We should care less about de-Hamasification |
Germany’s current Erinnerungspolitik (its highly institutionalized culture of Holocaust remembrance) is often presented as if it were a natural and continuous outgrowth of the postwar period, while not being that at all. In reality, it is a relatively late political and societal achievement, taking clearer shape only decades after the war and solidifying in its current form after reunification in 1990.
In the intervening years, official West German discourse frequently emphasized German suffering and tended to narrow responsibility for Nazi crimes to a limited circle of figures tried at the Nuremberg Trials. Meanwhile, large numbers of former Nazis were reintegrated into public life, with some returning to positions of influence in politics, industry, and state institutions.
Now the lesson from this is not to resurface German Israeli enmity but instead point out that just as we know that de-Imperialization essentially did not happen in Japan, we can also stop pretending that de-Nazification was a thing in Germany, or in Italy. And while de-Ba’athifaction was certainly an event in Iraq it is known more for its negative........