For decades, it has been broadly accepted in the Jewish community that Meir Kahane—founder of the Jewish Defense League, accused terrorist in Israel and the United States, ultra-nationalist character—is an extremist outlier whose ideas are decidedly not mainstream. And yet, because ultra-nationalism is in vogue again, perhaps it was only a matter of time until Kahanism picked up steam on social media.
In this week’s episode of Bonjour Chai, hosts Avi Finegold and Phoebe Maltz Bovy focus on influencer Lizzy Savetsky’s controversial post in support of Meir Kahane—and how the lifestyle content creator, like others in her field, have pivoted towards hardline pro-Israel advocacy post-Oct. 7. How seriously should we take their endorsements? Or should we be more worried about the mainstreaming of fringe ideas?
Turning abroad, the hosts then speak with Till van Rahden, a professor of German and European studies at the Université de Montréal and the author of Jews and other Germans: Civil Society, Religious Diversity and Urban Politics in Breslau, 1860 to 1925, about similar pro-nationalist trends in Germany. He sheds light on the recent German elections and the rise of the Alternative for Deutschland party, including its evolution from a conservative group to a radical right-wing entity, raising concerns of neo-Nazi affiliations.
Transcript
Transcripts are AI-generated and may contain errors.
Avi Finegold: Phoebe, I loved your column this week about an influencer. What’s her name again, Man Repeller?
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: Yes. Leandra Medine Cohen.
Avi Finegold: Leandra Medine Cohen, who you’ve spoken about on the show in the past. You clearly have a big fix—no, I’m not… You don’t have a fixation on her.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: I do, though. No, but I would say that sometimes I feel like we have the show sometimes. Talk about like as if I’m a fan of. There are people who I think are just fascinating figures, and I think she’s one of the most fascinating figures in Jewish life today.
Avi Finegold: But there are other Jewish influencers who are making the news this week, and I wanted to spend some time to talk about that. Specifically, Lizzy Savetsky, who put up a video praising Meir Kahane. Michael Rapoport did the same, but we’re not going to spend as much time talking about him, partially because I’ve met him and he’s a friend of a friend, and we can leave that alone. I put up a mezuzah with him one time. That’s a story for another time. Where I want to talk really is, like I said, Lizzy Savetsky and Meir Kahane and Leah Leibovitz, who’s not an influencer but he’s a journalist, also has been calling to talk about this. But let’s focus on the influencers, and let’s focus on Meir Kahane. So tell us first of all, who is Lizzy Savetsky and what she said and where this is going.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: Lizzy Savetsky is an influencer married to a plastic surgeon who offered free plastic surgery to victims of October 7, whether restorative or mood enhancing. Effectively, remember this guy?
Avi Finegold: Vaguely, yes.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: But anyway, this is his wife, and she is an influencer in her own right. She pivoted from kind of lifestyle influencing—accessories, so forth—in 2021. So not post-October 7, she pivoted to pro-Israel influencing, which includes such things as posting a thirst trap for Israel of herself in a bikini made by either Israeli or Zionist designers. But whatever, the point is that was her pivot, and she did it earlier than most. So there has been post-October 7th, this whole question of where Jewish influencers stand with regards to the Middle East. What is an influencer? Well, it could be any number of things, and some of them are more political. But in this context, I’m talking about sort of conventionally feminine-presenting women who look a certain way. Lizzy Savetsky was once almost on Real Housewives of New York. That would be this sort of certain way I’m talking about. It’s a certain aesthetic. It’s about selling cosmetics, clothing, things like that. It’s selling something, but the something generally isn’t political. But then what happened after October 7th is if you go to the Instagrams of various influencers, including people like Leandra Medine Cohen, who used to have the Man Repeller blog and now has a Substack, immediately after October 7th you see this kind of battle forming in the comments of their Instagram between the people who want them to speak out one way about the Middle East and the people who want them to speak another way about the Middle East. These are not people who had previously had any kind of geopolitical knowledge or interest or anything to speak of. Right. These are just people in a different realm. The reason this was all happening to some extent makes sense when you think about 2020, 2021, where influencers were putting Black Lives Matter. There was a kind of agreement that you could put that. But it got much more contentious post-October 7th. I give all of this as the backstory to where Lizzy Savetsky is coming into things because she is not one who hedges. She is not one where people are battling in her comments about is she going to come out as pro-Palestine or pro-Israel. It’s clear where she stands. Except another thing that can happen apparently, and that’s what this story we’re talking about today is, is an influencer can be so extremely on one side versus the other side that they alienate their audience. Right. So you can alienate your audience by kind of not pleasing anybody, but you can also alienate your audience by going far, far, far off. We should say what it is she did. She posted a speech, right? So has she alienated every single person in the world? No, because it’s a big world, and there are people who think any number of things. But what she has managed to do is in the comments to her post and in the Jewish media articles written about this. Basically, it’s a sea of people whose Zionist credentials are impeccable, saying, this is not okay. This is something we renounce. This is something we have said is not what we stand for. You are harming the Zionist cause by doing this.
Avi Finegold: This.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: That is what I have seen.
Avi Finegold: Unless your name is Liel Leibovitz.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: Who is one person and who is also influential.
Avi Finegold: Clearly he’s speaking on behalf of people that listen to him. I mean, Tablet, by publishing an article where he openly calls for this, is not ultimately endorsing, but saying that this is a valid opinion to have and that we should be able to publish.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: I think we’re talking about two different things, which is what is the realm of acceptable opinion in the sort of immense thing that is the Jewish community. And there you could highlight any number of publications, but we’re talking more narrowly about this lady and her fan base. And I think people who were like, who were happy and feeling at this sort of Jewish pride that she was promoting, which was this kind of. It didn’t seem like a far-right extremist thing until it did. And it also seems like she, like her own politics may have shifted recently because she also. There was some interview she did where she’s apologizing for having not been on board with Trump sooner and like atoning for that. She was not MAGA earlier on.
Avi Finegold: Yeah. So I get the sense that her anti. Anti-Semitism, that’s what people call it, and her Zionism was fairly easy to digest until it stopped being that with, you know, this. This shift towards, you know, real, you know, Kahanism.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: This is something that I always find interesting when it comes to influencers. This type of influencer is. They have a persona where they’re very easy to dismiss as frivolous. Right.
Avi Finegold: The nature of influencers or influencing is that it has to be easily digestible and palatable to as many people as possible.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: Sure, but that’s not really what I mean. What I mean is more like that Eliza Licht, who did her video where she was claiming that I was bad for the Jews because I didn’t rave preemptively about her book. She’s putting on face powder. She’s trying to, like, hustle to promote a face powder while doing that same video. The reason, what I’m saying is that this is a lifestyle realm. It’s fashion, makeup, materialist stuff, right? That is the realm we’re talking about. So it’s easily looked at as, oh, well, this isn’t really political. But there’s been this understanding in recent years. Like, trad wives are now kind of understood to be, yes, they’re selling something, maybe they’re selling a dress, maybe they’re selling some kind of cooking product, whatever, but they’re also selling a political ideology often, right. And that there is something like substantive political going on. And I think what happened here was suddenly you kind of have to figure out, is Lizzy Savetsky even like to say, is she a Kahanist? Like, is she somebody who you could even ascribe any kind of consistent political ideology to, or is she a ditz on the Internet? You know what I mean? And I think there is this kind of mystery about that with influencers that’s, to me, I think, kind of interesting. It’s also upsetting that this has become mainstream. Well, this is the question. Avi, has this become mainstream? Is this like, if all these people are telling her, no, no, we don’t do this. Is she speaking for anybody other than herself and possibly one writer in Tablet and Michael Rapaport, comedian, whatever?
Avi Finegold: Yes, I think she is speaking for many other people. In my anecdotal, but I think somewhat representative experiences, I have met people in the recent past who have said that, you know, Kahane, you know, was right and we really should be arming ourselves and we should be defending ourselves. And I’ll get into Kahanist said in a moment, but I think that there are people that, yes, do believe this now, or at least are saying it out loud and feeling empowered to do so more than before.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: So, something else that I wanted to talk about was kind of the gender angle of this, because she’s a mother, right? She has a few kids. And what she was interviewed as saying kind of put her over the edge and made her post this was basically like this parade, the Hamas parade of the baby’s coffins, basically. It was like she just couldn’t take it, and it did seem like there was a kind of, like, it’s not just incidental that this is a woman, I think, doing this, that this is arising in that realm. Because I think there’s something where, where even if that’s not where you land on it politically, and it’s not where I land on it politically, there’s something really wrenching about it. There’s also something, you know, really wrenching about dead babies of any background of any, you know, and I think this has been like, it’s been very upsetting. Like reading the news, especially if you’re the mother of young children, I think is a different experience, which I think in a weird way might be what ends up making people more forgiving of her than maybe they should be at this point. Because it seems like it’s easily understood as like, oh, she just got very emotional, so she’s in favor of ethnic cleansing now, you know what I mean?
Avi Finegold: Yeah, let’s back up a second and understand who Meir Kahane was. He was an American-born Israeli; he was a rabbi, he was a one-time member of the Knesset until he got booted out. He’s also a convicted terrorist because of his violent incitement and the things that he believed in. He believed that Jews should take up arms to defend themselves, not just in Israel but in America and Israel. He did definitely advocate for Jewish supremacism over the entire land, even to the extent of what we would call nowadays ethnic cleansing, right. Really saying all the Palestinians, everybody should be gone because they are ultimately always going to be a problem for the Jewish state. He always had people that looked up to him in his life. Since he died in 1990, he’s always had a small faction of people that are around. That’s, to me, the existence of the Jewish Defense League, the, the existence of his ideas still being around and still being valid. It shows that people have wanted that sort of idea in the Jewish community for a while. The Jewish Press, which is one of the major Jewish newspapers in North America, publishes his Torah writings weekly since he has passed away. So, people are into him, and it’s easy to see why when Jews want to go towards a more radical solution, they would point to him and say, oh, that’s the guy who has been saying this, and we should, you know, underscore this all along. The thing that people aren’t saying is that, because I know that Lizzy Savetsky went and she posted a video where she was like, you know, I’m not saying that I endorse everything that he said, but I think that he was right in some things. And she goes on and explains what the parts that she was right. I don’t think that she understands that for him, this wasn’t like, I believe in this, and I believe in that, and I believe in that. This was a unified theory of what he believed Jews were and their relationship to the land of Israel. He wanted a theocracy. He did not want a democracy. You know, if there was a choice between having a democracy and a theocracy, he thought that clerics, rabbis should be running the country, that Orthodox law should be the law. He believed that religious courts were going to be the courts. He did not want secular institutions.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: Do you have any reason to think that Lizzy Savetsky would hear that list of things and be like, oh no, I can’t believe I posted this video and not be like, here, here?
Avi Finegold: He would be against her. He would probably assume that posing as in a bikini would be like contravening Jewish law.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: I think that we’re looking at a different right wing than used to exist. So certainly what you see in America with Trump, but even more so with Elon Musk and the sort of demise of a kind of puritanical social conservatism. Like, what I take from what you’re saying is that here’s this liberal, feminist, progressive lady who would be all put out when she realizes she’s endorsed something very conservative. And I’m saying in the cons climate we’re in now, she’s concerned. That is what, that is the aesthetic and value system of mainstream American conservatism.
Avi Finegold: Sure, and I get it, I get that.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: I think she’s somebody who, like most influencers and most people in kind of her world, would have kind of given whichever lip service to progressive things in a kind of generic way when that was kind of the vibe.
Avi Finegold: What I’m trying to get at, what I’m trying to get at is that these people, and not just her, conservative.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: Politically conservative woman, sure.
Avi Finegold: But they are into Kahane because of his anti-Arabism, and they don’t realize that it’s all of a bent with a specific form of Judaism, and it’s Jewish supremacism, and as a result is anti, you know, non-Jewish people. And I don’t think that they would support. Right. They really believe in a diversity of Judaisms and, and a diversity of practice within Judaism. And he did not believe that.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: Okay, so can I, I have one.
Avi Finegold: That’s where I’m maybe.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: Okay, I have a partial. I could, like, this is the extent to which I could maybe come around, which is that I think, remember the whole conversation about whether Elon Musk was doing a Nazi salute or not? And that there’s this kind of nebulous gesturing at the thing sort of unseriously, but also doing it, you know. And I think the way I interpreted this video was a little bit like, I don’t really know what I’m doing, but here, this is the vibe I’m feeling. This is kind of how I feel right now. You know, it’s a mood, it’s going on, you know, it’s going. It’s kind of putting or throwing something ridiculous out there, partly to provoke, partly out of ignorance, with a lot of, I guess the expression I keep coming back to is plausible deniability. Right. Because she can say, I’m just this bikini-wearing influencer who just cares about Jews. That’s, that’s all I’m doing here. But also she is somebody who meets with politicians and is kind of an activist, you know what I mean? She’s not actually a bikini salesperson. And that’s it, you know what I mean? That’s, that’s not really the whole thing. Sure.
Avi Finegold: And I’m just pointing out that to take your muscular Judaism, your idea that Jews should rise up and really, like, not only defend themselves, but it’s time to get these people out and to use Meir Kahane as your poster boy for this brand of Jewish identity—not being just defensive, but to really go on the offensive in this way—is a really, really bad look because of all of the roots behind what this specific individual believed in.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: And so yeah, we agree, we agree that it’s bad, but I think that where I think we disagree, you don’t.
Avi Finegold: Get to go and say, I just believe in the Israel piece and in the pro-Israel piece. And he is like, and you know, he was for getting rid of the Palestinians. He was part of doing so much more than that, which was so odious.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: Right? I agree about the odiousness. I don’t necessarily agree that if she understood it better, she would reject it. I can’t speak for her, but I’m saying that I don’t think. I think you’re reading a lot into the fact that she does not physically present herself in modest attire. The bikinis. Right.
Avi Finegold: Possibly. I don’t know.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: These things are complicated.
Avi Finegold: The one thing that is not complicated is Meir Kahane was a bad person, and we should not be supportive of him.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: On that, we are agreed.
Avi Finegold: Well, on that note, let’s move on to an interview with Professor Till van Rahden of Université de Montréal.
—
Avi Finegold: One of the big pieces of news this past week is that there were elections in Germany. If you don’t already know, Germany’s coalition fell apart last November. There were elections this week which were run by the center-right party, the Christian Democratic Union, which will make the new Chancellor Friedrich Merz. The bigger news, though, was the second place finish of the Alternative for Deutschland or the AfD party. This hard right turn echoes similar trends that we’ve seen in France, Italy, among other places, and has many people concerned, especially because of, well, you know, German history with nationalist parties. With us to talk about this is Till van Rahden, professor of German and European Studies at the Université de Montréal. Dr. van Rahden, welcome to Bonjour Chai.
Till van Rahden: Thank you for having me.
Avi Finegold: So what is the AfD? When was it founded? What are its actual links to Nazism in general?
Till van Rahden: The AfD was founded in 2013. At the beginning, it was a sort of slightly strange but conservative group of people who were concerned about European integration and argued for a higher degree of national sovereignty, specifically for Germany, but for other European countries as well. Over the years, it took a turn to the right and has now become one of the most right-wing and also radical right-wing political parties in Europe to the degree that some of the more established right-wing radical right-wing parties, like the Rassemblement National in France, hesitate to collaborate with the German AfD.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: So how is the AfD perceived within Germany?
Till van Rahden: The consensus among the mainstream political parties is that there should be no collaboration whatsoever with the AfD because it represents not just a right-wing and/or conservative right-wing political milieu, but a milieu that includes neo-Nazis in leading positions. Therefore, this is part of the post-Nazi consensus that has defined the Federal Republic, that no respectable political party should be working with a party that inherited Nazi political traditions.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: I wanted to just drag out a bit on that question of inherited Nazi political traditions. So I did my own PhD in French and I’m familiar with the questions of Front National in the French context. But in the German context, given how recently this party was formed, what is the genealogical connection to Nazism, if that makes sense?
Till van Rahden: I don’t think it’s possible to draw a straight line because there are a few years between 1945 and 2013.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: Right, right.
Till van Rahden: But there has always been a kind of subcurrent of radical right-wing politics in the post-war Germanys. Most of the time, it was hard to discern this in the context of elections. It was more like a cultural ideological subcurrent. Most of the time, with some exceptions, there was a party called the Republicans of all names in the 1980s that mobilized some of the voters who identified with this kind of politics. But for most of the time, it was hidden from federal politics, more generally speaking. The AfD has been able to change that. It may also have something to do with the fact that it is now 80 years since the end of the Second World War and the German defeat and the end of Nazism.
Avi Finegold: I am curious about the connections vis-a-vis the Jewish community. I understand that they want to ban kosher slaughter and circumcision. Is this really couched, or is there overt antisemitism there? What’s their stance vis-a-vis Israel? Should the Jews in Germany and elsewhere actually be concerned about the AfD?
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: Or are they? Maybe it’s also.
Till van Rahden: Well, I think that there is no single Jewish voice in Germany, as there is no single Jewish voice in Canada, for obvious reasons. The AfD prides itself on having a significant group of members that are Jewish. They claim that they have more than 1,000 Jewish members, but there’s no evidence for this. What we do know is that there are very small groups among Jewish students particularly, but also among the Jewish community at large, who sympathize with certain elements of right-wing politics, which in and of itself is also not unusual. But the mainstream organizations, whether it’s the Central Council for Jews in Germany or more left-liberal progressive organizations, have very little time for the AfD or are certainly not working with the AfD and are very concerned. The head of the Central Council just published an op-ed saying how concerned he was about the electoral successes of the AfD at last Sunday’s election.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: What specifically is concerning from within Germany? Because I think, in some ways, I am not a typical North American in that I have a husband who’s from Belgium. I have a lot of friends and acquaintances who are from Europe because of my husband, being an academic. I’ve known a lot of Germans, and I have heard Germans who I don’t think of as political extremists say things like it’s enough already with the guilt about the war. They’re not saying this to be rude to me as a Jew; they’re just saying, like, I was born in the 1980s or 90s or whatever. So I guess what I’m trying to figure out is this is clearly a party that is perceived as extremist in Germany, but I can’t tell why. What about it is considered extremist there as versus coming from North America, where you say, “Oh, well, it’s right-wing, it’s in Germany, clearly it’s bad.”
Till van Rahden: Well, I mean, the starting point of such a conversation would be to underline that the current American government is vocally supporting the AfD and calling for Germans to vote for the AfD and calling for the kind of center-right conservative party to enter into a coalition with the AfD. That’s obviously very complicated.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: And yeah, I was going to say that you’ve jumped ahead to some of our other questions. Absolutely.
Till van Rahden: But that is, I think, a game changer in sort of conversations in Germany, but also across Europe. Now, if one takes the long view, what’s striking about the rise of the radical right all across Europe over the past 20 or 25 years is that, unlike in the 1920s and 1930s, antisemitism is not a central element of their ideology. In fact, they claim to be pro-Israel, they claim to be philosemitic, et cetera. That is all very complicated. I think if you start scratching the surface of some of the philosemitism and also pro-Israel voices that come out of the European radical right, including Germany, you will find that sort of established antisemitic stereotypes are, in fact, driving, in very strange ways, the philosemitism.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: Well, it’s not—I don’t think that’s strange at all. I mean, philosemitism, that’s another whole question. But can we talk actually a little bit about this US angle? So what is up with that? Why is JD Vance or Elon Musk jumping in in this way?
Till van Rahden: My hunch is not that they have a subtle understanding of German politics and how the electoral dynamics work, but that they are playing to their base, the sort of MAGA base in the US, which shares many of the ideological commitments of the AfD. The AfD has always been looking to some of the MAGA ideologues for inspiration. I think that, unlike the radical right in the 1920s and 1930s, because antisemitism is neither upfront nor is it central to radical right-wing ideologies today in Europe, what most Jewish leaders are concerned about is the destruction of liberal democracy, the rule of law, the protection of basic civic rights. That has an even longer story that goes back to the age of emancipation. Whatever else Jews believed in, and they didn’t necessarily just vote for one party, they could agree on a certain set of principles, including the rule of law, including basic civic rights, et cetera. I think that’s a long history, and that’s what some of the leading Jewish voices in contemporary Germany are also drawing on.
Avi Finegold: It sounds similar to what’s going on in America, where the Jews that are against the rightward shift in the Republican Party are the ones that are worried for democracy in America, and the ones that are for it are looking at the fact that this party is very pro-Jewish and pro-Israel.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: But I was just going to say, Avi, that if we talk about numbers in the US, most Jews voted for Harris, not Trump. It sounds like something similar is happening in Germany, where, whatever lip service is being paid to a common enemy in radical Islam or whatever, Jews are not buying it.
Avi Finegold: What I’m curious about is the pro-Israel stance of this party and the other radical right parties. Is it because Israel is currently under a hard-right, I wouldn’t say regime, but government, and as a result is anti the people that might become immigrants that they might not want in Germany in general?
Till van Rahden: And that’s also, in some ways, peculiar to Germany. There’s a cross-party consensus that support of Israel is in the German national interest. Again, that’s just the surface level, and it gets a lot more complicated once you enter into the details. The AfD is part of that idea that support of Israel is part of the German interest. Now, it’s obvious that the AfD feels an affinity with certain members of Netanyahu’s cabinet, and there are also very small numbers of Jews in Germany who openly support the AfD, including a student organization called Beta Germany. They sympathize even with the sort of right-wing extremists within the Netanyahu cabinet. There is a political connection, but I don’t think it’s central to that. I think the main source of antisemitism in contemporary Europe is probably the most contentious issue. Is it a result of a long-standing history of Christian Judeophobia, Christian antisemitism, a European phenomenon, or is it something imported when a growing number of Muslim immigrants arrived in Europe, whether in France, Germany, Belgium, Sweden, etc.? The answers to these questions are very complicated, and these issues become very politicized in European politics and in German politics.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: I think the answer is kind of simple, and I go with why not both? I mean, of course, but then—
Till van Rahden: The question is to what degree. The other thing is also, at what point does concern about Muslim antisemitism also strengthen anti-Muslim sentiments, racism, even violence? What are the moments in which Jewish communities, because of their support for the rule of law and the idea of basic civic and civil rights, work together, despite divergent views when it comes to Israel and Palestine, in the European context to strengthen a sort of liberal democracy?
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: I mean, I’m seeing a big parallel with discussions happening in the US and to some extent in Canada about Jews and DEI, and sort of diversity in all of this. On one hand, there is a sense among some Jews that pro-diversity initiatives lean towards antisemitism or aren’t strong enough against antisemitism. However, there’s also this zooming out that happens where I think a number of Jews realize that if the climate is generally anti-minority, it does not go well for Jews. Maybe something kind of similar is happening.
Till van Rahden: I would say so. Particularly in the American context, something happens in the ’60s and ’70s when Jews are no longer perceived as a minority that is vulnerable and needs protection but are seen as people who have entered the elite of society. They are therefore perceived as being part of the problem when it comes to minority rights. In the German context, I don’t see much of that. It’s a different conversation, but it goes back to big conversations like, “Is multiculturalism good for the Jews?” That’s something that also informs it. Not explicitly, but if you start thinking about such issues, it informs conversations in Germany and Europe as well.
Avi Finegold: The thing you brought up before about Germany’s specific relationship with Israel brings up many ideas for me. The fact that Germany is unique in history in that they had a formal apology to world Jewry, to Israel when it was established, for perpetrating the violence, the crime, the Holocaust, all of the above. Many other countries would not have done that. I think the Germans, for a very long time, felt that in a positive and meaningful way. We’re seeing this shift away from that in America with slavery and in Canada with indigenous issues. I wonder, and I’m a Jew, right? I’m the one that has always told people, why would you not buy a German product? I’m sure many Jews refuse to buy a brand BMW or anything like that. Why wouldn’t you? They have shown that remorse. But at some point, clearly to the younger generation, they’re done with that. I grapple with this, and I wonder if you’ve had thoughts about the nature of how long one has to be apologetic before one can say, “We still are apologetic. We are still sorry about that, but we need to move on.” The inability to move on makes some individuals, especially younger people, say, “I’m done with this” and revert back to the other direction.
Till van Rahden: That’s a huge question. I try to highlight a few things that are interesting in my view. There’s a discrepancy between official commemorations and private memories. From the get-go, the Federal Republic’s story was at least different from that of the German Democratic Republic. But in the Federal Republic, the idea was that one needed to address the question of not necessarily collective guilt but some form of collective shame when it comes to the memory of the Holocaust. Within the private setting, it was often very different. People rejected these policies because they brought up very complicated and painful family memories. I’m not just thinking about, let’s say, the 200,000 to 400,000 perpetrators in a narrow sense, but also everyday Germans who picked up some fancy cutlery in 1943 because they could get it on the cheap. Now it’s cutlery they have in the family, and all of these little things continue to shape family memories. Official memory versus private memory is significant. The second thing is that there’s a huge difference in how this plays out. There’s the national commemoration and then what happens on the ground, so to speak, in cities like Cologne or Frankfurt, and even small villages that try to rebuild ties to their former Jewish communities and survivors from those communities in the 60s, 70s, and in some ways, until today. Why I’m bringing this up is because, whatever the shortcomings of this sort of commemoration of collective shame may be, it’s very robust. I’m not seeing the same shift that slavery, for instance, has become a badge of honor for the MAGA camp. Continuing to remember something that is deeply shameful continues to be central to a German culture of commemoration.
Avi Finegold: Very informative. Thank you for that, Dr. van Rahden. This has been very enlightening. Thank you so much for coming on.
Till van Rahden: My pleasure, my pleasure. Thank you.
Show Notes
Credits
- Hosts: Avi Finegold and Phoebe Maltz Bovy (@BovyMaltz)
- Production team: Zachary Judah Kauffman (editor), Michael Fraiman (producer)
- Music: Socalled
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