Twin Totalitarian Terrors

Review of

A Century of Horrors:
Communism, Nazism, and the Uniqueness of the Shoah
Crosscurrents) (Paperback)
by Alain Besançon (Author), Ralph C. Hancock (Translator)
Intercollegiate Studies Institute (May 15, 2007)

©Pieter Uys 2008

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This extended essay reflects on the twentieth century's twin totalitarian evils.
Besançon ponders their nature, why the one is today considered evil
incarnate whilst the other gets off lightly, and why the Shoah/Holocaust is
unique in last century's atrocity exhibition. Although Communism - including
Maoism - produced far more victims than Nazism, the two are not stigmatized
equally. To better define this disparity, Besançon refers to a collective
"amnesia" and "amnesty" where Communism is concerned versus
"hypernesia" in respect of Nazism.

This is due to our culture's dominant moral relativism, a Postmodernist

morality that asserts universal relativism whilst clinging to temporary
absolutes dictated by intellectual trends. The collapse of the Soviet Empire
and the fall of the Berlin Wall have driven most of the Leftist Faithful into
Marxism's latest mutations of environmentalism and multiculturalism. Chantal
Delsol*1 unmasked a type of European piety prevalent in academic and
media circles as an empty morality of despair and withdrawal. She calls it the
clandestine or black market ideology of our time; sickly sentimental, arbitrary
and intolerant despite claims to the contrary.

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It inspires nausea to see a hip fashion brand like Soviet Jeans using Soviet
imagery in its marketing. Trade in Nazi paraphernalia is restricted to the
murkier media and overt Nazi styles are associated with violent skinheads.
The visual imagery, lyrics and manner of delivery of the popular German rock
group Rammstein reveal an aesthetic of blood- and power lust, death-
worship, ferocity and sadism, concludes Claire Berlinski after thorough
investigation including several interviews with band members. In a series of
absorbing arguments in the entertaining Menace in Europe she shows how
the black-market German nationalism of Rammstein resembles the Third
Reich's dramaturgy, mythology, propaganda and vocabulary.

Like all sects of Sinisterism*2, Communism and Nazism were collectivist and
justified mass murder but they surpassed all the others in scale of massacre.
They caused similar physical, moral and psychological destruction and would
have killed consciousness itself if it were possible. As competing strains of
the power-worshiping sinisterist religion they regarded as rivals Christianity
and Judaism. A perceptive thinker, perhaps William Nicholls*3 or Robert

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Wistrich*4, referred to Western utopian movements as the "secular
salvationist offspring of Christianity."

They fit neatly into Eric Hoffer's descriptions*5 of the mass movement driven
by disaffected true believers hell-bent on mutilating reality through sociopathic
behavior in their search for "meaning." For Besançon, ideology offers a type
of temporal salvation that claims to correspond to a cosmic pattern which
must be enforced on earth in order to recreate paradise.

The total destruction of existing values is the immediate goal; a drastic

departure from history in pursuit of the path which is believed will lead to
utopia. The "salvationist" label is thus appropriate. Analyzing and comparing
the structure of their thought-forms and taking into consideration their host
cultures Germany and Russia (and less frequently China), he explores their
promise/s in relation to the beliefs they attempted to eradicate.

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This leads Besançon to question whether there was something fundamentally
unusual about the murder of the 6 million as compared to all the other victims
of the Nazis and Communists. He does not seek the answer in the method of
murder or in the depths of suffering that are after all impossible to measure,
but in the impulse or intent. He also addresses differences in the perception
of the horror as determined by religious belief. For Christians, the word
"holocaust" with its sacrificial connotation made sense. Some Jews objected
precisely because of the implication of human sacrifice which is abhorrent to
Judaism, choosing the word "shoah" which means disaster or catastrophe.

Besançon's expression "twin evils" reminds one of today's prominent evil

twins that predated, thrived in and survived Communism and Nazism: Anti-
Americanism*6 and Anti-Zionism. More than mere remnants of Besançon's
twins, they are mind parasites with remarkable powers of mutation and
survival.

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Anti-Zionism is one expression of the hydra-headed New Antisemitism which
is a blend of several 20th century strains that evolved out of the post-
Enlightenment variety which in turn emerged from Anti-Judaism that goes
back all the way to the origins of Christianity. The roots of Anti-Americanism -
which also sprouted several variants - are embedded in European elitism.

This New Anti-Semitism*7 with its many faces provides clues to the Shoah's
uniqueness when viewed as a toxic tree:

(a) With its roots in the New Testament, the Shoah was the culmination of
1900 years of delegitimization and dehumanization. Its trunk is composed of
the writings of the "church fathers", discriminatory laws that became
especially harsh after the victory of Constantine Christianity, psychological
repression and projection amongst a religiously brutalized populace that
reached fever pitch in the late Middle Ages and Augustine's replacement
theology that migrated to Protestantism through Luther. The branches
bearing poisoned fruit are the "salvationist" ideologies like Fascism,

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Nationalism, and Communism and Nazism, the ones in which the virus took
genocidal form.

(b) A hatred honed for maximum contagious capacity was unleashed in the
Nazi branch in an effort to annihilate a people and a religion. Consuming
massive resources, the effort was fueled by such frenzied insanity that it
became the Nazi priority even to the extent of hindering Germany’s war effort.

In other words, the factors that make the Shoah unique are (a) the long
centuries of preparation (b) the contagious and epidemic hatred that inspired
and guided it.

During the Anti-War demonstrations of 2003, Christopher Hitchens*8 and Julie

Burchill both commented on a peculiar behavioral pattern observed in some
of the participants: a type of frenzy with erotic undertones. It has since

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become more commonplace, particularly at anti-Israel and anti-American
demonstrations. The eroticism is often expressed by gestures that
incorporate serpentine writhing. I now suspect that this erotic quality has
always been present in outbreaks of Judeopathy.

Andre Glucksmann has warned that the concept of a contagion of hatred

must be taken literally as a mental disorder that invades minds, bodies and
society. Immune to reason, such an outbreak inoculates itself against
opposing opinions and emotions. But at least we have identified a particular
manner of its expression that may well point to Judeo-Christian myth. Now it
is up to the irreverent, to South Park*9 and stand-up comedians to ridicule,
mimic and mock it. What is immune to reason is vulnerable to humor.

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FOOTNOTES
1. ICARUS FALLEN by Chantal Delsol
2. SINISTERISM by Bruce Walker
3. CHRISTIAN ANTISEMITISM by William Nicholls
4. THE LONGEST HATRED by Robert Wistrich
5. THE TRUE BELIEVER by Eric Hoffer
6. ANTI-AMERICANISM by Jean-Francois Revel
7. THE NEW ANTI-SEMITISM by Phyllis Chesler
8. A LONG, SHORT WAR by Christopher Hitchens
9. SOUTH PARK: THE MOVIE