Wissenschaft und Publizistik als Kritik

Monat: Januar 2013

Did Quentin Tarantino Promote Antisemitic Ideology?

Algemeiner.com, January 24, 2013

January 24, 2013

Antisemitism is a very flexible ideology. We know of Islamist antisemitism, the Iranian threat, Arab antisemitism, left-wing, right-wing and mainstream anti-Zionist European antisemitism. We also know of anti-Judaism—the hatred of circumcision and of ritual slaughter, for example.

A short while ago, American film director Spike Lee accused his colleague, film director, screen writer and actor Quentin Tarantino of distorting American history and slavery in his new film “Django Unchained.” For Lee the film is racist, and portrays slavery in a mild light. Lee says he will not watch the film.

Promoting his film in Berlin, Tarantino responded indirectly to Spike Lee by saying: “America is responsible for two Holocausts: for the destruction of native Americans and for the slavery of African Americans.”

Leading German daily, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, known for promoting the anti-Zionist antisemitism of Nobel Prize Laureate Günter Grass earlier this year, happily quoted Tarantino accusing America of “two Holocausts.” The Austrian actor Christoph Waltz who appeared in Tarantino’s latest film was just awarded a Golden Globe for his role in Django Unchained and Waltz is not known as a critic of Holocaust distortion Tarantino-style.

Accusing America of genocide is among the best known anti-American tropes worldwide. In Germany (FRG), there was a remarkable increase in this trope right after the screening of the TV series “Holocaust” in January, 1979. Blaming the West and America for another genocide or Holocaust was most welcome by many Germans. Psychoanalytic theory calls this a projection of guilt.

As we know, the Holocaust was an unprecedented crime. Many historians of the Holocaust emphasize the unprecedented character of it, including historian and Jewish studies scholar Steven T.  Katz from Boston University.

The Holocaust is unique. Never before was there the intent and the policy to kill an entire people. Germans wanted to kill the Jews – and they destroyed European Jewry by killing six million Jews. For the first time in history, gas chambers were part of an industry of destruction.

The German railway system was used for the deportation of Jews from far away countries like Greece. Since the late 19th century in particular (in fact, even before), Germans developed a specific form of German antisemitism aimed at the destruction of Jews. Jews were seen as the “eternal Jews,” as working on a world conspiracy, as being behind capitalism (“Mammon,” the supposedly Jewish god of money!) and of communism, liberalism, modernity, urban cities, free forms of sexuality and the like.

The Russian forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, first distributed around 1905, became crucial to Hitler’s antisemitic ideology, too. Since the Middle Ages, blood Libels have been a typical Christian tool and, since 1840 and the Damascus Affair, an increasingly Christian Arab, as well as Muslim and Islamist tool to spread Jew-hatred. Today Jews are accused of killing innocent Christian or Muslim children for religious purposes.

All these genocidal features are missing when we look at colonialism, slavery, and racism. Jews were seen as superior, not as inferior like Native Americans, Blacks, or slaves. Jews were seen as a dangerous force behind all kinds of evil. Africans were subject to horrible crimes in modern times, but those crimes were far from genocide. The Arab-Islamic slave trade and the European-American slave trade used Africans as a cheap labor. Exploitation was the reason behind slavery and racism, and the allegedly superior Arabs or Whites were behind it.

On the other hand, exploitation was neither the reason nor the result of the Holocaust. The (German) will to destroy Jewry was behind the Shoah. Destruction ruled, not exploitation or racist rule over a group of people. German did not just want to rule over Jews, they wanted to kill them and they did kill them.

Not so in slavery, colonialism, or racism. The history of Native Americans was also horrible, but far from genocide. There was never the intention of European settlers to kill the entire native population. Rather, disease caused much of the destruction of the native peoples. Historian, theorist and critic of capitalism, Karl Marx, called this “primitive accumulation.” Primitive accumulation is based on violence, direct violence and murder. The Holocaust, though, is completely distinct from that. There was no cui bono in the Shoah.

The Sueddeutsche Zeitung mentions historian David Stannard as a “serious” source to back Tarantino’s claim about America having committed Holocausts. However, Stannard is not a serious historian. I deal with him in my new book, Antisemitism: A Specific Phenomenon. Holocaust Trivialization – Islamism – Post-colonial and Cosmopolitian anti-Zionism. Stannard promotes the anti-American and antisemitic Holocaust-distorting trope of the Holocaust of native Americans in the US.

Stannard is also a friend of author and agitator Ward Churchill, infamous for framing the entire history of the US as an ongoing genocide or “Holocaust” (since 1492) and for referring to the 9/11 victims “little Eichmanns.” (The two notorious studies from these two ‘historians’ are David E. Stannard (1992): American holocaust: Columbus and the conquest of the New World, New York: Oxford University Press and Ward Churchill (1997): A Little Matter of Genocide. Holocaust and Denial in the Americas 1492 to the Present, San Francisco: City Lights Books.)

American journalist and columnist for the German weekly Die Zeit, Tuvia Tenenbom, reported in his book I Sleep in Hitler’s Room (which became a German bestseller, Allein unter Deutschen) about traveling to Germany and finding antisemitism. He meets the gardener of a lovely and very trendy restaurant vis-à-vis the house of the Wannsee-Conference in Berlin. When Tenenbom asked about the strange people who love to marry and to have lunches at the House Sanssouci Restaurant, the gardener responded: “And you killed the Indians!”

Tarantino promotes the very same antisemitic ideology. He distorts the Holocaust by framing American history as even worse than German history. Two holocausts for the US, and just one for Germany in this antisemitic, though very fashionable view.

Hurting Jewish Holocaust survivors, their relatives, and all other people who remember the worst crime of mankind ever, is the result, if not the intent, of Quentin Tarantino’s words. He praises the Germans for their kind of Holocaust remembrance while accusing America of being unable and unwilling to confront their own history.

There was and there is racism in the US, yes, even after the end of slavery and segregation. This has to be confronted on a daily basis. But there were not two holocausts in American history. Neither Native Americans nor African Americans were killed intentionally on a genocidal level. Rather, exploitation, the spread of diseases, and European-American chauvinism and racism were prevalent.

The obsession to downplay, obfuscate, distort and even universalize the Holocaust has to stop. Quentin Tarantino is just another candidate, one of the first in 2013, for the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Top Ten Antisemitic/anti-Israel Slurs. Holocaust distortion and Holocaust universalization are very widespread and serious forms of antisemitism.

Those who forget or distort the past won’t support the Jewish state of Israel in the future. Quentin Tarantino is not a ground-breaker in this regard; he merely echoes the German and European (as well as American) anti-Americanism and antisemitism of the cultural elite.

Dr. Clemens Heni is the author of Antisemitism: A Specific Phenomenon. Holocaust Trivialization – Islamism – Post-colonial and cosmopolitan anti-Zionism

 

Is Quentin Tarantino an Antisemite?

By Dr. Clemens Heni, author of Antisemitism: A Specific Phenomenon. Holocaust Trivialization – Islamism – Post-colonial and cosmopolitan anti-Zionism

 

Antisemitism is a very flexible ideology. We know of Islamist antisemitism, the Iranian threat, Arab antisemitism, left-wing, right-wing and mainstream anti-Zionist European antisemitism. We also know of anti-Judaism and hatred of the circumcision and of ritual slaughter, for example.

A couple of days ago, American film director Spike Lee accused his colleague, film director, screen writer and actor Quentin Tarantino of distorting American history and slavery in his new film “Django Unchained.” For Lee the film is rather racist, or portrays slavery in a mild light. Lee will not watch the film, he says. Tarantino thinks of himself as the leading American film producer of our time.

Promoting his film in Berlin, Tarantino responded indirectly to Spike Lee and said: “America is responsible for two Holocausts: for the destruction of native Americans and for the slavery of African Americans.”

Leading German daily, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, known for promoting the anti-Zionist antisemitism of Nobel Prize Laureate Günter Grass earlier this year, happily quoted Tarantino accusing America of “two Holocausts.” Tarantino’s Austrian actor Christoph Waltz just was awarded a Golden Globe for his role in Django Unchained and Waltz is not known as a critic of Holocaust distortion Tarantinostyle.

Accusing America of genocide is among the best known anti-American tropes worldwide. In Germany (FRG), there was a remarkable increase in promoting this trope right after the screening of TV series Holocaust in January 1979. Blaming the West and America for just another genocide or Holocaust was most welcome by many Germans. Psychoanalytic theory calls this a projection of guilt.

As we know, the Holocaust was an unprecedented crime. Many historians of the Holocaust emphasize the unprecedented character of it, including historian and Jewish studies scholar Steven T.  Katz from Boston University.

The Holocaust is unique. Never before were there the intent and the policies to kill an entire people. Germans wanted to kill the Jews – and they destroyed European Jewry by killing six million Jews. For the first time in history gas chambers were part of an industry of destruction. The German railway system was used for deportations of Jews from far away countries like Greece. Since the late 19th century in particular (in fact, even before), Germans developed a specific form of German  antisemitism aimed at the destruction of Jews. Jews were seen as the “eternal Jew,” Ahasver, as working on a world conspiracy, as being behind capitalism (“Mammon,” the supposedly Jewish god of money!) and communism, liberalism, modernity, urban cities, free forms of sexuality and the like. The Russian forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, first distributed around 1905, became crucial for Hitler’s antisemitic ideology, too. Since the Middle Ages blood Libels have been a typical Christian tool and, since 1840 and the Damascus Affair, an increasingly Christian Arab, as well as Muslim and Islamist tool to spread Jew-hatred. Today Jews are accused of killing innocent Christian or Muslim children for religious purposes.

All these genocidal features are missing when we look at colonialism, slavery, and racism. Jews are seen as superior, not as inferior like native Americans, Blacks, or slaves. Jews were seen as a dangerous force behind all kinds of evil. Africans were subject to horrible crimes in modern times, but those crimes were far from genocide. The Arab-Islamic slave trade and the European-American slave trade used Africans as a cheap labor. Exploitation was the reason behind slavery and racism, and the allegedly superior Arabs or Whites were behind it.

On the other side, exploitation was neither the reason nor the result of the Holocaust. The (German) will to destroy Jewry was behind the Shoah. Destruction ruled, not exploitation or racist rule over a group of people. German did not just want to rule over Jews, they wanted to kill them and they did kill them. Not so in slavery, colonialism, or racism. The history of native Americans was also horrible, but far from genocide. There was never the intention of European settlers to kill the entire native population. Rather diseases caused much of the destruction of native peoples. Historian, theorist and critic of capitalism, Karl Marx, called this “primitive accumulation.” Primitive accumulation is based on violence, direct violence and murder. The Holocaust, though, is completely distinct from that. There was no cui bono in the Shoah.

The Sueddeutsche Zeitung mentions historian David Stannard as a “serious” source to back Tarantino’s claim about America having committed Holocausts. However, Stannard, is not a serious historian. I deal with him my new book, Antisemitism: A Specific Phenomenon. Holocaust Trivialization – Islamism – Post-colonial and Cosmopolitian anti-Zionism. Stannard promotes the anti-American and antisemitic Holocaust-distorting trope of the Holocaust of native Americans in the US. Stannard is also a friend of author and agitator Ward Churchill, infamous for framing the entire history of the US as an ongoing genocide or “Holocaust” (since 1492) and for calling of the 9/11 victims “little Eichmanns.” (The two notorious studies from these two ‘historians’ are David E. Stannard (1992): American holocaust: Columbus and the conquest of the New World, New York: Oxford University Press and Ward Churchill (1997): A Little Matter of Genocide. Holocaust and Denial in the Americas 1492 to the Present, San Francisco: City Lights Books.)

American journalist and columnist for the German weekly Die Zeit, Tuvia Tenenbom, reported in his book I Sleep in Hitler’s Room (which became a German bestseller, Allein unter Deutschen) about a brother-in-mind of Tarantino, the gardener of a lovely and very trendy restaurant vis-à-vis the house of the Wannsee-Conference in Berlin. When Tenenbom asked about the strange people who love to marry and to have lunches at the House Sanssouci Restaurant, the gardener responded: “And you killed the Indians!”

Tarantino promotes the very same antisemitic ideology. He distorts the Holocaust by framing American history as even worse than German history. Two holocausts for the US, and just one for Germany in this antisemitic, though very fashionable view.

Hurting Jewish Holocaust survivors and their relatives and all other people who remember the worst crime of mankind ever, the Shoah, is the result if not the intent of Quentin Tarantino. He praises the Germans for their kind of Holocaust remembrance while accusing America of being unable and unwilling to confront their own history.

There was and there is racism in the US, yes, even after the end of slavery and segregation. This has to be confronted on a daily basis. But there were not two holocausts in American history. Neither native Americans nor African Americans were killed intentionally on a genocidal level. Rather, exploitation, the spread of diseases, and European-American chauvinism and racism were prevalent.

The obsession to downplay, obfuscate, distort and even universalize the Holocaust has to stop. Quentin Tarantino is just another candidate, one of the first one in 2013, for the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Top Ten Antisemitic/anti-Israel Slurs. Holocaust distortion and Holocaust universalization are very widespread and serious forms of antisemitism. Those who forget or distort the past won’t support the Jewish state of Israel in the future. Quentin Tarantino is not a ground-breaker in this regard; he merely echoes the German and European (as well as American) anti-Americanism and antisemitism of the cultural elite.

 

Jakob – der Liebling der deutschen Volksgemeinschaft

 

Ein Wintermärchen, 2013

Auch ohne Schnee und Sonnenschein kuschelt das Land wieder, Anfang Januar 2013, es ist wie im Wintermärchen: Deutschland kennt keine Parteien mehr und nur noch Deutsche. Die Volksgemeinschaft im Jahr 2013 stellt sich hinter einen Journalisten, der auf Platz 9 der berüchtigtsten Antisemiten unserer Welt bzw. in die Top Ten der aus Sicht des Simon Wiesenthal Centers (SWC) “erwähnenswertesten antisemitischen respektive antiisraelischen Verunglimpfungen des vergangenen Jahres” geraten ist. Was stört die Deutschen am meisten daran? Der Antisemitismus des Jakob Augstein und die Diffamierung, Dämonisierung und Ausgrenzung Israels? Das Schweigen der Augsteins dieser Welt über die wirklichen Gefahren und Kriege auf dieser Welt?

Oder stört eher die Kritik am Antisemitismus und an Deutschland? Lassen wir das „gesunde Volksempfinden“ zu Wort kommen:

„Mich interessieren nur die Macht-Mechanismen, die Broder mit seiner Empfehlung offenlegt: Wie kann eine Institution wie das Wiesenthal-Zentrum, das als seriös bewertet wird und großen politischen Einfluß besitzt, die persönliche Antipathie einer Revolverschnauze aufgreifen und aus der eigenen Arbeit eine Karikatur machen? Wird durch die Nominierung Augsteins nicht die ganze Liste überdeutlich zu dem, was sie wohl zuvor schon war: eine Farce?“

Von wem ist dieses Zitat? Von Christian Bommarius und der Frankfurter Rundschau, die Broder lieber im Knast oder Schlimmerem sähe denn als Bürger in Freiheit, von Juliane Wetzel vom sog. „The German Edward Said Center for Holocaust distortion and post-colonial Antisemitism“ an der Technischen Universität (Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung, ZfA),  vom evangelischen Antisemitismusverharmloser Klaus Holz, dem Deutschlandradio und WDR5 und seiner Journalistin Liane von Billerbeck („Berlinerin mit ausgeglichener Klimabilanz, zwei erwachsenen Kindern, dem Hang zu märkischen Seen und Dichterfürsten“), vom Deutschen Journalistenverband (was soll man von dem auch sonst erwarten?), von Michael Wolffsohn, der Antisemitismus als eher läppischen und harmlosen „Unsinn“ umetikettiert und womöglich das Ansehen Deutschlands gefährdet sieht wenn Augstein wahrheitsgetreu kategorisiert wird, immerhin ist Augstein der anerkannte Sohn eines der seinerzeit mächtigsten Medienmänner, Rudolf Augstein, der mit Herzblut alten SS- und anderen Nazimännern im Spiegel Unterschlupf bot, sowie der leibliche Sohn von Martin Walser, dessen antisemitische Paulskirchenrede im Oktober 1998 die Abwehr der Erinnerung an den Holocaust und die Jagdsaison auf jene, die erinnern, zumal Juden, inoffiziell in der Frankfurter Paulskirche eröffnete;

oder ist das obige Zitat von der ex-Weinkönigin und stellvertretenden CDU-Bundesvorsitzenden Julia Klöckner, ihrem Kollegen im Geiste, Gregor Gysi von der antizionistischen Partei Die Linke, dem Journalisten Michel Friedman, für den weder Augstein noch Günter Grass auf so eine Liste gehören, oder doch eher von der konservativen Zeitung für Deutschland (FAZ), ihrem Feuilletonchef Nils Minkmar oder auch ihrem Interviewpartner, einem Vizepräsidenten des Zentralrats der Juden Salomon Korn, der  Augstein zwar so gut wie noch nie gelesen hat, aber sicher weiß, dass er zu Unrecht auf diese Liste des Simon Wiesenthal Centers gehört. Oder ist das repräsentative Zitat gar, Gottseibeiuns, von der jungen Welt, dem Neuen Deutschland, der taz, dem Freitag oder dem Vorzeige-Journalisten der ZEIT in solchen Fragen, Jörg Lau?

Nein, obiges Zitat ist von Götz Kubitschek, Autor der neu-rechten Postille Sezession, Geschäftsführer des Antaios Verlages, Co-Gründer des neu-rechten Instituts für Staatspolitik und ex-Redakteur der ebenso neu-rechten Jungen Freiheit. Selbst der Bundeswehr war sein Treiben zu bunt und er wurde 2001 vorübergehend wegen „rechtsextremistischen“ Aktivitäten entlassen. Kubitschek ist ein in der extrem rechten Szene beliebter Netzwerker, der im Oktober 2012 ein von bis zu 700 Leuten besuchtes Treffen (inklusive Politically Incorrect, PI) – „Zwischentag“ – organisierte.

Am 3. Januar 2013 stellte sich Kubitschek hinter Jakob Augstein und pries ein Büchlein an, das im Februar 2013 in seinem Verlag erscheinen soll:

„Günter Scholdt Vergeßt Broder! Sind wir immer noch Antisemiten? 96 seiten, gebunden, 8.50 € Schnellroda 2013.“

Der neu-rechte Aktivist Felix Strüning bewarb Kubitscheks extrem rechtes Netzwerk-Treffen im Oktober 2012 und lobt auch ein Antaios-Buch von Manfred Kleine-Hartlage, „Warum ich kein Linker mehr bin.“ Im selben Verlag erscheint auch einer der Superhelden der anti-muslimischen Liga, der norwegische Blogger Fjordman, der alle Muslime aus dem Westen schmeißen möchte, und zwar gründlich und langfristig (schrieb er im Dezember 2010). Antisemitismus, deutscher oder norwegischer Nationalismus, fast immer christlich grundiert, sowie Hass auf Muslime geben sich die Hand im Antaios-Verlag, der auch die Wehrmacht lobt und preist in ihrem „präventiven“ Krieg gegen die Sowjetunion, wie ein weiterer Titel dieser Propagandaschmiede verspricht. Schließlich, auch das ist Mainstream, wird der Antisemit und Käferaufspießer Ernst Jünger in diesem Verlag gefeiert.

Der Antisemitismus der rechten Szene (von neu-rechts bis rechtspopulistisch und rechtsextrem, je nach Lust und Laune soziologischer Differenzierung oder Appetit auf politikwissenschaftlichen Jargon) wird in dieser Hetze gegen Broder salonfähig. Denn obiges Zitat hätte von jedem anderen Augstein-Verteidiger kommen können. Nicht Augstein sei der Skandal, sondern Kritik am deutschen Antisemitismus, den der Sohn Martin Walsers gleichsam Pars pro toto verkörpert. Alle fühlen sich in Deutschland getroffen vom Simon Wiesenthal Center und kuscheln, von ganz links bis extrem rechts und mittendrin, wie im Wintermärchen.

 

Clemens Heni: Antisemitism: A Specific Phenomenon

Edition Critic – NEW Book

Antisemitism: A Specific Phenomenon

Holocaust Trivialization – Islamism –
Post-colonial and Cosmopolitan anti-Zionism

by Clemens Heni

Clemens Heni
Antisemitism: A Specific Phenomenon
Holocaust Trivialization – Islamism – Post-colonial and Cosmopolitan anti-Zionism
ISBN 978-3-9814548-5-7
Berlin: Edition Critic, 2013
Studies in Antisemitism/Studien zum Antisemitism Vol. 3/Band 3
33 € ($ 42) (£ 26)
xi + 648 pages 6” x 9” (15.2cm4x22.86cm) *Bibliography *Index
 

 

 

 

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