state of total bankruptcy. Bush's administration desperately craves 
for support within the European community. It is not a secret that 
Continental Europe, in itself a multi-ethnic community, doesn't 
succumb in the same way to the Anglo-American notion of cultural 
clash. The Europeans so far have refused to join Blair and Bush's war 
against Islam in a real, dynamic way. Yet, with the new holocaust 
denial resolution, America hopes to introduce a change of spirit.

Rather than conveying the repeated false image of Judeo-Christian 
versus Islam, this time it is the 'Holocaust' versus its 'Deniers'. 
Rather coincidently, the Holocaust conformists (us) need oil, the 
'deniers' (them) happen to possess it.

As foolish as it may appear, America finds itself slipping into the 
trap wittily dug by Iranian President Ahmadinejad. The American 
administration has managed foolishly to approve that the Holocaust is 
indeed the demarcation line between East and West, between so-called 
'evil' and 'good'. Yet, the definition of this separation can be seen 
as that which stands between the 'free thinking West' that 
enthusiastically seals its past in a black box and the 'open minded 
East' who dare to raise questions about the past.

The Holocaust resolution draws the future battlefield between the 
uprising of (yesterday's) Slave and the decay of (today's) Master. 
Ahmadinejad threw the bone, the Bush administration was stupid enough 
to pick it up. It affirmed that the Holocaust is the new medium of 
resistance.

Within the framework of the new American Holocaust resolution, it is 
'us' - the West, those who 'know' the 'truth' and 'them' - nations 
who aren't counted in that hegemonic group, who fail to see it. Yet 
it is 'us' who make our past into a graveyard and it is 'them' who 
grasp that it is the dynamic past that shapes the future.

Without getting myself into the debate regarding the truth of the 
Holocaust, the ugly face of Holocaust-politics cannot be hidden 
anymore. The Holocaust is now officially becoming an ideological 
weapon against Islam and also against Arab resistance. It is there to 
establish a fake western collective identity based on blind 
conformity and total marginalisation of the other.

However, in the short term, the new American Holocaust political 
initiative may prove to be productive. The notion of the destruction 
of `European Jewry' unites some major political powers. It unites the 
European parliamentary left together with the conservative liberals 
as well as America's most radical expansionist forces. They all need 
the Holocaust for different reasons.

In Europe, the Holocaust is there to dismantle the emerging far 
right.  In the Germanic States the Holocaust is the core of the 
post-war symbolic order. For the Anglo-Americans the Holocaust is 
there to push away any real ethical engagement with Dresden, 
Hiroshima, Vietnam, Palestine and Iraq. Most importantly, the new 
Holocaust denial resolution provides the Americans with the pretext 
for the next Genocide. In other words, the next Holocaust is actually 
a collective punishment of Holocaust denial.

Regardless of what the truth of the Holocaust is and what its denial 
may entail, to seal the past is to give away the vision of a better 
future. The end of history is the end of the West. Bush's America may 
just want to take us there. With the death toll in Iraq numbering 
650,000 and 3,000,000 displaced refugees, with millions of 
Palestinians locked in concentration camps for almost 40 years, 
neither Bush nor Blair nor any other Western politician can offer us 
a cheerful vision of the days to come. Instead they encourage us to 
stop looking into our past.