Discussion on Nuremberg and Historical Memory

When you say the Nuremberg system, what does that mean?

It means, well, there's a lot of elements to it

having to do with geopolitics and warfare, but from the standpoint that we're talking about right now,

you know, it's this idea

that for people to live historically,

in the sense that I just described it,

is something that is dangerous and to be targeted and broken down,

and you saw this really on domestic social levels.

I mean, you see it, I mean, it's not as

if that left-wing government in Spain is not part of the problem,

you know, they clearly are.

But here in the United States,

you know, you saw the effects of it over the course

of the second half of the 20th century where,

you know, you had our cities back in the day

that were sort of these organic communities with separate neighborhoods

divided by ethnicity and religion that were not in conflict with one another.

So they had arrived at compromises over the years

and ran their cities in an organic way and

people were part of, you know, they were plugged into communities

that watched them be born and that would watch them die

and that their kids would grow up in and know

that their kids were going to grow up in and they sensed themselves as these people.

You know, they understood themselves as part of this living community

that was going to continue on afterwards.

So it was important for them to make sure

that the things they inherited were given to the people that came along after their period of stewardship.

And over the course of the second half of the 20th century,

I mean, it was official U.S. government policy essentially to use

mass migration generally of African-Americans from the South as bludgeon weapons

to go in and break these communities up and drive these people out to the suburbs,

drive them out to other areas where,

you know, that old parish church that used to be all, you know, Italian Catholics.

You go drive through there now in Newark and it's maybe some old grandmas

who are still there, but everybody else lives 45 minutes away now, so nobody goes there anymore.

And all of those communities were broken up by force very often and through violence indirectly on purpose.

And it was because they were looked at as something that was potentially,

you know, that when people are living in a way where they sense themselves as part of a larger project,

the idea after World War II was that that can and in fact will almost inevitably get out of hand.

And out of- Can't get out of hand in what way?

Well, the way that the Germans got out of hand.

I mean, that's, you know, the idea that they start taking themselves too seriously

and thinking of their historical mission too seriously, and they start to act on it in the world

in a way that is dangerous to others.

That was the idea, right?

And of course, there's only one group, at least in the Western world,

that we decided that that doesn't apply to, and it's because they were the ones who were the victims of the Germans.

So the Israelis, the Jewish people in general, very much live historically,

and their right to do that and ability to do that is,

you know, you could say it's the central and primary certainly foreign policy,

but even with a lot of domestic policies, mission of the U.S. government and the sort of Western European NATO system in

general. It's a central focus of that, which is very strange when you think about it,

until you realize that we're living in the aftermath of Nuremberg.

We're living in the aftermath of the Second World War.

And we're probably coming up to the end of that cycle right now.

I think that we're, you know, we're reaching the point where everybody who was around back then is gone.

People who remember it directly and who have the real enthusiasm for it

that was born out of direct experience is probably fading away.

That seems to be the historical cycle every 80 to 100 years, you know.