Salvaging an Analytical Framework
In The Holocaust Industry, Norman Finklestein presented a new framework for understanding how the Holocaust came to take up so much space in america’s political conscience and how the historical narrative about the Holocaust (and antisemitism in general) has shifted over time. The central thesis of The Holocaust Industry is that an ideological representation, or The Holocaust, has overtaken and essentially replaced any sincere engagement with the actual historical event, which he refers to as the Nazi holocaust. […]
Finklestein opens The Holocaust Industry by analyzing how the Nazi holocaust factored into, or more accurately didn’t factor into american Jewish political life immediately after. He shows that, until decades later, The Holocaust was not the ubiquitous global memory we see it as today; there were no memorials, there was hardly any academic inquiry or analysis, and when polled, american Jewish people didn’t view the Nazi holocaust as something that deeply impacted the inner workings of Jewish life. Finklestein provides ample evidence that this slowly began to shift in the wake of israel’s military victory in 1967, as israel proved itself to be a valuable political/military ally to america. american Jews recognized this as an opportunity. They worked to achieve greater levels of assimilation and mainstream Jewish organizations tried to more openly and conspicuously align themselves with hegemonic american ideas- liberalism, anti-communism, capitalism, imperialism, and anti-Blackness. For example, Finklestein shows that Jewish organizations came to support the “rearmed and barely de-nazified” germany when american international policy considered germany an ally against the u.s.s.r.. Finklestein points out that Jewish organizations such as the american Jewish committee (AJC) and anti defamation league (ADL) were fearful any break from broader american international policy would threaten Jewish gains in assimilation and power.
Throughout the text, Finklestein acknowledges that Jews and Jewish organizations were boosted into prominence or relegated to relative obscurity on the basis of their willingness to align with The Holocaust Industry. He then confusingly concludes that the Holocaust Industry simply serves “Jewish interests.” But, if Jews who were willing to uphold The Holocaust Industry were provided major platforms, while Jews, such as Finklestein himself, who refused to uphold the Holocaust Industry, were cast aside and delegitimized, then clearly there are other interests at play than just “Jewish interests.” Instead of diving more deeply into the interests that he admits allowed the Holocaust Industry to materialize, Finklestein spends an entire chapter positioning the swiss government as a victim being attacked by groups of greedy Jewish lawyers.
It is not “Jewish interests” that produced The Holocaust Industry. The concept of “Jewish interests” itself is fraught. Jews are a globally diasporic people with interests that, for a wide variety of reasons, often compete with each other. There is no one coherent set of “Jewish interests” that the Holocaust Industry could serve. Instead, the Holocaust Industry materialized because it aligns neatly with broader white euro-american imperialist interests and it serves those white euro-american interests best if they are masked as “Jewish interests.” Of course, many Jews (myself included) are white euro-americans, but making this distinction is important because while only some Jews benefit from The Holocaust Industry, all white euro-americans do, Jewish or not. […]
The Holocaust Industry’s Two Dogmas
According to Finklestein, two central dogmas undergird the Holocaust framework, or the basis for The Holocaust Industry:
The Holocaust marks a categorically unique historical event and
The Holocaust marks the climax of an irrational, eternal Gentile hatred of Jews.
The first of these dogmas, Holocaust uniqueness, is completely ubiquitous today. It is so pervasive that we likely don’t even recognize it as an ideological position. Holocaust uniqueness manifests in, for example, the idea that we can’t or shouldn’t compare any other historical or current event to the Nazi holocaust- that it would be insensitive to the victims of the Nazi holocaust to make these comparisons. Another example of how Holocaust uniqueness manifests is the idea that the Holocaust is the worst and most violent form of evil that the world has ever known. “A subtext of the Holocaust uniqueness claim,” writes Finklestein, is that if the Holocaust is uniquely evil, then “however terrible, the suffering of others simply does not compare.” This dogma is often used to condemn as antisemites and silence both Jewish and non-Jewish Black people, non-Black Indigenous people, and other colonized people who compare their own suffering to the Nazi holocaust. […]
Finklestein is partly correct- these two central dogmas are absolutely critical components in upholding and maintaining The Holocaust Industry. But, the question Finklestein never answers- or even seriously asks- is if The Holocaust Industry is a form of unique entitlement that could only benefit Jews, why are so many non-Jews benefiting? […]
Where Finklestein failed, Houria Bouteldja flourishes. In Whites, Jews, and Us, she makes the connections that Finklestein refuses to make. Where Finklestein focuses on the Jews who uphold The Holocaust Industry, Bouteldja rightly positions The Holocaust Industry within centuries of white euro-american colonial violence. She writes:
‘Manipulation has only one goal: to share the Shoah, to dilute it, to deracinate Hitler and move him to the colonized populations, and in the end, to exonerate white people. To universalize anti-Semitism, to make of it an a-temporal and stateless phenomenon, is to kill two birds with one stone: it is to justify the hold-up of Palestine as well as the repression of indigenous people in Europe… Before mass crimes were tested in Europe, they were first tested in the Americas, in Africa, in Asia. To dehumanize a race, to destroy it, to make it disappear from the surface of the earth, is already inscribed in the colonial genes of National Socialism. Hitler was nothing if not a good student. If the techniques of mass massacre revealed all their efficiency in the concentration camps, it is because they had been tested on us, and thus made all the more efficient; and if white ferociousness came down on you with such savagery, it is because European populations closed their eyes to the “tropical genocides.”’
Bouteldja doesn’t understand history as a timeline where “pre-Holocaust” magically transformed into Holocaust, which gave way to “post-Holocaust.” Instead, the Nazi holocaust materialized as a byproduct of the white euro-american colonialism that ravaged the world for centuries and continues to do so today. The same white euro-american countries who fomented the colonial imperialist ideology that became nazism, who committed the Nazi holocaust, and who benefited from the Nazi holocaust needed to distance themselves from it or they would perish. But, they wanted to distance themselves from the Nazi holocaust in a way that absolved themselves of all of their past crimes, not just the ones they committed during the Nazi holocaust. Further, they wanted to absolve themselves so completely that their ongoing crimes would be obscured and attempts at accountability rendered hopeless. This is where The Holocaust Industry is most effective.
