The Other Side of the Holocaust?
There are not two sides to genocide, but just what did Gina Peddy mean?
When Texas school district administrator Gina Peddy called on educators to include “opposing” perspectives on the Holocaust, which is the historical episode that led to the extermination of an estimated six million European Jews (on top of murdered Romani people, union officials, political dissenters and Soviet Red Army POWs), she was met with widespread condemnation.
Indeed, what other side or perspective could there be to genocide? Killing innocent children, mothers and fathers, doctors and scientists? If we have a moral code, whether it’s the Golden Rule or Immanuel Kant’s “categorical imperative,” genocide is just wrong.
I, like most observers, was struck by the impudence, even absurdity, of calling for the other side of the Holocaust to be taught. The last time I read anything close to this was a document that condemned what Hitler did to the Jews, but asked why we don’t discuss what the Jews did to Germany. The author of that document provided no evidence of any kind that “the Jews” did anything collectively to harm Germany but he believed there must be an other side.
People should know what this “other side” consists of. The Jews allegedly “control” the media; Jews “own” all the banks; Jews “dominate,” period. It’s worth noting that many of Adolph Hitler’s tropes against the Jews echoed 19th Century French reactionaries (people who wanted to roll back progress made after both the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars which had helped emancipate the Jews of Europe after 1,800 years of religious and legal discrimination). One can find the same tropes in parts of the Hamas Covenant, especially Articles 7 and 22, which you can easily find online.
I have sought for an innocent construction of just what Gina Peddy meant. Perhaps she was thinking of Hannah Arendt and her concept of “the banality of evil.” Arendt, a German-born writer and philosopher with a secular Jewish background, wrote a book about the 1961 trial of Nazi official Adolph Eichmann in Jerusalem in which she pointed out how casual, even matter-of-fact, ordinary people in Nazi-occupied Europe could be in committing clear-cut crimes against humanity. Would that excuse such people, though? Maybe that’s what the Peddy was thinking, though I doubt she reads Hannah Arendt.
Or, perhaps Peddy was really afraid that her colleagues would be disciplined for not teaching the other side of the story, even for the Holocaust. This is a possible defense that has been implied by The Texas Tribune, which has reported calmly and fairly on the controversy (read article here.) The Tribune confirmed that some educators in the state have been so intimidated by House Bill 3979 (signed in June by the governor) that they really thought everything, but everything, had to admit of an opposing perspective. The legislation was unambiguously aimed at Critical Race Theory but I do wonder if slavery is to have an opposing view, or a poll tax on Black voters as during much of the Jim Crow South?
Somewhat reassuringly, the superintendent of Carroll Independent School District, which is Gina Peddy’s home district, is quoted as saying, “We also understand this bill does not require an opposing viewpoint on historical facts.”
We can only hope Texas educators understand at least this much.
Gnawbone, where subscriptions are always free.