The Nizkor Project: Remembering the Holocaust (Shoah)

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Last-Modified: 1997/10/16


Summary

In assessing the materials, I have treated the three
documents "Did Six Million Really Die?, "66 Questions and
Answers on the Holocaust", and "Jewish Soap" as a conceptual
framework which is used to establish a particular
perspective on the nature of the Holocaust, the duplicity of
Jews, and the victimization of Germans. Such a perspective
provides a body of shared information and attitudes which
inform the interpretation of the later passages.

Several recurrent devices are employed within many of the
passages, including, (a) the use of epithets such as `Jewish
Lobby,' `Holocaust Lobby,' `Zionist Lobby,' and `Israeli
Lobby' to single out Jews as a special group, (b) the use of
what have been called scare quotes (quotation marks around a
particular term which is in fact not treated as a quotation)
to express the writer's disbelief in some particular event
or attitude ("victims", "Holocaust", "forgery", etc.); (c)
the use of stipulation without warrant in place of argument,
(d) the use of syntactic and discourse devices such as
agentless passives, topic continuity, anaphoric assignment,
and pragmatic principles to lead the reader to construct a
negative complex of attributes associated with Jews.

                                                   [Page 35]

The writers employ a variety of rhetorical strategies to
advance their positions. One of the commonest is a four-step
`targeting' strategy in which the authors (a) single out
Jews as an Identifiable group, (b) attribute to Jews as a
group a series of negative characteristics (criminals, evil
manipulators, extortionists, assassins, etc.), (c) claim to
be exposing the facts of (b), and finally, (d) on the basis
of such "exposure", invite the reader to target Jews as an
identifiable group and attribute to them negative, criminal,
etc. characteristics. In executing the targeting strategy,
the writers typically heap abuse upon both Jews and also
those others who, the writers claim, are controlled by Jews.

Another common strategy is one of `inversion,' in which a
particular expression with its commonly held meaning is
inverted, such that its meaning changes to its opposite.
This strategy is frequently found in instances in which
victims of the Holocaust are labelled with scare quotes (
"victims", "survivors", etc.), and then are portrayed as
aggressors, while the original aggressors become the
victims.

Another strategy, the `alibi' strategy, involves the
equivocal use of words, wherein important terms and
expressions are given a special, often restrictive
definition in one location and then are used subsequently
and without notice in a different, often broader, meaning.
This device is used with words like "Holocaust", "survivor",
and "Zionists" to support logically untenable and misleading
conclusions.

Also frequently used is the `code' strategy, which employs
the use of metaphor and establishes a series of expressions
laden with negative associations in order to construct a
network of interrelated and often interchangeable terms.
Thus, terms such as `Jewish' (or `Zionist' or `Israeli')
`Holocaust Lobby' are found in association with expressions
like `parasite,' `unscrupulous,' `noisy,' `whining,' etc.,
creating a complex entity with negative attributes.

The `metonymy' strategy is one in which the attributes of a
particular instance are projected upon the superordinate
category. This is especially striking in the "Jewish Soap"
text. Thus, when some particular attributes are associated
with a particular instance, those attributes are then
inferentially projected to the superordinate set containing
that metonym.

Anti-Semitism is found laced throughout the passages. The
warrants offered by the writers for their anti-Semitic
position are typically those which play upon highly negative
stereotyping. Included among those are: (a) Jews are not
victims, but victimizers of Germans and others, (b) Jews as
a group are deliberately attempting to undermine (some vague
and unspecified notion of)  "Western civilization
culture/etc.", (c) Jews do not know their proper social
position; they meddle and interfere in their betters'
business, (d) Jews are unscrupulous and avaricious in their
striving for financial gain and for political and economic
power, (e) the Holocaust is a Jewish propaganda activity and
never really took place, (f) Jews as an identifiable group
engage in massive criminal activity, (g) non-Jewish peoples
and cultures must fight against all Jewish

                                                   [Page 36]
                                                            
activities and (h) the real victims of WW II were the Nazis,
who had reasonable, rational, and civilized policies toward
Jews and other minorities.

These analyses lead to the conclusion that the writers of
the passages have in numerous instances singled out Jews as
a special, identifiable group. Moreover this group is
asserted to possess highly negative and criminal attributes
as a group, thereby targeting the group for, e.g., hatred,
revulsion, contempt, and loathing. In some passages, overt
threats of violence are uttered toward Jews as a group.


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