File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/marxism-international.9708, message 434


From: cbcox-AT-rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu (Carrol Cox)
Subject: Re: M-I: Hitler's willing executioners
Date: Sun, 31 Aug 1997 14:13:07 -0500 (CDT)


Doug writes, answering a whole series of questions from Andrew:

> Well yeah, Andy, I think my answer is yes to most of your questions. But
> there's a world of difference among casual racism/anti-Semitism,
> Dixie-style lynchings, and organized mass murder. Since what I know of
> Goldhagen comes mainly from Finkelstein, my impression is that he doesn't
> explain how Germany made the horrible transition - and nothing you've said
> so far has either.
> 
> Please get back to me after you've read Finkelstein.
> 
> Doug

	I too would answer yes to those questions; I would like to
underline parts of Doug's response: "*organized* mass murder." It
is the organization that turns a My Lai into a Buchenwald. Any *one*
act of killing in the Holocaust differs not a whit from any *one*
act of slaughter anyplace else, even the hanging of 11 black soldiers
for minor civil disobedience during The Great War. As long as you
wish to speak of the mass of the population, independently of 
bureaucratic organization and central government decisions, then
the Holocause is not qualitatively different from My Lai or
the 19th c. U.S. cavalry or an almost endless list of 20th c.
brutalities. It is that organization from the top that needs
explanation. Given such organization, I see no real reason why
one could not get equal cooperation from a large share of the
citizenry in *any* modern world state. There simply is no need
for looking for an explanation. That is, I repeat my claim that,
based on Andrew's arguments or any of Goldhagen's that I have
seen summarized, the phrase "willing executioners" is a vacuous
tautology, requiring no explanation.

	The desperate search for some sort of "core secret" to
the Holocaust could well leave us defenceless against a repetition,
for it would lull us into thinking it could not happen without
such a core secret, AND IT DID AND CAN.

Carrol


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