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<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\nWe learned yesterday that Roger Hallam, co-founder of Extinction Rebellion (\u201cXR\u201d) apologised<\/a><\/span> after his comments about the Holocaust sparked outrage.<\/h5>\n
I was curious to find out what it was that Hallam said that led to such indignation. German Green politician Volker Beck accused Mr Hallam on Twitter of “bringing the climate movement into disrepute<\/span>.”<\/a> German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said the Nazi genocide was “uniquely inhumane” (can the German foreign minister provide a list of what he considers to have been\u00a0 \u2018humane\u2019 genocides?). Ullstein, Hallam\u2019s German publisher announced it had stopped publication of Hallam\u2019s book on climate change and that it was disassociating itself from his comments.<\/h5>\n
Judging by the\u00a0 scale of the histrionics I assumed that Hallam had broken every rule. He must have praised Hitler or perhaps justified or even denied the Holocaust all together.\u00a0 Apparently, he said nothing at all like that. In an interview with Die Zeit<\/em>, Hallam stated that the Holocaust was\u00a0 “just another fuckery in human history.”\u00a0 The “fact of the matter,\u201d he said, \u201cis, millions of people have been killed in vicious circumstances on a regular basis throughout history.”\u00a0 He concluded by observing that genocides have occurred repeatedly over the past 500 years and “in fact, you might say it is like a regular event”.<\/h5>\n
At least on its face, his statements were factually correct, Hallam didn\u2019t deny or diminish anyone\u2019s suffering.\u00a0 Quite the opposite, he expressed a universal disgust with all forms of oppression and hatred.<\/h5>\n
What was Hallam\u2019s crime? Apparently, that he spoke both authentically and ethically, and ignored the fact that this form of discourse is extinct within contemporary \u2018Left\u2019\u00a0 and progressive circles.<\/h5>\n
XR’s Annemarie Botzki tweeted: “We distance ourselves from Roger Hallam’s trivialising and relativising comments about the Holocaust.”\u00a0 Hallam is being accused of \u2018trivializing\u2019 and \u2018relativizing\u2019 the holocaust simply by noting the clear and undeniable fact that history has witnessed more than one systematic destruction of one people by another.<\/h5>\n
The study of history benefits from a\u00a0 comparative approach. Our scholarly understanding of the past expands when we can see, for instance, the equivalence between the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo and the 1948 Palestinian Nakba. Our understanding of Zionism grows when we delve into the parallels between the national socialist aspirations of the early Labour Zionists<\/a><\/span> and\u00a0 those of German National Socialism that surfaced later. Yet, within the domain of the Holocaust religion such a scholarly comparative approach is regarded as the ultimate heresy. To examine the Holodomor<\/span>,<\/a> the Boer War, Stalin\u2019s crimes, Neocon global atrocities, or Israeli War Crimes alongside the Holocaust is perceived by some as the ultimate profanity as it \u2018relativises\u2019 that which \u2018must\u2019 extend beyond history and reason, namely \u2018The Holocaust.\u2019<\/h5>\n
For Jewish institutions, Holocaust:\u00a0 \u2018Relativisation,\u2019 \u2018Trivialization\u2019 and \u2018Universalization\u2019 are the \u2018ultimate crimes\u2019 as they tend to prevent the crystallization of the Holocaust as a unique chapter in human history. The attempt is made by these institutions to prevent\u00a0 the application of language that is \u2018specific to the holocaust\u2019 to events that are unrelated to it or to Jewish suffering in general.<\/h5>\n
We are stumbling upon two core elements at the heart of the Holocaust religion.\u00a0 One is, of course, the primacy of Jewish suffering. The other is the Orwellian attempt to dominate language, terminology, vocabulary and expressions by restricting the usage of certain words so the words themselves serve Jewish identitarian causes.<\/h5>\n
The great Israeli thinker Yeshayahu Leibowitz<\/a><\/span> noticed as early as the 1970s that the Holocaust was morphing from an event in history into a dogmatic religion. It was he who coined the notion \u201cHolocaust religion.\u201d Leibowitz perceived that, although Jews believe in many different things, Judaism, Bolshevism, Human Rights, Zionism and Anti Zionism: all Jews believe in the Holocaust.\u00a0 A decade later in 1987, Israeli philosopher Adi Ophir expanded on this shift in Jewish consciousness and identification. In his paper On Sanctifying the Holocaust: An Anti-Theological Treatise<\/em><\/a><\/span>, Ophir admitted that \u201ca religious consciousness built around the Holocaust may become the central aspect of a new religion.\u201d<\/h5>\n
Ophir listed the four commandments of the new religion:<\/h5>\n
\n
\u201cThou shalt have no other holocaust.\u201d\u00a0<\/strong><\/h5>\n<\/li>\n
\u201cThou shalt not make unto thee any graven image or likeness.\u201d <\/strong><\/h5>\n<\/li>\n
\u201cThou shalt not take the name in vain.\u201d\u00a0<\/strong><\/h5>\n<\/li>\n
\u201cRemember the day of the Holocaust to keep it holy, in memory of the destruction of the Jews of Europe.\u201d\u00a0<\/strong><\/h5>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Ophir\u2019s commandments illuminate these two Judeo Centric core elements of the Holocaust\u00a0religion. The primacy of Jewish Suffering (1, 2 and 4) and strict lingual restrictions (1,2 &3).<\/h5>\n
Orwell\u2019s insights into left authoritarianism that made 1984 into a prophetic masterpiece together with Ophir\u2019s thoughts\u00a0 provide us with the intellectual framework to understand both the Jewish and the Left\u2019s attitude toward the Holocaust. The Left that, at least in the past, attempted to unite us in the name of a universal ethos is now at the forefront of the battle against each of its own core values: the\u00a0ethical, the universal (equality) and, most important, freedom.<\/h5>\n
Noticeably, not a single Left politician or thinker stood up for Hallam and his expression of a genuine humanist and universalist outlook. This is tragic but not surprising. It can easily be explained by the concepts of \u2018Athens\u2019 and \u2018Jerusalem.\u2019\u00a0 If Athens is the birthplace of philosophy and Jerusalem is the home for Torah and Mitzvoth, then Athens teaches us how to think while Jerusalem produces a set of directives as, for example,\u00a0 what \u2018not to say.\u2019 The Left\u2019s call that was born of an Athenian instinct that was both dialectical and universal has generally been reduced into a Jerusalemite set of \u2018commandments\u2019 that are totally\u00a0removed from truthfulness, authenticity or human nature.<\/h5>\n
It is this Jerusalemite authoritarian mode that is quintessential to contemporary Left politics and explains why Corbyn\u2019s Labour has expelled its best members for truthful speech. Why is it that Corbyn himself never stood for Ken Livingstone and others who were telling the truth? This systematic failure of Left politics may explain why the promised revolution never materialized. \u00a0 It also explains why Hallam was stabbed in the back by his allies for telling the truth.<\/h5>\n
Truth is from Athens but the Left is from Jerusalem.<\/h5>\n