Out of curiosity, I picked up Richard Breitman’s A Calculated Restraint while I was at the library. The subtitle is What Allied Leaders Said About the Holocaust. It’s about why those who held power in the West, while often knowing the details of the horrors going on, chose to remain silent or else only speak selectively and downplay events. It was almost as if there were a conspiracy of silence. No one wanted to acknowledge how bad it was and to deal with it, nor to navigate the public response.
[That interests me because propaganda, though typically thought of in terms of what is said, is in many ways more powerful in what it hides, obscures, censors, silences, and talks around. What leaders don’t speak is so often why the people don’t know. But in general, I’ve long been fascinated by the historical, psychological, and agnotological study of cultures of silence and ignorance (Derrick Jensen, A Language Older Than Words & A Culture of Make Believe).]
The main reason for the reticence among the political elite, from what I gather in perusing the book, was calculated realpolitik. Leaders were busy dealing with international conflicts and war, which required gaining public support, building alliances, and maintaining it all under strife and strain as national and ideological interests pushed and pulled in diverse directions. To bring up the ongoing slaughter and threat of worse to come just complicated negotiations and plans. It was inconvenient.
My personal concern, though, is what the author might say about the genocide being committed right now by Israel. Breitman’s book was published just this past year. There is no way he could remain silent about it, right? Sadly, he only brought the situation at all just to dismiss Palestinians in accusing Hamas of being anti-Semitic. Sure, the world is full of anti-Semitism, as true now as during World War II. But what Zionists don’t want to face is that Palestinians are Semites and so their persecution is anti-Semitism.
This is amusing, sadly, considering that Nazis condemned Jews as anti-German. It’s the same rhetoric, that prejudice against powerless minorities is justified because of claims the targeted victims themselves are prejudiced. Zionism is just a new form of fascism with a new scapegoated minority. For all of Breitman’s historical analysis, he still ends up clueless. Ironically, he falls into the position of fascist apologist of genocide, if doing so by omission of deafening silence. Maybe he should’ve done some soul-searching, instead.
I’m not suggesting it’s a bad book. The author seems to offer an accurate and insightful analysis about the public messaging and the fate of wartime Jews. But it’s amazing that, even at this late of date, some people still can’t see the Zionist writing on the wall. Breitman would be educated by reading Omar El Akkad’s One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This. He should be asking why he is not speaking out about present mass atrocities. It’s not too late to take a moral stand for the genocided victims of fascism.
Marmalade 