The Holocaust Industry: The Abuse of Jewish Victims [Englisch] [Gebundene Ausgabe]

Norman Finkelstein does not object to remembering the Holocaust. His parents were sent to a concentration camp by the Nazis - why should he want to forget what they had gone through? What Mr Finkelstein does object to, is the exploitation of their suffering, and all the other victim's suffering, by a Holocaust Industry that has hardly a connection to them. It would be a mistake to try to summarize his arguments in this short review, as this would only lead to generalizations and misunderstandings. This book is neither an attack on Holocaust commemorance nor on the Jews and their religion. It is an attempt to take a reasonable approach to a topic that has been, up to now, often discussed in a much too emotional way.

Finkelstein has anything from little respect to utter contempt. That is, he regards them as a "Holocaust dogmatists" and "Holocaust mongers"-- "Hoaxers" and "Hucksters." With the www.amazon.com homepage now (July 28-31) running a "Quick Pick" review (or "recommended reading") of Greg Campbell's 1999 book, The Road to Kosovo: A Balkan Diary, it might make for an interesting research project to look at authors who have written about the wars over the break-up of Yugoslavia the same way that Norman Finkelstein looks at the "Holocaust Industry." Thus, accompanying the advertisement for Greg Campbell's book was an "Editorial Review" that opens with a serious distortion of the recent history of Kosovo and then goes downhill from there. Says the reviewer:

"In the summer of 1998, freelance journalist Greg Campbell got into a rental car in Zagreb, Yugoslavia, and drove across Croatia, Serbia, and Montenegro into Kosovo, where Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic had recently begun stepping up an ongoing "ethnic cleansing" campaign against the ethnic Albanians who make up the majority of the region's population. Staying with local journalists--some of whom were also part of the underground Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA)--Campbell was forced to confront the consequences of the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia."

Comment ought to be unnecessary. By the summer of 1998, the major "demographic problem" facing the Yugoslav federation in Kosovo was a thirty-year out-migration of ethnic non-Albanians, caused by depressed economic conditions and pressures from Kosovar Albanians on the rest of the Kosovar population to being about what was then called an "ethnically pure" Kosovo--meaning, an all-Albanian province with the goal of gaining eventual republican status within the federation or independence and statehood altogether. My hunch is that the wars over the break-up of Yugoslavia quickly generated something on the model of an "Holocaust Industry"--a "Genocide Industry," let us call it. It's amazing how thoroughly sold commentators are on the ex post facto point of view of view of the powers now occupying parts of the former Yugoslavia. As Norman Finkelstein writes about Elie Wiesel's central place in the pantheon of official Holocaust soothsayers: "Plainly he did not come to this position on account of his humanitarian commitments and

literary talents. Rather, Wiesel plays this leading role because he unerringly articulates the dogmas of, and accordingly sustains the interests underpinning, The Holocaust [Industry]." I believe that very much the same thing can be said of the writers on the break-up of Yugoslavia that occupy a central place in the pantheon of official (i.e., well-received and relatively ubiquitous) "Genocide" soothsayers. They occupy this favorable position because they unerringly

articulate the dogmas of, and accordingly systain the interests underpinning, the ex post facto point of view of the powers now occupying parts of the former Yugoslavia--American power's in particular.