Wars
of the Laptop Bombers
Today's
Stories
January 29
/ 30, 2005
Gabriel Kolko
Wilsonian
and Neoconservative Myths
Linn Washington, Jr.
Con Job: Bush Pledges on Racism Lack Realism
January 28,
2005
Rachard Itani
Tsunami
Aid By the Numbers: the US Really is a Miser
Jensen / Youngblood
Iraq's
Non-Election
Patrick Cockburn / Elizabeth
Davies
Attacks on Polling Places Leave 13 Dead
Dave Zirin
The Great Donovan McNabb: Proud "Black Quarterback"
Dave Lindorff
Suicide by State Execution?
Karyn Strickler
A Corporate Death Penalty Act?
Jorge Mariscal
Fighting
the Poverty Draft
January 27,
2005
Seymour Hersh
We've
Been Taken Over By a Cult
Cockburn /
Sengupta
The
US's Bloodiest Day in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
Juke Box Journalism: Shilling for Bush
Ignacio Chapela
/ John F. García
The Laws of Nature
Mike Whitney
The Widening Chasm Among Conservatives
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
Those Liberal Southern Baptists!
Ray McGovern
Reining In Cheney
Russ Wellen
Marginalizing Bin Laden
Christopher
Brauchli
The
FBI's Carnival of Errors
Website of
the Day
Informed Eating
January 26,
2005
Saree Makdisi
An
Iron Wall of Colonization: Fantasies and Realities About the
Prospects for Middle East Peace
Scott Fleming
In Good Conscience: an Interview with Concientious Objector Aidan
Delgado
Dave Lindorff
Filling Saddam's Shoes: the Puppet Regime Return's to Torture
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Salazar and Obama: Two Dismal Debuts
Toni Solo
The
US and Latin America: a Not-So-Magical Reality
William James Martin
Condoleezza Rice: Confused About the Middle East
William A.
Cook
Bush's Second Inaugural Address: the Lost Ur-Version
Eric Hobsbawm
Delusions
About Democracy
Alexander Cockburn
The CIA's New Campus Spies
January 25,
2005
Brian Cloughley
Iraq
as Disneyland
Mike Roselle
Satan is My Co-Pilot
Josh Frank
/ Merlin Chowkwanyun
The War on Civil Liberties
John Chuckman
Freedom on Steroids
Paul Craig
Roberts
A
Party Without Virtue
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
The
Intolerance of Christian Conservatives
James Petras
The
US / Colombia Plot Against Venezuela
Website of the Day
Lowbaggers for the Environment
January 24,
2005
Fred Gardner
Last
Monologue in Burbank
Lori Berenson
On the Politicization of My Case
Uri Avnery
King
George
January 22
/ 23, 2005
Jennifer Van
Bergen / Ray Del Papa
Nuclear
Incident in Montana
Alexander Cockburn
Prince
Harry's Travails
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Company That Runs the Empire: Lockheed and Loaded
Stan Goff
The Spectacle
Saul Landau
Nothing Succeeds Like Failure
Gary Leupp
Official Madness and the Coming War on Iran
Fred Gardner
Is GW Getting the Runaround?
Phil Gasper
Clemency Denied: the Politics of Death in California
Stanley Heller
A Kill-Happy Government: Connecticut Chooses Death
Greg Moses
The Heart of Texas: an Inauguration Day Betrayal on Civil Rights
Justin Taylor
The Folk-Histories of John Ross
Daniel Burton-Rose
One China; Many Problems
Elaine Cassel
Try a Little Tyranny: Questions While Watching the Inaugural
Mike Whitney
Failing Upwards: the Rise of Michael Chertoff
Mark L. Berenson
My Daughter Has Been Wrongly Imprisoned
Christopher
Brauchli
It Doesn't Compute: a $170 Million Mistake
Gilad Atzmon
Zionism and Other Marginal Thoughts
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Day of the Rats
Mark Donham
The Secret Messages of Rahm Emmanuel
Ben Tripp
Adventures in Online Dating
Walter Brasch
Hollywood's Patriots: Soulless Kooks, Mr. Bush?
Poets' Basement
Wuest, Landau, Ford, Albert & Drum
January 21,
2005
Dave Lindorff
A
Great American Journalist:
John L. Hess (1917-2005)
Sharon Smith
The
Anti-War Movement and the Iraqi Resistance
Don Santina
Baseball, Racism and Steroid Hysteria
Ron Jacobs
Locked Out and Pissed Off: Protesting the Bush Inauguration
Kurt Nimmo
The Problem with Mike Ruppert
Don Monkerud
Once They Were Cults: Bush's Faith-Based Social Services
Alan Farago
Swimming Home from the Galapagos
Derek Seidman
An
Interview with Army Medic and Anti-War Activist Patrick Resta
Read How the
Press & the CIA
Killed Gary Webb's Career
January 20,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
Dying
for Sycophants
William Cook
The
Bush Inauguration: A Mock Epic Fertility Rite
Joshua Frank
The Democrats and Iran: Look Who's Backing Bush's Next
Eric Ruder
Why Andres Raya Snapped: Another Casualty of Bush's War
Mike Whitney
Coronation in a Garrison State
Robert Jensen
A Citizens Oath of Office
Peter Rost
Bush Report on Drug Imports: Good Data, Bad Conclusions
David Underhill
Is It Torture Yet?: the Eclectic Fool Aid Torture Test
James Reiss
Adieu, Colin Powell: Pea Soup in Foggy Bottom
CounterPunch
Staff
Voices
from Abu Ghraib: the Injured Party
January 19,
2005
Marta Russell
Social
Security Privatization & Disability: 8 Million at Risk
Mike Ferner
Marines
Stretching Movement: Protesting Urban Warfare in Toledo
Nancy Oden
The
Nuremberg Principles, Iraq and Torture
Tony Paterson
A Catalogue of British Abuses in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Divide-and-Conquer Plan to Destroy Social Security
Doug Giebel
BS and CBS: When 60 Minutes Helped Promote WMD Fantasies
Alexander Cockburn
Will
Bush Quit Iraq?
January 18,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
How
Americans Were Seduced by War: Empire and Militant Christianity
Jennifer Van
Bergen
Federal
Judge: Abu Ghraib Abuses Result of Decision to Ignore Geneva
Conventions
Douglas Lummis
It's a No Brainer; Send Graner: a Rap for Our Time
Ron Jacobs
Syria Back in the Crosshairs?
Seth DeLong
Enter the Dragon: Will Washington Tolerate a Venezuelan-Chinese
Oil Pact?
Lance Selfa
Stolen Election?: Most Democrats Didn't Even Bother to Inquire
Paul D. Johnson
Mystery Meat: a Right-to-Know About Food Origins
Elisa Salasin
An Open Letter to Jenna Bush, Future Teacher
January 17,
2005
Heather Gray
Misconceptions
About King's Methods for Social Change
Robert Fisk
Hotel Room Journalism: the US Press in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
What the NYT Death Chart Omitted: Civilians Slaughtered by US
Military
Jason Leopold
Sam Bodman's Smokestacks: Bush's Choice for Energy Czar is One
of Texas's Worst Polluters
Gary Leupp
A Message from the Iraqi Resistance
Douglas Valentine
An Act of State? the Execution of Martin Luther King
Harvey Arden
Welcome to Leavenworth: My First Encounter with Leonard Peltier
Greg Moses
King
and the Christian Left: Where Lip Service is Not an Option
January 15
/ 16, 2005
James Petras
The
Kidnapping of a Revolutionary
Robert Fisk
Flying Carpet Airlines: My Return to Baghdad
Ron Jacobs
Unfit for Military Service
Brian Cloughley
Smack Daddies of the Hindu Kush: Afghanistan's Drug Bonanza
Fred Gardner
The Allowable-Quantity Expert
Dr. Susan Block
The Counter-Inaugural Ball: Eros Day, 2005
John Ross
Zapatista Literary Llife
Suzan Mazur
Unspooking Frank Carlucci
M. Shahid Alam
America's New Civilizing Mission
Frederick B. Hudson
Jack Johnson's Real Opponent: "That I Was a Man"
Mike Whitney
Bush's Grand Plan: Incite Civil War in Iraq
Tom Crumpacker
A Constitutional Right to Travel to Cuba
Bob Burton
The Other Armstrong Williams Scandal
John Callender
La Conchita and the Indomitable 82-Year Old
Lila Rajiva
Christian Zionism
Saul Landau
An Imperial Portrait: a Visit to Hearst's Castle
Doug Soderstrom
A Touch of Evil: the Morality of Neoconservatism
Poets' Basement
Davies, Louise, Landau, Albert, Collins and Laymon
January 14,
2005
Robert Fisk
"The
Tent of Occupation"
Lee Sustar
Bush's Social Security Con Job
José
M. Tirado
The Christians I Know
Dave Zirin
The Legacy of Jack Johnson
Sheldon Rampton
Calling John Rendon: a True Tale of "Military Intelligence"
Tracy McLellan
Under the Influence
Yves Engler
The Dictatorship of Debt: the World Bank and Haiti
Tom Barry
Robert
Zoellick: a Bush Family Man
Website of
the Day
Ryan for the Nobel Prize?
January 13,
2005
Mark Chmiel
/ Andrew Wimmer
Hearts
and Minds, Revisited
Joe DeRaymond
The Salvador Option: Terror,
Elections and Democracy
Greg Moses
Every Hero a Killer?...Not
Dave Lindorff
The Great WMD Fraud: Time for an Accounting
Jorge Mariscal
Dr. Galarza v. Alberto Gonzales: Which Way for Latinos?
Christopher Brauchli
Gonzales and the Death Penalty: the Executioner Never Sleeps
Gary Leupp
"Fighting
for the Work of the Lord": Christian Fascism in America
January 12,
2005
Robert Fisk
Fear
Stalks Baghdad
Josh Frank
The
Farce of the DNC Contest
Jack Random
Casualties
of War: the Untold Stories
John Roosa
Aceh's Dual Disasters: the Tsunami and Military Rule
Carol Norris
In the Wake of the Tsunami
Mike Whitney
Pink Slips at CBS
Alan Farago
Can
the Everglades be Saved?
Paul Craig
Roberts
What's
Our Biggest Problem in Iraq...the Insurgency or Bush?
January 11,
2005
Tom Barry
The
US isn't "Stingy"; It's Strategic: Aid as a Weapon
of Foreign Policy
James Hodge
and Linda Cooper
Voice
of the Voiceless: Father Roy Bourgeois and the School of the
the Americas
Linda S. Heard
Farah Radio Break Down: Joseph Farah's Messages of Hate and Homophobia
Derrick O'Keefe
Electoral Gigolo?: Richard Gere and the Occupied Vote
Gila Svirsky
A Tale of Two Elections
Harry Browne
Irish
"Peace Process", RIP
January 10,
2005
Ramzy Baroud
Faith-Based
Disasters: Tsunami Aid and War Costs
Talli Nauman
Killing
Journalists: Mexico's War on a Free Press
Uri Avnery
Sharon's Monologue
Dave Lindorff
Tucker
Carlson's Idiot Wind
Dave Zirin
Randy
Moss's Moondance
Dave Silver
Left Illusions About the Democratic Party
Charles Demers
Plan Salvador for Iraq: Death Squads Come in Waves
William A.
Cook
Causes
and Consequences: Bush, Osama and Israel
January 8 /
9, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Say,
Waiter, Where's the Blood in My Margarita Glass?
John H. Summers
Chomsky
and Academic History
Greg Moses
Getting Real About the Draft
Walter A. Davis
Bible Says: the Psychology of Christian Fundamentalism
Victor Kattan
The EU and Middle East Peace
John Bolender
The Plight of Iraq's Mandeans
Robert Fisk
The Politics of Lebanon
Fred Gardner
Situation NORML
Joe Bageant
The Politics of the Comfort Zone
Mickey Z.
I Want My DDT: Little Nicky Kristof Bugs Out
Ben Tripp
CounterClockwise Evolution
Ron Jacobs
Elvis and His Truck: Out on Highway 61
Saul Landau
Sex
and the Country
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Time to End the Blackout
Ellen Cantarow
NPR's Distortions on Palestine
Richard Oxman
Bageantry Continued
Poets' Basement
Gaffney, Landau, Albert, Collins
January 7,
2005
Omar Barghouti
Slave
Sovereignty: Elections Under Occupation
Kent Paterson
The Framing of Felipe Arreaga: Another Mexican Environmentalist
Arrested
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Old
Vijay Merchant and the Tsunami
David Krieger
Cancel the Inauguration Parties
Gideon Levy
New Year, Old Story
Dave Lindorff
Ohio Protest: First Shot Fired by Congressional Progressives
Christopher
Brauchli
Privatizing the IRS
Roger Burbach
/ Paul Cantor
Bush,
the Pentagon and the Tsunami
January 6,
2005
Brian J. Foley
Gonzales:
Supporting Torture is not His Greatest Sin
Greg Moses
Boot
Up America!: Gen. Helmly's Memo Leaks New Bush Deal
Petras / Chomsky
An
Open Letter to Hugo Chavez
Alan Maass
The Decline of the Dollar
Dave Lindorff
Colin Powell's Selective Sense of Horror
Jenna Orkin
The EPA and a Dirty Bomb: 9/11's Disastrous Precedent
P. Sainath
The
Tsunami and India's Coastal Poor
January 5,
2005
Alan Farago
2004:
An Environmental Retrospective
Winslow T.
Wheeler
Oversight
Detected?: Sen. McCain and the Boeing Tanker Scam
Jean-Guy Allard
Gary Webb: a Cuban Perspective
Fred Gardner
Strutting, Smirking, As If The Mad Plan Was Working
David Swanson
Albert Parsons on the Gallows
Richard Oxman
The Joe Bageant Interview
Bruce Jackson
Death
on the Living Room Floor
January 4,
2005
Michael Ortiz
Hill
Mainlining
Apocalypse
Elaine Cassel
They
Say They Can Lock You Up for Life Without a Trial
Yoram Gat
The
Year in Torture
Martin Khor
Tragic
Tales and Urgent Tasks from the Tsunami Disaster
Gary Leupp
Death
and Life in the Andaman Islands
January 3,
2005
Ron Jacobs
The
War Hits Home
Dave Lindorff
Is
There a Single Senator Who Will Stand Up for Black Voters?
Mike Whitney
The Guantanamo Gulag
Joshua Frank
Greens and Republicans: Strange Bedfellows
Maria Tomchick
Playing Politics with Disaster Aid
Rhoda and Mark
Berenson
Our Daughter Lori: Another Year of Grave Injustice
David Swanson
The Media and the Ohio Recount
Kathleen Christison
Patronizing
the Palestinians
January 1 /
2, 2005
Gary Leupp
Earthquakes
and End Times, Past and Present
Rev. William
E. Alberts
On "Moral Values": Code Words for Emerging Authoritarian
Tendencies
M. Shahid Alam
Testing Free Speech in America
Stan Goff
A Period for Pedagogy
Brian Cloughley
Bush and the Tsunami: the Petty and the Petulant
Sylvia Tiwon
/ Ben Terrall
The Aftermath in Aceh
Ben Tripp
Requiem for 2004
Greg Moses
A Visible Future?
Steven Sherman
The 2004 Said Awards: Books Against Empire
Sean Donahue
The Erotics of Nonviolence
James T. Phillips
The Beast's Belly
David Krieger
When Will We Ever Learn
Poets' Basement
Soderstrom, Hamod, Louise and Albert
December 23,
2004
Chad Nagle
Report
from Kiev: Yushchenko's Not Quite Ready for Sainthood
David Smith-Ferri
The
Real UN Disgrace in Iraq
Bill Quigley
Death
Watch for Human Rights in Haiti
Mickey Z.
Crumbs
from Our Table
Christopher Brauchli
Merck's Merry X-mas
Greg Moses
When
No Law Means No Law
Alan Singer
An
Encounter with Sen. Schumer: a Very Dangerous Democrat
David Price
Social
Security Pump and Dump
Website of the Day
Gabbo Gets Laid
December 22,
2004
James Petras
An
Open Letter to Saramago: Nobel Laureate Suffers from a Bizarre
Historical Amnesia
Omar Barghouti
The Case for Boycotting Israel
Patrick Cockburn / Jeremy Redmond
They Were Waiting on Chicken Tenders When the Rounds Hit
Harry Browne
Northern Ireland: No Postcards from the Edge
Richard Oxman
On the Seventh Column
Kathleen Christison
Imagining
Palestine
Website of the Day
FBI Torture Memos
December 21,
2004
Greg Moses
The
New Zeus on the Block: Unplugging Al-Manar TV
Dave Lindorff
Losing
It in America: Bunker of the Skittish
Chad Nagle
The View from Donetsk
Dragon Pierces
Truth*
Concrete
Colossus vs. the River Dragon: Dislocation and Three Gorges Dam
Patrick Cockburn
"Things Always Get Worse"
Seth DeLong
Aiding Oppression in Haiti
Ahmad Faruqui
Pakistan and the 9/11 Commission's Report
Paul Craig
Roberts
America
Locked Up: a System of Injustice
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Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
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CounterPunch
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Corrie
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Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
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Weekend Edition
January 29 / 30, 2005
The Myth of the Open Society
The
Politics of Auschwitz
By
GILAD ATZMON
Sixty years after liberation, Auschwitz
became an international political event. It is no coincidence,
and I feel that we should spare a moment asking ourselves: why
now, why Auschwitz?
Living in a scientific technological
environment, it is natural for most commentators to judge any
given narrative reflecting on its positive contents, i.e. the
story it tells, the facts it picks up on and the message it conveys.
When it comes to Auschwitz, it is always the terrifying numbers,
Mengele and the selection, the clinical mass murder, the Gas
Chambers, the trains, the famous Arbeit Macht Frei above the
front gate, the death march just before liberation etc. And yet,
I would argue that it is at least as enlightening to expose that
which the Auschwitz narrative is there to conceal. Every historical
tale can operate as a smoke screen; narratives are very effective
in encouraging collective blindness. Auschwitz and the Holocaust
narrative, in this sense, are no different.
As it seems, without engaging
ourselves with the many questions
Concerning the validity of the widely accepted holocaust narrative,
we can safely ask what the Auschwitz Narrative is there to serve.
Who benefits from the Auschwitz account? We are entitled to ask
why the official holocaust narrative is so widely promoted by
different and opposing political institutions. Is it a result
of a highly sophisticated orchestrated Jewish propaganda? I am
not so sure anymore.
On the surface, the answer
to these questions is simple, the devastating image of the Auschwitz
and the Nazi Judeocide is a self-sufficient argument against
nationalism, racism and totalitarianism. Within the state of
acceptance of the holocaust tale, any of these three is regarded
as an enemy of humanity. But then, one must admit that it neither
nationalism, racism, nor totalitarianism that killed so many
innocent human beings in Auschwitz. Ideologies do not kill, it
is always people who kill, regardless of their ideologies.
But it goes a bit further,
with the image of Auschwitz in the back of our minds, our western
liberal thinkers and politicians are enthusiastically depicting
a naive vision of our social reality, presenting us with a simplistic
binary division. On the one hand, we find the open society, on
the other, we find its many enemies. Following this world view,
there is only one open society, but many different enemies; and
yet, it is important to mention that the open society is an empty
signifier, in practice it means very little, not to say nothing.
As it seems, in order to become a member in the exclusive open
club, one simply must join the right wars. President Bush, a
man who is far from being eloquent when verbal capabilities are
concerned, was unexpectedly articulate in presenting that very
post Auschwitz western axiom: you are either with us or against
us.
Being with us, namely being
amongst the open, means that you believe that it was us who liberated
Europe, it was us who liberated Auschwitz, it was us who saved
the Jews, and it is us who still bring the notion of democracy
to the most remote corners of this boiling planet. Being with
us means that you accept the fact that we are the voice of the
free world. It means as well that you know that you are unconditionally
free. It is basically a new form of tautology: you are free even
if you aren't. Being with us means that you believe that the
world is rapidly progressing towards a greater divide, namely
a cultural clash, in which you are a good innocent Judeo-Christian
enlightened being, and the rest are dark fundamental evils or
at least potential evil. Being with us means that you are not
supposed to ask too many questions about our own immoral conduct.
For instance, you don't ask why Bomber Harris & co. murdered
850,000 German civilians, targeting German cities rather than
Nazi industrial infrastructure.
Being a free being in an open
society means that you should never raise questions about Hiroshima.
In case you are stupid enough to raise the issue, you had better
be clever enough to accept the official lie: it was the best
way to bring this horrible war to an end. Being a free being
you won't raise questions regarding the morality behind leaving
2,000,000 fatalities in Vietnam. Being with us means that you
don't have to ask all those silly annoying questions because
Auschwitz is the ultimate in evil. Auschwitz is the bedrock of
human wickedness and don't you ever forget that it was us who
put it to an end.
Let us put the truth in place,
Auschwitz was beyond doubt a horrible place, but unfortunately
it isn't the ultimate evil, just because evil has neither limit
nor scale. But, to be historically accurate, it wasn't even us
who liberated Auschwitz. As it appears, it was Stalin, the other
evil. It was Stalin who gave so many Jewish, POWs, political
prisoners, gypsies and inmate the chance to see daylight. But
again, being a free being in an open society you don't really
have to pay attention to minor historical details.
It would seem that Auschwitz
is essential within our righteous western self image. When Iraqi
oil is in demand, the American president will equate Saddam with
Hitler. Next we will learn that the Iraqi people should be liberated
from their 'Auschwitz'. We already know the inevitable consequences.
Since Auschwitz is so crucial
for the American policy makers, it isn't surprising that not
too far from the residency of the American president, there is
a big Holocaust museum dedicated to the memory of the Jewish
people and their heroic liberators. This museum is not about
people or even about crimes against humanity, it is about the
maintenance of the illusion of the open society. It is about
the maintenance of a very specific narrative. It is all about
how we are right, and they, who ever they are, are categorically
wrong.
This museum is not really about
Jewish suffering. I assume that there will be some basic facts
that the museum won't share with its visitors: for instance,
it will not tell the passing crowd that the American government
adopted a highly restrictive immigration policy that was never
modified between 1933-1944, in order to block Jewish immigration.
It will avoid the fact that the American government refused or
obstructed German offers of negotiation to remove Jews from Nazi
controlled territories. Mostly important, it will hide the clear
fact that the US air force was not instructed to disrupt the
Nazi killing machine. Neither railways to Auschwitz nor Auschwitz
itself was ever bombed neither by the RAF nor by the American
Air Force. It seems as if a real murderous negligence was involved
in the American decision making on the issue along side the war.
For instance, on 20 August 1944, 127 flying fortress escorted
by one hundred Mustang fighters successfully dropped their bombs
on a factory less than five miles from Auschwitz. Not a single
plane was diverted to attack the death camp.
These stories won't appear
in the American Holocaust museum. They simply don't fit into
the heroic and righteous American self image. The history of
Auschwitz is in fact a story of brutal Anglo American negligence.
The acceptable Auschwitz narrative is basically a myth that is
there to support the American expansionist practice. Auschwitz
is the moral pillar of the American ideology.
The Holocaust museum is there
to tell Americans what may happen when everything goes wrong.
As sad as it may sound, in contemporary America everything is
going wrong, despite of the museum. The reason is simple, when
the image of evil is brewed within your cultural heritage as
the discourse of the other, you may as well become blind to the
fact that you yourself are already evil. Like their Israeli brothers,
the Americans forgot how to look at themselves.
In the case of America, the
Holocaust narrative serves the right wing expansionist philosophy.
In order to prevent another Auschwitz, the Americans will send
their armies to Vietnam, Korea, Iraq. They are always the liberators.
Till the end of the cold war, there were communists to fight
with, a real concrete evil; but now the evil is becoming more
and more abstract. In fact, the only way to materialise the vague
enemy is to equate it with Hitler.
Europe's case is slightly different.
As strange as it may sound, in Europe it is the parliamentary
left that is capitalising on Auschwitz. As long as Auschwitz
is there deeply entrenched within the daily discourse, the right
wing can never raise their heads. The European mainstream left
is totally dependent on the Holocaust narrative and the Auschwitz
tale. As it seems, Auschwitz is the last left barricade against
the possibility of right wing revival. In Europe, any sense of
national aspiration, or even just a demographic concern that
may sound like xenophobia is immediately addressed as an awakening
of Nazism. Within this oppressive world view, people are not
allowed to express any affection towards their land. Furthermore,
being politically dependent on the image of the Jewish innocent
victim, the European mainstream left can never fully support
the Palestinian cause.
As it may seem, Auschwitz stands
as a symbol of partnership between the European parliamentary
left and the American expansionist right. For both, Auschwitz
stands as an icon of threat against the image of open society,
within the prospect of this fatal bond, any European genuine
left is destined to be pushed to the margin. Any form of genuine
left inspired by red aspirations is doomed to be presented as
a subversive and radical outlook. In March 1998, Robin Cook,
then the British foreign minister, paid a diplomatic visit to
Israel. While there, Cook rightly refused to visit Yad Vashem,
claiming that he was concerned with the future rather than with
the past. It wasn't long before Cook lost his job. The refusal
to bow to the Auschwitz tale cost Cook his job. It wasn't the
Jews who ousted him out of the foreign ministry. It was the Labour
party that kicked him out, a parliamentary European left institute.
So, Auschwitz is there to maintain
the myth of open society; it is there to present an illusion
of liberated Western identity. As long as Auschwitz is there,
in the core of our discourse, we are everything but liberated.
There is life after Auschwitz and this life belongs to us. We
had better do something with it. If there is something we should
never do, then that is taking other people's lives in the name
of Auschwitz. And apparently, this is exactly what we are doing.
Gilad Atzmon was born in Israel and served in the
Israeli military. He is the author of the new novel A
Guide to the Perplexed. Atzmon is also one of the most accomplished
jazz saxophonists in Europe. His recent CD, Exile,
was named the year's best jazz CD by the BBC. He now lives in
London and can be reached at: atz@onetel.net.uk
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