Centering the Holocaust erases Europe’s own colonial history

Evidence

Europe’s colonial history and legacy dissipate if not disappear. The Holocaust is – it belongs to – Europe. It transpired on European soil, it continues to traumatize political dialogue and debate in Europe, it closes down critical themes in public discourse, it effects certain closures on what can be said and what not. … Colonialism, by contrast, is considered to have taken place elsewhere, outside of Europe, and so is thought to be the history properly speaking not of Europe. Colonialism, on this view, has had little or no effect in the making of Europe itself, or of European nation-states. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 823

Categorization

• SEED: An essay angle: how a society’s canonical trauma can functionally erase a different, simultaneous wrong — the ‘competition of suffering’ that shapes which histories get told.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 823
• XREF: connects to: Holocaust memorialization lets Europe deny its colonial racial past — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 826; Europe’s Holocaust focus erases its colonial race history — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 823