cynicismcentral.org - TOWNSVILLE AUSTRALIA

Mervyn Bendle | May 29, 2009
Article from: The Australian
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25552777-7583,00.html

AN Australian intellectual Second XI will be speaking at a symposium, The History Wars Revisited, at the Free University of Berlin in October.

On the surface it appears the participants will be rehearsing their tired old lamentations about how some beastly people on the Right dared to question the various mythic confabulations surrounding the history of indigenous Australians.

However, beneath the surface, they may be contributing to what amounts to a sinister form of Holocaust denial associated with the Historikerstreit (historians' dispute) about the nature and direction of German history that first convulsed Germany in the late 1980s. Those interested in this frequently vicious history war can consult James Knowlton's Forever in the Shadow of Hitler?, which provides an extensive selection of original documents of the Historikerstreit, specifically the controversy concerning the singularity of the Holocaust.

As this description makes clear, the key issue at stake in the dispute was the singularity of the Holocaust and the desperate attempts being made by certain German historians, politicians, and their supporters to relieve Germany's burden of guilt by relativising that hideous, epoch-defining event to represent it as just another example of many genocidal crimes that have allegedly occurred, not just in Germany but across the world, including in Australia.

This revisionist objective can beachieved by encouraging ideologically committed or second-rate and opportunistic intellectuals to produce arguments that show Germany merely followed other nations in committing genocide and that the German people can be exonerated, at least partially, for the ghastly crimes of the Nazi regime. Moreover, the Nazi regime is made to look less singularly murderous and pathological.

Of course the key to this strategy is the efforts, sponsored and otherwise, of co-operative intellectuals from other countries who labour away to provide examples of genocide that their own countries allegedly have committed, and that can be used as exhibits to support the case that the Holocaust was in no way singular but just a regrettable example of the perils all countries face and that Germany regrettably fell victim to.

Australian historians can contribute to this strategy of Holocaust denial in several ways. After all, they have demonstrated a fierce and unquenchable desire to portray the history of indigenous Australians in terms of alleged genocides perpetrated by white Australians, involving the Black War, the Stolen Generations and other over-hyped alleged depredations.

Moreover, as leftists they are amenable to the Marxist-Leninist claim that genocide is an inevitable characteristic of liberal-democratic capitalist societies. A good example of this approach is the deplorable book by Australian New Left historian Ben Kiernan, Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur, which is notable for representing Australia and other English-speaking countries as the most egregious exponents of genocide, dwarfing the Nazis and theHolocaust.

The irony is that their efforts to diminish the singular evil of the Holocaust aligns them with the most extreme elements of the far Right in Germany and Europe who long for the day when they can rehabilitate the Nazi and fascist past. They should be worried about this alignment and the implicit anti-Semitism of their position, but they aren't because they believe they have a higher duty to denigrate their own society and the West in general.

Regrettably, Australian historians fall into this trap because they suffer profoundly from an inferiority complex and a bad case of cultural cringe, arising principally from the fact the history of their country stands as a beacon of progress and moderation in an age of barbarism, and consequently seems rather uninteresting in comparison with the great dramas that have engulfed most of the rest of the world. This lack of drama is especially galling for those who toy in a dilettantish fashion with the continental theories of Michel Foucault and Edward Said, as so many of our intellectuals do.

Ultimately, such intellectuals truly are a Second XI, making a pilgrimage to Berlin to give their little papers about their difficulties in Australia, pretending they're in the same league as historians whose country really does have a problem to deal with.

An uncharitable observer may see them as a sad, childish gang of wannabes, jumping up and down in front of the big kids, trying to get on their team, desperate to be taken seriously, screaming pick me, pick me, we murder people by the millions too. The tragedy is that they don't realise they, and all of us, are much better off being well out of that particular, monstrous, game.

Mervyn Bendle is senior lecturer in history and communications at James Cook University in Townsville.

I have trouble believing you are Merv's student - you sound too reasonable and you make too much sense.
I think the major issue is that Merv is out of his depth - he isn't a terror studies scholar and he is trying to battle people who have books with international publishers. I don't see how he is a legitimate speaker on these issues - but in Merv's defence I am not aware of a truly conservative terror scholar of note in this country and this likely compounds the problem