Holocaust Archives: Updates

Our latest site upgrade is based on expanded coverage of partisans during the Second World War.

We're in the course of publishing Palme-Dutt's book on fascism and the state of the global economy in the 1930s. We've now added more to section 2 titled "Conflict of the Productive Forces Against Society" and started to add section 3 "Productivity and Unemployment" and how those two interrelated notions contributed to the rise of the Nazis. While Palme-Dutt's section 4 "4. The Alternative-Social Revolution or Destruction" because of changes in objective conditions, it is still of interest to reflect the thinking of this particular tendency. There are similar conditions with "Chapter 2. The End of Stabilisation" that we've just added new material to. Those interested in broader, but related matters, might also want to read the essay by David Lethbridge on the state of the fascist movement at the end of the 20th century.

Holocaust: What's In A Name

We live in a new world where the internet has become the major source of news. Reports recently revealed that readership on the net passed readership in paper print and net ad revenue for news sites beat similar revenue for the print media.

There's another side to this as well. Increasingly political battles take on new roots in the search engines. The internet severely scrambled the old econonomics of scale and opportunity costs. Somebody with an ancient computer and snail-paced connection can produce information more widely read than that of the multibillion dollar corporation providing people know that it's there and where to find it.

Sadly many progressive groups still treat their web sites as things that "people will find if they want to" as opposed to adopting professional actions to present their views. It reflects one of the conservative sides often present among Progressives: the tendency to do things in the old ways, not because those ways are best, but because the people making the decisions are comfortable with the old ways, too lazy to learn and implement the new, or a combination of both. For them, having a web site is problem enough; obtimizing the site for political combat is more than they're able to imagine.

One problem with the word "Holocaust," as Bruno Bettlheim pointed out, is the religious connotation of a burnt offering, implying that the central Nazi motivation and purpose was to target Jews for religious reasons and the attrocities took the form of religious ritual.

All other things being equal, and sadly they aren't, my personal choice would be the Rom ("Gypsey") word Porrajmos or "[Great; Huge; Intense] Devouring." But few people search for information by entering "Porragmos" into the search engines. Few look for information by using the words "antifascism" or "antifa."

Another objection by some antifascists is that the word "Holocaust" has been popularized by forces with whom the antifascists disagree so any use of the term becomes a form of backhanded support for the politics of the people who advocated the term "Holocaust."

There are times when the "why" of an issue doesn't matter and focusing on it simply becomes a way of avoiding any real battles. The events of the Nazi actions, whether good or bad (and they're bad in my opinion) are popularly thought of as "the Holocaust." If you want to reach people you need to make your information available to them as they are instead of where you'd like them to be. And when the people are searching for material on Nazi attrocities under "Holocaust" you need to present it under the same term.

There's an easy answer to this objection: if you got beaten in this area fight harder; if you don't like the popularized term "Holocaust" outpopularize the others and maximize use of what ever term you prefer. Organize.

Playing the "Race Card" Race Card

How do you appeal to racist sensibilities knowing you'll be attacked for doing so?

Rightwing authoritarians have several long-term propaganda techniques they tested over the decades. One is to start the appeal to racist bias by accusing the other side of bring up the issue.

Then, when the people you've just thrown the racist charge against inevitably reply, you use that as "proof" that your original charge was correct because "they're doing it again."

That's what we see today with the Republican's propaganda-machine on television, on radio, on the web, on the news sites, and in the blogosphere. The Obama administration has played the race card, their efforts proclaim. You know that the liberals are on the run when they play the race card is another claim. People have lost a debate when they have to play the race card, in a smug conclusion they make giving each other a metaphorical pat on the back.

There's one fly -- or set of graphics files -- in the ointment.

Some years ago we wrote how past anti-racist and anti-fascist efforts were limited based on information they had that came only from the top, most public, level of their opponents actions. The racists and fascists had movements like the iceberg were the vast bulk was hidden beneath the water. Activists could get their information from the Klan newsletter or Hitler's Beobacher. But none could really know how the Kook of the Klan whipped up the lynch mob back in the swamps. Nor, as Hitler drove to power, did the Communist Party of Germany or the Communist International show they had any significant understanding of the Storm Trooper on his soapbox ranting about this or that set of ostensible Jewish atrocities.

Worse, activists who did have some minor knowledge of either Kook or Stormer was often attacked by their own movement for wasting time on trivialities or unimportant figures.

The Internet changes this. The net's search engines provide us with videotapes, as it were, of all the various swamp and soapbox level actions.

The net becomes particularly helpful when we look at the "race card" issue. A simple search of images.google.com shows almost 76,000 images indexed in the company's database. Looking at them shows clearly that the only "race card" being played politically today is the imaginary race card the Republican Right falsely claims "liberals" are playing.       to be continued

In the past, whenever we published something not directly related to the Holocaust some would berate us, asking us why, given the lack of direct connection to the Holocaust-proper, we published. The short answer is that it was, as our editorial policy states, of interest to students of the Holocaust. We have questions "Who did the Nazi propaganda function? What techniques did they use? How did they handle criticism? A huge amount of material useful to answer to those questions is in German and unavailable to most users on the Internet. Much of the material is unavailable to German-speakers, where Nazi handbills printed on cheap paper have decayed and there never was any documentation of much of the Nazi street-level agitation. The whole "race card" issue lets us better understand the earlier Nazi efforts by providing us with accessible raw data from the agitation.