On January 27, 2017, the annual Holocaust Remembrance Day that recalls the atrocities Germans and other European citizens committed in the mid-twentieth century-the murder of 6 million Jews, and 5 million others who fall into various targeted categories from Roma and Sinti to priests, homosexuals, asocials, political dissidents, Jehovah's Witnesses, and the mentally and physically disabled, American President Donald Trump, only in office for one week, signed an executive order that Shear and Cooper writing for the New York Times cite as:
"suspend[ing] the entry of refugees into the United States for 120 days and direct[ing] officials to determine additional screening 'to ensure that those approved for refugee admission do not pose a threat to the security and welfare of the United States.' The order also stops the admission of refugees from Syria indefinitely, and bars entry into the United States for 90 days from seven predominantly Muslim countries linked to concerns about terrorism. Those countries are Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen."1 The irony of this ban is not only that this is unlikely to lessen the threat of terror attacks, but also that no citizens of any one of these countries committed a fatal terrorist attack on United States' soil. None of the countries from which the fatal attackers on or since 9/11 have hailed are even on this list. As NPR's reporting has made clear,2 the listed countries also do not include any countries to which Trump has business connections. But to return to the actual date on which Trump enacted this order, is it mere coincidence that he chose this particular day to sign into law the rejection of refugees fleeing war, violence, and conflict on the Arabian Peninsula at the American border? The Western world, although it continuously attempts to remove itself from any culpability in the conflict in this region or in Northern Africa, finds itself historically enmeshed since, at the very latest, the era of colonialism and imperialism. Furthermore, is it mere coincidence that Trump chose not to mention Jews or any other targets of the Nazi regime in his statement? Or that he uses the passive formulation "by Nazi terror" rather than an active agent (Germans and other Europeans that served as the murderers)?3 I would argue it is not. And I would argue that this absence produces an erasure. If his appointments to his cabinets, such as Steve Bannon, as well as his own non-willingness to denounce white supremacist groups like the KKK who avidly vocalize their support for him, tell us anything, it is that he finds himself both within and surrounded by a circle of Alt-right politicians who are somewhat difficult to distinguish from the Nazis of Germany's past in their thoughts and recent actions. Not much in history in terms of dates is coincidental. One need only think of the significance of November 9th in the course of Germany history (note: this is also the date of Trump's presidential victory). The date is layered in meaning from the assassination of Robert Blum in the upheaval of the 1848 revolution to Karl Liebknecht's declaration in 1918 of the "Free Socialist Republic." Hitler's Beer Hall Putsch failed in 1923 on this day; he was incarcerated and, in his prison cell, he would write the bestseller Mein Kampf that would serve as a forewarning of events to come, including those on November 9, 1938 that resonated through the sound of broken glass on what is referred to as Germany's "Kristallnacht." At the end of the twentieth century, in 1989, the date marked the fall of the Berlin Wall and signaled the fall of Communism in Europe and the triumph of capitalism. As such, historians take dates seriously, especially when significant events continuously occur on them. With this in mind, what might it mean that Trump enacted the Muslim ban on the day of International Holocaust Remembrance, and how might this negatively re-code such remembrance that is supposed to serve the function of never allowing such atrocities to recur? Although marking the persecution committed during the Holocaust/Shoah as something to be remembered and commemorated in the statement Trump issued, at the same time he enacted religion-based executive orders as presiding president. The message is contradictory to say the least sending mixed signals. The contradictions were apparent to anyone with a critical eye and some sense of awareness of history. But what can be gleaned beyond this from an analysis of these coinciding dates that mark historical events occurring in different years, indeed in different centuries, in two different, yet similar Western nations? And how might viewing them in connection to one another open up new ways of seeing what remains hidden and silenced in each, but is actually their common denominator? Many already have been quick to point out the ironic parallel in American history of the Muslim and refugee ban to the turning away of the St. Louis which carried nearly 1000 Jews from Europe across the Atlantic, only to be mostly denied entry to Cuba and the U.S. and later returned to Europe where they were dispersed among various European countries. A fourth of the passengers would perish in the Holocaust, being forced back onto mainland European territory.4 As Eric Cortelessa explains quoting Jonathan Greenblatt, the Anti-Defamation League's CEO in his article in The Times of Israel: "It’s impossible to ignore, whether intentional or not, the tragic irony in executing the kind of order that kept Jews out of America, like those who perished on the St. Louis and countless others, on the day when we remember the unspeakable tragedy that befell European Jewry and the Jewish people,” he told The Times of Israel."5 The rampant xenophobia and anti-Semitism of Americans, particularly strengthened by the Great Depression, were all factors contributing to the rejection of these Jewish refugees.6 So what, then, are the actual underlying points of commonality that brought the U.S. to these two distinct, yet akin, decisions? Nicholas Kristof's Opinion piece in the New York Times published on August 25, 2016 has been reposted and circulating widely in the last few days on social media sites. In his contribution, he built a bridge between the lives and narratives of the Jewish-German-Dutch Anne Frank and the young Syrian Rouwaida Hanoun, who may or may not be Muslim even though she has been attached simultaneously to both the Muslim and refugee discourse in mainstream media that equates the two problematically since refugees from Muslim majority countries are not just Muslim. Kristof's opinion article appeared following the image of Hanoun making its own rounds in the media and sending shockwaves around the globe and predominantly in the Western world, where such images tend to not permeate, as a result of our geographic distance from the site of the Syrian conflict. In the article, Kristof further explains his juxtaposition of the two girls and the role that media played in influencing the American public's fears in relation to refugees and politicians' policy-making in the 1930s. He writes: "The obstacle was an American wariness toward refugees that outweighed sympathy. After the 1938 Kristallnacht pogrom against Jews, a poll found that 94 percent of Americans disapproved of Nazi treatment of Jews, but 72 percent still objected to admitting large numbers of Jews."7 What Kristof misses in his reading of this data is the notion that public opinion could very well be against the treatment of Jews in Germany during and after Kristallnacht, but still tolerate and actually hold anti-Semitic values and beliefs, most especially in economic times of turmoil. As Kristof rightly states, "News organizations didn't do enough to humanize refugees and instead, tragically, helped spread xenophobia. The Times published a front-page article about the risks of Jews becoming Nazi spies, and The Washington Post published an editorial thanking the State Department for keeping out Nazis posing as refugees."8 Yet again, he dismisses the fact that Jews being perceived as Germans in disguise or potential Nazi informants actually parallels Muslims (not just from the 7 countries listed in the ban Trump just issued, but all of them in the Western frame of mind) being perceived as and equated to terrorists in many ways. Some former Jews did hold extremely anti-Semitic attitudes, for example, Karl Marx and Karl Kraus, so it is not outside of the realm of possibility that Jews could be Nazis; however, that Jews fleeing Nazis would become Nazi spies in the U.S. seems all but absurd and reminiscent in contemporary times of an anti-Semitic and propagandistic tactic to heighten fears of Jews by drawing on already existent anti-Semitic narratives. Particularly, the powerful and historical Dreyfus Affair in France at the turn of the century which provoked Theodor Herzl's call for Zionism is one example of which, although eventually having proved Dreyfus' innocence after years of interment at Devil's Island, no doubt left the impression that all Jews were saboteurs and spies for the enemy. In both scenarios, the case of Jews as potential Nazi spies and the case of Muslims as potential terrorists, the logical fallacies serve as a justification for rejecting them as refugees. Moreover, in both cases they mark refugees as potentially dangerous threats through a series of slippages attached to linguistic signifiers that embody fear and are actually meant to increase anti-Semitism and Islamophobia (Nazis/spies & Terrorists). Thus, what comparisons like this one also have had me wondering lately is what it would mean if we were to consider anti-Semitism as something that targets both Jews and Arabs from a Western Christian perspective. Because in reality, the word Semite actually refers to those speakers of a Semitic language (including Jews and Arabs). Could this serve as a linguistic tool that would unite the two in an effort to expose the true violence underpinning both anti-Semitism and Islamophobia that results from white, Western, Christian hegemony and the fears it produces? Could we not then turn the gaze critically back onto the West as the culpable source of anti-Semitism towards both of its targets, without denying other forms of violence, such as IS terrorism? Kristof's opinion article from the New York Times elides the fact that Anne Frank was not welcome in the U.S. as a refugee and feared precisely because she was Jewish, not simply because she was a refugee: "Fears of terrorism have left Muslim refugees toxic in the West, and almost no one wants them any more than anyone wanted a German-Dutch teenager named Anne."9 Her Jewishness was undeniably a factor in the fear that the media induced, it was simply couched or masked in the term refugee and could remain a hidden, albeit present absence. While the anti-Semitism of the 1930s and 40s in the U.S. was seemingly latent in our readings of it today (although one can certainly provide examples of its manifestation), the Islamophobia of contemporary times is openly present, even if it, too, attaches itself to the word refugee. This is because it already resounds in the mentioning of the word Muslim, which in the U.S. has all too often been equated to the word terrorist. The slippage refugee=Muslim=terrorist is all too familiar. It is possible to be a refugee and not be Muslim, to be Muslim and not be a terrorist, to be a refugee and not be a terrorist, or to have any combination of the above, just as it is also possible to be a refugee and be Christian, to be a Christian and be a terrorist, and so on. These signifiers are not interchangeable. While I know there is a whole history that goes along with anti-Semitism that marks it as something specifically targeting Jews, I wonder if a recuperation of the word's actual meaning might be productive in terms of making visible the white Western European and Christian hegemony that is behind both the fear and discrimination of Jews and Muslim populations (that to be sure are not all Arabs and all Arabs are not all Muslim). It might open up an opportunity to expose anti-Jewishness as the white Western Europe and Christian invention it is and that was packaged as propaganda and disseminated to Northern Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. In this way, it might open up productive spaces for dialogue across a Jewish/Muslim divide, and it might equally expose Western Christianity's own violence toward other religions that it, too, tends to cover up and displace to others. Multiple friends and students of mine have commented on the fact that fear of the increase of anti-Semitism as a result of the influx of Muslim refugees to Europe have heightened their families' desire for stricter immigration laws, and this is not without justification.10 But if we began to look more closely at anti-Semitism's roots,11 including its etymology, and its transference and dissemination to the Muslim world, we might be able to expose those origins that are buried, and reassign anti-Semitism's linguistic 'value' in a double-sense. Jews and Muslims might be able to lessen their fears in relation to one another, while Christians would be held accountable for their own insecure identity and displaced anxiety and fear that has resulted in its reproduction in both Muslims and Jews. Works Cited 1.Michael D. Shear and Helene Cooper, "Trump Bars Refugees and Citizens of Seven Muslim Countries," The New York Times, January 27, 2017, accessed January 27, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/us/politics/trump-syrian-refugees.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=a-lede-package-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news 2.Marilyn Geewax and Michael Martin, "Countries Listed on Trump's Refugee Ban Don't Include Those He Has Business With." National Public Radio, January 28 2017, accessed January 28, 2017, http://www.npr.org/2017/01/28/512199324/countries-listed-on-trumps-refugee-ban-dont-include-those-he-has-business-with 3"Statement by the President on International Holocaust Remembrance Day," The White House, accessed January 28, 2017, https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/01/27/statement-president-international-holocaust-remembrance-day 4"Voyage of the St. Louis," United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, accessed January 29, 2017, https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005267 5Eric Cortelessa, "US Jews See 'Tragic Irony' in Refugee Ban on Holocaust Remembrance Day." The Times of Israel. January 29, 2017, accessed January 29, 2017, http://www.timesofisrael.com/us-jews-see-tragic-irony-in-refugee-ban-on-holocaust-remembrance-day/ See also: Heather Timmons and Annelise Merelli, "On Holocaust Remembrance Day President Donald Trump Repeated one of the U.S.'s Most Tragic Errors," Quartz, January 28, 2017, accessed January 28, 2017, https://qz.com/896975/on-holocaust-remembrance-day-president-trump-shut-the-door-on-refugees-repeating-one-of-the-uss-tragic-mistakes/ 6 Ibid. "Voyage of the St. Louis." 7 Nicholas Kristof, "Anne Frank Today Is a Syrian Girl." The New York Times, August 25, 2016, accessed January 28, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/25/opinion/anne-frank-today-is-a-syrian-girl.html?smid=fb-share 8Ibid. Kristof, "Anne Frank." 9Ibid. Kristof, "Anne Frank." 10See, for example, Jon Henley, "Antisemitism on Rise Across Europe 'in Worst Times Since the Nazis,' The Guardian, August 7, 2014, accessed January 28, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/aug/07/ antisemitism-rise-europe-worst-since-nazis and Public Broadcasting Station. "Amid Europe's Refugee Crisis, Fears of Anti-Semitism Rise," PBS, February 16, 2016, accessed January 28, 2017, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/amid-europes-refugee-crisis-fears-of-anti-semitism-rise/ 11David Greenberg, "The Roots of Arab Anti-Semitism: Radical Islam's Favorite Western Tradition," Slate, October 31, 2001, accessed January 28, 2017.http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history_lesson/2001/10/the_roots_of_arab_antisemitism.html
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This semester I am once again teaching my Jews of Germany course-a course I never thought I would find myself teaching, especially given that it is not my specialty per se (I do have a secondary specialization in turn of the century Vienna). As the existing curriculum in an academic job often dictates what one will teach upon arrival, the course fell into my hands upon appointment at SUNY New Paltz as a Lecturer in the Languages, Literatures & Cultures program in German. Teaching the course for the first time in the fall of 2015, it quickly became my favorite course ever taught, as a result of both the students in that section and the content that I selected to teach and engage the students in discussion. This course was an incredible experience, not least because of the makeup of my classroom. It consisted of a number of Jewish students and a significant number of them were Ashkenazi Jews or Jews of German (and Eastern European) descent, as well as third generation Holocaust survivors. In and of itself, this was one of the most memorable moments of my teaching career. Flash forward to fall 2016. Again, I find myself in a classroom full of students eager to learn about the history of Germany's Jewish population. Many assume initially that the course will focus solely on the Holocaust, but the history of Germany's Jews did not start or end with the Holocaust and neither did the history of anti-Semitism on the European continent (and beyond). Starting at the beginning of the semester, we traced the course of German history from the Middle Ages to the early twentieth century, and we did not begin to touch on the history of the Holocaust until mid-Semester. Dealing with the historical context of Weimar Germany and the pre-WWII period, we read Walter Benjamin's "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." Benjamin was a member of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory and his essay-written in 1936 after the rise of Hitler to power and the creation of the Ministry of Propaganda under Goebbels-lays out the trajectory of art from its origins as a cult object with an auratic presence (situated in a particular space and time and acquiring layers of meaning throughout its historical existence) to its reproducibility through the ever-increasing mechanization in society that forces it to lose the authenticity it once had. This is particularly evinced in the advent of photography and its medium of descent, film. Benjamin's essay culminates in what can be perceived as his diagnosis of the role that film will play in the years, decades, and centuries to come: it will serve as a propaganda tool that will be able to influence the masses. Undoubtedly, Benjamin saw on the one hand the potential of film to educate and politically mobilize the masses, and, on the other hand, the potential abuse of it in its ability to manipulate and deceive them. As the in-class discussion evolved, I could not help but wonder what Benjamin would have to say today if he were to come back to visit the present, specifically in the context of the 2016 American election given that this was the context in which I was teaching his work (the text was discussed pre-Election). I asked the students what the next transition in technology was following the advent of the age of mechanical reproduction. We concluded it was undeniably the shift to digital technology. How digital technology differs from mechanical reproduction is that it removes or, perhaps more clearly stated, it eliminates entirely the distance between the producer and the final product and the recipients of that product. In this way, it differs from mechanical reproduction in that there is no longer an apparatus between producer and product and no longer a distance in time or space required for distribution of the end product. It is instead automatic. Rather than having a machine capture or copy an image that must then be cut and edited, digital technology allows for the immediate manipulation of information and image and its direct transfer to others en masse. One must not go anywhere or wait for its release. Memes are generated and disseminated within seconds. Social Media sites facilitate these images in reaching the masses at rates unimaginable. They transcend national boundaries and borders within seconds. Fake news articles can also be written and posted online, and they reach their readers at similar rates. We have seen the damage this has caused. The platform for today's collectively and individually produced propaganda consists of social media pages such as Facebook and Twitter, on which a number of articles and memes are posted, shared, and recommended to readers instantaneously. Some of these articles are based in fact and some are mere propaganda. As such, readers are no longer required to seek out the truth, they only need to seek out their own world view (and in the case of Facebook's algorithms and its trending article share system, this is not even required). Thus, they are able to find images and articles that represent, support, and structure their own desired realities and beliefs or create and circulate them. If Walter Benjamin were to time travel and arrive in today's world, I am certain that he would contribute a new theoretical perspective on the technological advances of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, as well as the means (or perhaps I should say memes?) by which information is now conveyed to the public for mass consumption. It no longer even has to be embedded in an aesthetic work of art, for it must no longer hide the fact that its content is political. It simply is. Truth, then, as something that may have once been authentic is no longer attainable in the world of the internet. It is self-producing and self-affirming. It does not need facts to make it real. Truth has become digitally (re)producible in the age of social media and the internet, reified to a point of irretrievability. It is a simulacrum as Baudrillard would have it.
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AuthorI'm a Germanist who specializes in Black German Studies. ArchivesCategories |