2023-08-05 21:39:00
Leonardo Senkman, historian and emeritus professor and research associate at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem/ Photo: Alejandro Santa Cruz.
The emergence and resilience of the radical right in the world after the horrors of Nazism is a complex phenomenon but at the same time necessary to explain in order not to repeat past mistakes and among those who assume this challenge is Leonardo Senkman, historian and emeritus professor and research associate at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Without making “illegitimate comparisons or transplants” between Nazism and classic fascism with contemporary movements, the researcher born in Entre Ríos stressed the need to “weight” history and, based on this, rethink what happens with the emergence of rights in different countries, including in Latin America.
“The new rights are very careful now to be racist and anti-Semitic as the old rights were,” he said in an interview with Télam when reflecting on ruptures and continuities in political discourse.
Author of various books on Nazism, anti-Semitism and Jewish refugees, Senkman described the breaks between the present and the past as the “demonization of the old fascism” proclaimed today by leaders such as the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, and similar phenomena such as the creation of a negative otherness. and dehumanized, which during Nazism was built around Jews and today around African and Asian refugees arriving in Europe.
These reflections on the rejections, sympathies, ghosts and persistence of Nazism in the contemporary radical right will be the center of some open days (with prior registration) that from August 9 to 11 The Tres de Febrero National University and the University of Buenos Aires, among other institutions, will be held in downtown Buenos Aires.
90 years after Adolf Hitler came to power, some 40 speakers from Argentina, Israel, Germany, Chile, Uruguay, Brazil and Cuba, among them Senkman, will address from different disciplines what happened in Germany from 1933 until the beginning of World War II in 1939 and its current impact on Latin America and the world.
– How do you explain the persistence of the new rights after what happened 90 years ago?
– The topic is complex but I am going to start with what should not be done, which are comparisons. As a historian and as a writer, it has been very important to me to analyze why this persistence exists, without making transplants or illegitimate comparisons, but pondering the phenomena, not in the sense of praising but of understanding. Having said this, a phenomenon to highlight is that the new right-wing that is emerging in Latin America and in the world, also in Israel, which is where I live, are now very careful not to be racist and anti-Semitic as the old right-wing were. But they have in common the fact that they seek homogeneity. Today, in the form of a democracy that rejects foreigners and refugees whether they are colored, African or Asian. In these conferences, for example, I am interested in comparing the rejection that existed in the Port of Buenos Aires from 1936 to 1941 against the ships that brought Jewish refugees with the current rejection of the barges of refugees, mainly from North Africa, that They transit through the Mediterranean Sea. The actors are different, but the motivations are similar.
Photo: Alejandro Santa Cruz.
– In both cases there is the construction of a negative and dehumanized otherness
– As a historian, I would never agree to compare the phenomenon of those seeking to leave Africa for humanitarian reasons to the racism of Nazism. But yes, for the Nazi ideology the Jews were not people. I am going to give an example that I investigated in the archives of Argentina: at the time of Nazi Germany there was a consul in Munich named Ernesto Sarmiento and he was very impressed by the Nuremberg laws to purify blood. He even said that they should be taken into account when thinking about the immigration law in Argentina. He even translates the opinions of a doctor who inspired the laws who says that the issue was not the color, but the infection that the Jews brought to the national collective. Something similar is happening today: Africans are treated not only because of their skin color, but because of the discourse that alters the European DNA.
– Are there other breaks between the ideology of Nazi Germany or classical European fascism with the current movements of the radical right?
– While classic fascism breaks with the Church, the extreme right that emerges today are fundamentalists. This happens in Israel, for example, where there is an ultra-religious Zionism. Another factor I want to mention: in Italy, Meloni does everything possible to demonize the old fascism from which his party comes, he wants to disassociate himself from the history and fascist genealogy of his party. And this is a phenomenon that worries me: how in Italy or in France (Marine) Le Pen managed to scorn organizations that were openly fascist. This is new. Before, in the 50’s or 60’s there was admiration. The new rights avoid that. It is a whole strategy of demonization that I think is very important to take into account when analyzing them.
– You mentioned Le Pen and Meloni, but there is another paradigmatic phenomenon: the far-right Alternative for Germany party, designated as a neo-Nazi, is projected as the second force at the national level, according to some surveys. Do you view this trend with concern, nothing more and nothing less? what in germany?
– It’s very serious about Germany. There, Nazism was defeated, but it was latent. It has never been overcome and is worrying a lot of people in the country. And it is no coincidence that in the coming days Gerd Wiege, the head of the “Department for Democracy, Migration and the Fight against Racism” of the state of Berlin, or Samuel Salzborn, the commissioner on anti-Semitism, will also be talking about these issues. of the state of Berlin. Now, the politicization of anti-Semitism today has a different characteristic from what it was before. There are parties that use anti-Semitism and others that seek to separate. I spoke before about those who seek to demonize their past, but there are others, like this party in Germany, who have no qualms about claiming it and being racist, anti-black and anti-Jewish.
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