In our second episode, we switch from German to English and talk with Dirk Moses, Professor of International Relations at the City College of New York, CUNY. Dirk is one of the world’s leading experts on genocide, as well as a long-term observer and sharp critic of German memory politics.
The Israeli state is currently being accused of the crime of genocide against the Palestinian people before the International Court of Justice. In our conversation with Dirk, we take a step back and ask when and how the idea of “genocide” originated, in order to better understand how it is used today. How can genocide, as a concept and a law, help us identify and stop mass violence? Dirk identifies, as the title of his recent book puts it, “The Problems of Genocide” and proposes a new framework to better understand why states destroy entire groups of people.
The German state has made the remembrance of the genocide against the Jewish people - as a unique crime, and the corresponding support for Israel, a cornerstone of its post-war identity. We ask Dirk why he thinks the Holocaust is not a Zivilisationsbruch—a rupture in an otherwise progressive civilization—but rather part of a broader history of Western racism and colonialism that has targeted a variety of different groups. Dirk argues that because German memory politics does not include this broader history, certain elements of the Nazi past remain unaddressed and continue to resonate in the present.
The Interview was recorded in September 2024.
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Throughout our conversation, we refer to various books and articles. If you’re interested, you can find a compiled list here:
- Dirk Moses: The Problems of Genocide: Permanent Security and the Language of Transgression. Cambridge University Press, 2021
- Dirk Moses: The German Catechism, Geschichte der Gegenwart, 2021.
- Dirk Moses (Hrsg.): Genocide and Settler Society: Frontier Violence and Stolen Indigenous Children in Australian History. New York: Berghahn Books, 2004
- Dirk Moses: German Intellectuals and the Nazi Past, Cambridge University Press, 2007.
- Hans Kundnani: Joschka Fischer und die deutsche Beteiligung am Krieg gegen Serbien, in: Kriegerische Tauben, 2019, S. 141-157.
- Michael Burleigh, and Wolfgang Wippermann, The Racial State, Cambridge University Press, 1991.- Jürgen Habermas: Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit: Untersuchungen zu einer Kategorie der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft, Hermann Luchterhand Verlag, 1962.
- Michael Rothberg: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization, Stanford University Press, 2020.
- Michael Rothberg, Jürgen Zimmerer: Enttabuisiert den Vergleich!, in: Die Zeit, 2021, https://www.zeit.de/2021/14/erinnerungskultur-gedenken-pluralisieren-holocaust-vergleich-globalisierung-geschichte.
- Jürgen Zimmerer (Hrsg.): Erinnerungskämpfe: Neues deutsches Geschichtsbewusstsein, Reclam, 2023.
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