A Wake-Up Call to the Left
JVL Introduction
Deborah Macccoby reviews Norman Finkelstein’s new book I’ll Burn That Bridge When I Get to It!: Heretical Thoughts on Identity Politics, Cancel Culture, and Academic Freedom.
Finkelstein is nothing if not controversial. Over two decades his works on Zionism and the Holocaust played an important part in discrediting the dominant pro-Zionist narratives and were revered by many.
Pilloried by the right and denied tenure for his political views, Finkelstein then also fell out with many of those who had earlier idealised him, because of his belief, robustly expressed, that the call for full BDS was a “cult” divorced from reality and his ongoing support for two states in Israel-Palestine.
An iconoclastic figure, he now turns his sharply critical eye on the leading lights of identity politics in the States in a work which Tariq Ali at Verso describes as “incoherent” and which Verso declined to publish.
Deborah Maccoby believes this is a fundamental misreading of Finkelstein’s new book and offers a careful guide to and defence of it here.
[updated 16 March at 5.45pm]
This article was originally published by Amazon on Wed 15 Mar 2023. Read the original here.
A Wake-Up Call to the Left
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It is difficult to comment on a book I’ve not read. However there is no doubt whatsoever that identity politics are the opposite of class politics and argue for a cross class identity as against working class unity. They allow the oppressors to assume an identity of oppression as we saw e.g. with Zionist feminism and sections of the radical feminist movement.
Whether the use of JS Mill is wise I’m not sure but Mill himself was a product of the colonial age and didn’t believe that the liberties he was talking about applied to the ‘savage’ races.
But it’s on giving space to holocaust denial that I find myself most in disagreement. Holocaust denial has been given plausbility by Zionism’s shameless use of the holocaust to legitimise their Jewish supremacist movement and state. However that is no reason for treating it as a serious subject.
Finkelstein was right before to treat it as the equivalent of flat earthism. It has no academic or intellectual credentials. It relies on bogus population statistics before and after the war to argue that what happened did not happen.
HD denies the reality of eye witnesses and the absolute proof of the shipment of millions of Jews and others to camps wherein they simply disappeared. It also ignores the evidence of the Nazis themselves, most notably the freely given interview by Eichmann in 1957 with Dutch Nazi journalist Wilhelm Sassen where he boasted of the exterminations and indeed took Sassen and others to task for denying what had happened.
Eichmann was rather proud of his achievements. Rudolf Hoess, the commandant of Auschwitz also freely admitted to the exterminations and the final nail in the coffin of HD was Oskar Grunwig, the Auschwitz accountant who was a member of the SS and who confirmed what had happened.
In this Finkelstein is simply wrong.
I may disagree with Norman Finkelstein over BDS and a One State Secular Solution, but the logic of his reasoning behind the adoption of Identity Politics by ‘the estblishment’ to circumvent ‘the class struggle’ is enlightening. The last thing that Universities and MSM want is healthy debate on a level playing field, with equal opportunities to present both sides. It is not just the fascistic ‘right’3 who deny platforms.
Thank you for this review – it made me want to read the book and form my own views on it. Disappointed that Verso felt unable to publish it which seems to reinforce his arguments somewhat. The use of so-called woke identity politics is just the latest manifestation of the age old strategy of divide and rule by which the ruling classes maintain their dominance.
In reply to Tony: Finkelstein still equates Holocaust denial with Flat Earthism. He hasn’t changed his views at all about this. He is levelling an attack against those who claim that Holocaust denial is a major threat. Proponents of the Holocaust industry often claim that Holocaust deniers are a major threat — this is part of boosting the credibility of the Holocaust industry. Finkelstein is saying: if (please note the hypothetical “if”) it is claimed that Holocaust denial is a major threat, then the logical conclusion that follows from this is that Holocaust denial should be taught in universities, preferably by Holocaust deniers, so that students can be equipped to deal with this major threat; and they can only be so equipped by studying the arguments of Holocaust deniers and learning how to refute these arguments. It is a form of inoculation against a major, threatening virus. If however, Holocaust denial is viewed — as Finkelstein views it — as the view of a tiny, uninfluential minority who are the equivalent of the Flat Earth Society, then it is pointless to teach Holocaust denial at university. He is simply making a logical point against those who claim that Holocaust denial is a major threat.
Finkelstein’s a star! As Steven Richards & Chris say, his theory on identity politics being a Globalist distraction/diversion from class politics hits the nail squarely on the head. Pretty soon our schools & universities will be beyond rescue if we don’t arrest it.