Polish-Jewish Relations: 1,300 Keyword-Phrase-Indexed Book Reviews (by Jan Peczkis)

Fascism and Communism, by François Furet, Ernst Nolte, Tzvetan Todorov (Preface), Katherine Golsan (Translation). 2004

Treading on Holocaust Supremacism and Trying to Discredit the Dissenters (e. g., Holocaust Obfuscation): Ernst Nolte is NOT Trying to Lessen the Crimes of Nazism

By way of introduction, German historian Ernst Nolte has gotten a lot of flak, from academics, because he dared compared Communist genocidal crimes with Nazi genocidal crimes (against Jews, that is). Verboten! Nowadays, “double genocide” is demonized, and we hear gems such as “Holocaust obfuscation”. That is the legacy of the Historikerstreit.

INTRODUCTION: WHY THE MORBID FEAR OF GIVING COMMUNIST CRIMES THEIR DUE?

In the Preface, Tzvetan Todorov states that both Francois Furet and Ernst Nolte attribute “exceptional status to the destruction of the Jews under the Third Reich.” (p. x). Torodov repeats all the standard Judeocentric clichés about the uniqueness and “irrationality” of the Holocaust, and tries to downplay the significance of the Soviet camps. Francois Furet asserts that the Nazis did not need the high number of Jews, in Russian Bolshevism, to develop an intense hatred of Jews. (p. 21). How does he know this? Is he a mind-reader?

Francois Furet notes that Mussolini borrowed from Lenin in order to fight Communism. Both Mussolini and Lenin came from ultrarevolutionary socialism. Furet then falls back on the perceived danger that such thinking serves as at least a partial exoneration of Nazism. (p. 2). Since when do hypothetical arguments act as a constraint on free enquiry? However, Furet also makes this thoughtful comment, “The fascist movement fed on communism, the communist movement on antifascism. But both shared a hatred for the bourgeoisie world, which allowed them to unite.” (p. 19).

NOT A WHITEWASH OF NAZISM (NO HOLOCAUST OBFUSCATION). BUT COMMUNIST GENOCIDAL CRIMES ARE INESCAPABLE. DOUBLE GENOCIDE VALID

Ernst Nolte categorically rejects the notion that his position is an attempt to lessen the gravity of the Nasi crimes. He wrotes, (quote) But the “rational core” of Nazi anti-Judaism consists in the factual reality of the large role played by a certain number of personalities of Jewish origin at the center of the Communist and socialist movements, evidently because of universalist and Messianic traditions proper to historical Judaism. “Rational core” does not necessarily mean “legitimate core”: “rational” means something that can be apprehended in an intelligible manner or that can be represented in an immanent manner…Nazism was certainly not just a reaction against Bolshevism, but an excessive one, and as a general rule, excess is what justified at the outset leads to the unjustifiable. (unquote). (pp. 28-29).

For more on the HISTORIKERSTREIT, see my review:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/historikerstreit-holocaust-supremacism-stifled-red-crimes-knowlton/