Lutz Meiser
The return of the displaced
Concerning the pogroms of Nazi-Germany, but also concerning
aspects of current events in German life that are estimated
being linked to past or present fascism or political
right movements, scientist and critics in Germany seem
to exert for a new form of historical correctness.
Maybe a critic of such scientific and critical exertion,
Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, is right to call it an old
form of historical correctness: characterized by general
statements about general aspects of totalitarism and
its buerocratic machinery. Maybe its necessary to impugn
scientific tendencies to let sleeping dogs lie and
to offend critics who seem to wish that it is better
to believe further on: only the shepherd and the circumstances
he created were responsable for all the holocaust crueltys
- not the individual indulgance of his dogs, too. But
in the end this is an acedemic discussion and Goldhagen
himself states this in his long exoneration, wrote
for his German readers and printed as a dossier about
critics as slip-ups by the German weekly ZEIT. To be
continued.
What we call "new historical correctness"
is a claim to complexity that corresponds to a special
inclination for political correctness. If somebody
talks about individual indulgance in cruelty or - stronger
- enjoyment, delight or pleasure, people get nervous.
It is part of political correctness, not to touch such
aspects. The excitability of critics depends on the
taboo and its rules - who touches something that is
taboo becomes taboo himself. But if somebody commits
the scandalon and does what nobody dares to do, those,
who did not, exceed the borders too. But they proceed
on a principle that says: what has been displaced first
becomes conscious only in form of a denial. Goldhagen
not only touches a taboo, he touches a sore spot too.
Concerning the history of Holocaust in Germany the
special item of sadistic enjoyment is a kind of political
erogeneous zone that itches. And a lot of people, who
did not dare to scratch, now do. Goldhagens book about
Hitler and his willing followers ist not the herpetic
eruption that causes pain, like some critics diagnose.
It is the return of the displaced. And thats why Goldhagen
will stay a displaced person in Germany - for quite
a while.