The Pith Of Ruth Wisse’s Argument On The Dark Side Of Holocaust Education

‪Ruth Wisse: the dark side of Holocaust education ‬


‪https://tikvahfund.org/tikvah-may-2020/‬

‪Me to I:‬

‪I sent you the link to her talk: you may have seen it or if not you can watch it at your leisure.‬

‪As for my “report,” it’s wrapped up in questions I put to my wife who watched it separately from me as it happened.‬

‪“What about her main argument, that liberals and leftist others are using the Holocaust as proxy for universal hate and the Jews and others murdered by the Nazis as symbolic victims of hate in a whitewash of the particulars, all presented as an abstract, neutered event defining what is evil and what is good? ‬

The particulars include that it was Jews who bore the tragic brunt of a political campaign years in the democratic making in Germany, which, Wisse argues, would have, needed to, ought to have, taken political will to stand against it.


‪What about her argument that the abstract universalizing simplifications of good and evil and hatred distract us from the specifics of political anti Semitism then and now, now reborn on the further liberal left that bashes Israel at every turn and champions the Palestinians as colonially oppressed victims of Israeli white supremacy and apartheid? ‬


‪And what about her point that as this present Israel based iteration of political anti Semitism now informs much of the Democratic Party and the political left everywhere else, it takes political will to stand against it?”‬


‪End of report. ‬