Memory of past victimization is weaponized to legitimize new genocides

Evidence

Inadvertently, yet all the same ominously, such an interpretation of the Holocaust’s lesson chimes with, and adds oblique support to, the most widespread and iniquitous arguments brandished nowadays around the globe in justification of recurrent new genocides: namely, of a new round of victimization being needed to revenge the past cruelty as well as to defend the victims of past persecution against the repetition of their sufferings. The reasoning behind such justification of new genocidal attempts eagerly resorted to by the ‘political forces oriented towards the past’ has been spelt out recently by Luc Boltanski in the following way: ‘leaning on the memory of the suffering, misfortunes and sacrifices of the past victims, [they] legitimize appeals to the identity of peoples, classes and States.’ More often than not, such ‘history lessons’ are, in Boltanski’s words, weapons of ‘those in power who exploit past victims in order to take possession of the future while ignoring present suffering’. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 666

Categorization

• XREF: Boltanski’s point on weaponized past-victim memory feeds directly into the imagined-community critique and the construction of the ‘Other’ in Islamophobia readings. — connects to: Totalitarian terror extends to the victims’ families by forbidding grief and remembrance; Memory of genocide can teach victims to become future victimizers. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 670; Victims’ aggression gets reframed as the victim’s own deviance (+2 more)

Related

• Memory of genocide can teach victims to become future victimizers. (similarity 0.86)
• Manipulating Holocaust memory threatens the future’s human habitability (similarity 0.80)
• Reminding a victimized group of old harms raises guilt assigned to a new enemy. (similarity 0.80)
• The Holocaust’s confinement to Jewish-only memory served both outsiders and insiders (similarity 0.79)
• Hereditary victimhood functions as a blank cheque for moral righteousness (similarity 0.79)
• Historical victimhood narratives can be mobilized to incite new genocides (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Memory of genocide can teach victims to become future victimizers. #corroborates (0.88) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 670
• Victims’ aggression gets reframed as the victim’s own deviance #corroborates (0.75)