Susan Neiman, Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil (FSG, 2019)
When Tennessee\u2019s Governor recently ordered a holiday to celebrate the memory of confederate general Nathan Bedford Forest, a convicted war criminal who helped found the Ku Klax Klan, the New York Times columnist Paul Krugman commented: \u201cThe world would be horrified if Germany announced plans to start celebrating Erich von Manstein Day.\u201d Krugman\u2019s point was to emphasize that to celebrate a commander of the German Army from the Nazi period does not behoove a modern democratic nation. But his analogy of celebrating the founder of the Klan in today\u2019s America and a Nazi in today\u2019s Germany is more than another dispute between liberals and conservative Americans. Krugman invokes Germany\u2019s \u201covercoming\u201d or \u201ccoming to terms with\u201d its past of racial violence, atrocity and genocide as a possible guide for American attitudes toward its racialized past.\nBut how did Germany deal with the Nazi past? How did post-Germany move from the legacy of fascism to today\u2019s democratic political culture? And how can America learn from a country that had committed the crime of the Holocaust which has served as a universal moral yardstick for nearly half a century? I spoke with philosopher Susan Neiman, author of Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2019), about these questions, and whether contemporary America can learn anything from post-war Germany\u2019s ways of dealing with its past crimes.\nUli Baer is a professor at New York University. He is also the host of the excellent podcast "Think About It"\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices\nSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/genocide-studies