About What James Clyburn Said

The use of what Representative James Clyburn said to the hardly Democratic friendly The Hill lays bare a number of issues fraught with all kinds of freight.  Here's what he is quoted as saying :

"I'm serious about that. There are people who tell me, 'Well, my parents are Holocaust survivors.' 'My parents did this.' It's more personal with her," Clyburn told The Hill.

"I've talked to her, and I can tell you she is living through a lot of pain."

The "her" is, of course, Representative Ilhan Omar whose comments about AIPAC and its lobbying and intimidation of politicians on behalf of the Israeli government are getting the typical intimidating response of claiming what she said is "antisemtic" instead of looking at what seems to me to be a far more nuanced and true claim.  AIPAC is in existence to get American support and financial and military aid for the Israeli government, it is, by definition, dedicated to the interests of a foreign government in exactly the same way that the Saudi and other governments maintain lobbying efforts to extract stuff from the American government using every means they can devise to do that, including political lying.  People who lobby on behalf of other countries and their governments have divided loyalty, if for no other reason than they're paid to have divided loyalty.  Only, in this one case, when it's Israel, you're supposed to lie and pretend that's not what it is.  You're also supposed to lie and say that the the effect they have is unrelated to financial pressure in the way of campaign donations and the encouragement or discouragement of other donors.  That's a denial of what lobbying is and what lobbyists do under our system laid bare to that kind of corruption by the Supreme Court, the ACLU and the rest of the "free speech-free press" industry.

Of course, part of the practice of calling every criticism of Israel, of its government and society "antisemitism."  The false use of the label "antisemitism" is a means of trying to suppress such criticism, it is also a way to ostracize and demonize those who raise the most obviously true and justified criticisms of those.  No country, no government, no society should be allowed to have that power to silence their critics anywhere.   I totally reject attempts to make the United States government sacrosanct and safe from criticism and what goes for the government also goes for the society of the United States which, sort of, elects that government.  I would bet you that all of those who are attacking Omar and, now, Clyburn don't hold back when it comes to slamming both the government and society,  you can't do politics without engaging in both, at least not politics that have any effect.

One of the worst aspects of this was shown by the response of the Anti-Defamation League's criticism of Representative Clyburn.

"The Holocaust was a singular tragedy resulting in the death of 6M Jews," the ADL said on Twitter. "It’s offensive to diminish the suffering of survivors & the continuing pain of Jews today. We respect @WhipClyburn’s long record of public service, but he should apologize & retract."

How is Clyburn pointing out that someone who actually experiences a terrible event in history has a direct experience of that as opposed to their children who never experienced it diminishing the suffering of those whose experience is not direct? 

To claim what the ADL does in calling for Clyburn to apologize is dishonest.  If their logic is to hold, it means that those who did directly experience the Shoah, who were murdered, whose family members they knew were murdered, who were tortured, starved, worked to kill them . . .  can be equated with those born ten, twenty, who knows how long after it ended and who never had that direct experience.  It is logically incoherent in a way that invites dismissal and worse.

That line that the Nazi's murder of 6 million Jews is, somehow, more significant than the other groups the Nazis and others target for murder is an invitation to the most vulgar abuse of the memory of those 6 million and a diminishment of the other genocides of history, both before the Nazis murdered even one Jew and after the last of their victims died.  The ADL diminishes the murders of other groups by both the Nazis and by others in doing that.

That is not only wrong, it is exactly the same kind of classification of victims of genocide and murder that the Nazis practiced, the very basis of all of their group murders, including that of the Jews.  It is in the running as the most vulgar abuse of the memory of those murdered by the Nazis and others.  It invites people whose nationalities, religions, and other identities who have been AND ARE RIGHT NOW the victims of such campaigns to practice the same kind of exclusionary concern and ranking of people in that way.

What the ADL holds as its ideological position that the Nazis murder of Jews was "a singular tragedy" is one of the most disgusting abuses of the memory of those who were murdered, it is in no way honoring them.  It also is historically false.  The Nazis began their genocides by murdering the disabled, it was their trial run of how to murder the Jews and others.  It is preceded in history by the German genocide camps in Africa in the first decade of the 20th century, it is preceded by the use of eugenics to try to wipe out populations, some with complete success, such as the British in Tasmania and the total genocide of the Taino population.  It is preceded by centuries of genocides and the biological theories of inequality among different groups of people and the explicit claims that the extinction of entire groups of people, including by conscious governmental programs and by mass murder would benefit the survivors.  The Holocaust is one of the major acts of such murder, it was preceded by Stalin's mass starvation and murder campaign in Ukraine, it was preceded by the Turkish Armenian genocide, both of which were certainly known by the Nazis as they knew those who committed those largely forgotten genocides got away with it and they were little talked about in the world except by those who belonged to those groups.   They certainly knew about the genocides by the German government in Africa before the First World War, some of their scientific and military officers were participants in those.

The holding that the Holocaust is "a singular tragedy" is, first untrue, it wasn't "a tragedy" it was a massive crime, crimes are not tragedies.  It is also an invitation of those whose who themselves, their families, their communities, their group were the subject of similar crimes to choose to hold their "tragedies" are more worthy of notice, especially those which are ongoing even as they make that determination. 

That in no way is something that Ilhan Omar was guilty of in what she said, it was not what James Clyburn was guilty of, neither of them diminished the deaths, the tortures, the sufferings of those who the Nazis murdered and tried to murder.   I'm tempted to say it would probably have been better if Ilhan Omar had found some other way to say what she did, though all she did was tell the truth about the filthy business of lobbying - it is all about the money, in the end - and that James Clyburn didn't say what he did but, really, if it's not worked through now the situation will continue to fester and those who are not people of good will will make the next iteration of this far worse than it is.  The Republican-fascist scum like Nikki Haley is already lying about it, claiming that James Clyburn is saying the exact opposite of what he did, using the Holocaust in her 2024 presidential campaign. 

To hold that the Holocaust is made singular, separating it from even the other genocides the Nazis were committing at the same time, in the same places, in the same gas chambers, singling out that one genocide as "more special" is extremely dangerous for Jews.  It plays into some of the worst sterotyping of Jews holding themselves to be "chosen" as if that choice was an assignment of superiority, it also diminishes the protection that holding it as part of the universal crime of genocide gives by enhancing its meaning to those who are not Jewish.  The tactic of the ADL is not only wrong, it is stupid, massively stupid and it is immoral.  That is something that many of those who have studied the Holocaust, who practice holding it in memory have learned AND THEY BOTH CITE AND TEACH THE LINKS BETWEEN THAT CRIME AND THOSE COMMITTED AGAINST OTHERS, IN THE PAST AND TODAY.  I can't think of a better way to honor my ancestors who died and who had to flee Ireland as the British government starved Ireland during the potato famine than to link that act of governmental crime to all of those which I've mentioned here and which I haven't mentioned.  There are certainly more of those in history AND TODAY than I even know about.   Either you take all of those people as your people or you dishonor the ones you claim.