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On David Cooperman's comments: I regret to differ and maintain my charge that the Goldhagen book is racist. I do not, of course, mean that the author engages in the vulgar levels of epithets and smearings. What I mean is far more serious: that by ignoring the equally vicious record of Austrians, Vichy French, Ukrainians, Balts he shores up his fixation on "the Germans." As one Belgian scholar puts it, he "leaves the Holocaust in Germany..." This is the driving thrust of the book, and it skews the European historical situation. Also, since he totally ignores the role of the churches, except for sweeping generalizations that confuse gentiles and Christians (a common error, of course, on the European map!), the book also drives a message that ignores the centuries of antisemitism in CHRISTENDOM as a whole. This too is necessary if the argument is to be sustained that it was something about "the Germans." Are Jews and Afro-Americans the only ethnics against whom rage and hate are noted as "racist," or are other ethnics also included in the admoni- tions of the learned against "intolerance" and "bigotry?" Does arming a book with the apparatus of academic discourse (footnotes etc.) mean that its driving thrust and final impact are beyond analysis? I am sure that it is a serious mistake to define the Jewish people by means of the Holocaust, and just as serious to address TODAY the relations of Germans and Israelis and Americans, Jews and Christians in the spirit that was generally accepted on American campuses in 1944. It may be that the author, as he now says, had no intention of defaming the German people as such; that is still the impact of the book. It may be that explicit phrases and buzz-words of vulgar racism are missing in the book; that does not change the basic message that comes through loud and clear. To use the vulgar vernacular, the word is loud and clear: "it was the krauts..." [sotto voce, the rest of the "Christian nations" are home free] - FHL +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ | | | FRANKLIN LITTELL FHL@VM.TEMPLE.EDU | | DEPARTMENT OF RELIGION | | TEMPLE UNIVERSITY 610-667-5437 | | | +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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