(Drivebycuriosity) - The 20th century had a lot apocalyptic human tragedies: The Jewish Holocaust, the murderous regimes of Stalin, Mao & Pol Pot, the Turkish genocide of Armenians during World War I and the Japanese terror in China & Korea. And what about Hiroshima and Vietnam? Most of the are these genocides are almost forgotten, but the Holocaust still rules the headlines.
That is primarily thanks to "The Holocaust Industry", claims the Jewish author Norman G. Finkelstein in his little book "The Holocaust Industry" (amazon
). The author, who is Jewish himself and had lost family members in
concentration camps, is annoyed that a large group of people and
organizations are taking advantage from the suffering of the Jewish
people.
Annual Days of Remembrance of the Holocaust are a national event in the US. All 50 states sponsor commemorations, often in state legislative chambers. The Association of Holocaust Organizations lists over 100 Holocaust institutions in the United States. Seven major Holocaust museums dot the American landscape. The centerpiece of this memorialization is the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. Where is the national museum refering to the genocide on the Native Americans or to some 4–5 million men, women and children died as a result of the US wars in Indochina?
Apart from Holocaust memorials, fully seventeen states mandate or recommend Holocaust programs in their schools, and many colleges and universities have endowed chairs in Holocaust studies. Hardly a week passes without a major Holocaust-related story in the New York Times. The number of scholarly studies devoted to the Nazi Final Solution is conservatively estimated at over 10,000.
Finkelstein reports that the Holocaust Industry includes a "credulous press ready to give banner headlines to any Holocaust-related story". According to Finkelstein "the New York Times serves as the main promotional vehicle of the Holocaust industry. It is primarily responsible for having advanced the careers of Jerzy Kosinski, Daniel Goldhagen, and Elie Wiesel. For frequency of coverage, the Holocaust places a close second to the daily weather report". Finkelstein claims that "the US is the corporate headquarters of the Holocaust industry".
The Holocaust industry sprung up only after Israel’s overwhelming display of military dominance and flourished amid extreme Israeli triumphalism.
Outright Extortion Racket
In recent years, the Holocaust industry has become an outright extortion racket. Using the House and Senate banking committees as a springboard, the Holocaust industry orchestrated a shameless campaign of vilification.
The Holocaust Industry accused Swiss bank to take advantage and … “a fifty-year Swiss-Nazi conspiracy to steal billions from Europe’s Jews and Holocaust survivors.”The campaign rapidly degenerated into a libel of the Swiss people.“a country whose citizens . . . boasted to their neighbors about their enviable wealth, was quite knowingly profiting from blood money”; that “the apparently respectable citizens of the world’s most peaceful nation . . . committed an unprecedented theft”; that “dishonesty was a cultural code that individual Swiss had mastered to protect the nation’s image and prosperity”; that the Swiss were “instinctively attracted to healthy profits” (only the Swiss?); that “self-interest was the supreme guide for all of Switzerland’s banks” (only Switzerland’s banks?); that “Switzerland’s small breed of bankers had become greedier and more immoral than most”; that “concealment and deception were practiced arts among Swiss diplomats” (only Swiss diplomats?); that “apologies and resignations were not common in Switzerland’s political tradition” (unlike our own?); that “Swiss greed was unique”; that the “Swiss character” combined “simplicity and duplicity,” and “behind the appearance of civility was a layer of obstinacy, and beyond that was solid egotistical incomprehension of anyone else’s opinion”; that the Swiss were “not just a peculiarly charmless people who had produced no artists, no heroes since William Tell and no statesmen, but were dishonest Nazi collaborators who had profited from genocide,” and on and on.
Apart from blocking access to Holocaust accounts and purchasing looted gold, the Swiss also stood accused of conspiring with Poland and Hungary to defraud Jews.
Beyond whipping up public hysteria, the Holocaust industry coordinated a two-pronged strategy to “terrorize” (Bower) the Swiss into submission: class-action lawsuits and an economic boycott.
In February 1996 Hevesi and McCall wrote the Swiss banks threatening sanctions. In October Governor Pataki publicly lent his support. During the next several months local and state governments in New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Illinois all tabled resolutions threatening an economic boycott unless the Swiss banks came clean. In May 1997 the city of Los Angeles, withdrawing hundreds of millions of dollars in pension funds from a Swiss bank, imposed the first sanctions.
In July 1998 Hevesi and McCall threatened stiff new sanctions. New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Florida, Michigan, and California joined in within days. In mid-August the Swiss finally caved in.
Total attorney fee demands run to $15 million, with “many” billing at a rate of $600 per hour. One lawyer is asking $2,400 for reading Tom Bower’s book, Nazi Gold. “Jewish groups and survivors,” New York’s Jewish Week reported, “are taking off the gloves as they vie for a share of the Swiss banks’ $1.25 billion Holocaust-era settlement.”
After the Holocaust industry settled with Switzerland in August 1998, it deployed the same winning strategy against Germany in September.
Forgoing diplomatic niceties, Congressman Rick Lazio bluntly urged the Committee “to focus on the private sector German companies, in particular, those who do business in the US.” To whip up public hysteria against Germany, the Holocaust industry took out multiple full-page newspaper advertisements in October.
The shakedown of Switzerland and Germany has been only a prelude to the grand finale: the shakedown of Eastern Europe. With the collapse of the Soviet bloc, alluring prospects opened up in the former heartland of European Jewry. Cloaking itself in the sanctimonious mantle of “needy Holocaust victims,” the Holocaust industry has sought to extort billions of dollars from these already impoverished countries. Pursuing this end with reckless and ruthless abandon, it has become the main fomenter of anti-Semitism in Europe.
The Holocaust industry doesn’t need a mobilized public opinion. With the support of key US officials, it can easily break the feeble resistance of already prostrate nations.
To force submission from recalcitrant governments, the Holocaust industry wields the bludgeon of US sanctions.
A vast, well-heeled bureaucracy has sprung up. Insurance companies, banks, art museums, private industry, tenants and farmers in nearly every European country are under the Holocaust industry gun.
Finkelstein reports that various persons and organization still benefit from the Holocaust. He calls that "Capitalizing the Holocaust"
