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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 5, 2022

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The consensus narrative about the Holocaust might genuinely be the last support pillar holding up America's triumphalist narrative built from the end of WWII. Everything else about the rah-rah story that America used to justify its superpower status has been picked apart by a combination of history nerds and leftists with axes to grind, turning the idea of American Exceptionalism into a sham.

If even the Holocaust is turned into "boring reality," devoid of those more powerful and special qualities of narratives, reduced to another part of the "outdated" and "misinformed" story that conservative, religious boomers tell themselves about how America was great, and becoming a "race card" that Israel plays whenever it's criticized for whatever it did in Palestine on any given week, I suspect that not only will the Nazis be turned into "just another war-monging power" from an age few remember as anything but the boring, deadly past (and thus losing their uniqueness as an antagonistic force, no more or less immoral than America, Britain, or Russia), it will indeed be "fair game" all around WRT conquestmaxing and general politics-by-other-means.

Japan in WWII is also another example that doesn't fit your "tripwire" architecture, to my knowledge, as they'd already been a colonial power that had been snatching up other parts of Asia for decades beforehand (Korea, Manchuria, Qingdao, etc.).

The consensus narrative about the Holocaust might genuinely be the last support pillar holding up America's triumphalist narrative built from the end of WWII. Everything else about the rah-rah story that America used to justify its superpower status has been picked apart by a combination of history nerds and leftists with axes to grind, turning the idea of American Exceptionalism into a sham.

It is easy to imagine that WW2 in general and holocaust in particular will be put on backburner and quietly forgotten, it is easy to imagine that foundation myth of new rules based international order in Cold War Two era will be Cold War One and brilliant American victory over Red Russkies.

Bored of holocaust movies? Get ready for deluge of gulag movies with Russian beasts behaving maximally sadistically brutally. Tired of compulsory holocaust classes? Get ready for gulag education at every school.

Exxageration? Germany, always the bellwether, is ready to classify Ukrainian famine as genocide (scholarly consensus? who needs scholarly consensus). Russian Z is already treated as hate symbol equal to nazi ones, other russkie/commie symbols will easily follow.

The consensus narrative about the Holocaust might genuinely be the last support pillar holding up America's triumphalist narrative built from the end of WWII. Everything else about the rah-rah story that America used to justify its superpower status has been picked apart by a combination of history nerds and leftists with axes to grind, turning the idea of American Exceptionalism into a sham.

Is it? My impression was that winning the Cold War was actually played up more these days. After all, the "Soviets only won because of lend-lease" narrative never really caught on, giving the Soviets at least a roughly equal share at the table of WWII winners in the public mind, thus not on its own really painting America as exceptional.

Japan in WWII is also another example that doesn't fit your "tripwire" architecture, to my knowledge, as they'd already been a colonial power that had been snatching up other parts of Asia for decades beforehand (Korea, Manchuria, Qingdao, etc.).

Well, yeah, the architecture doesn't work for those countries; it's not clear to me if the problem of the emergence of a potential WWII-Japan-like power in that area was in fact solved for that region, but maybe the victorious powers didn't consider it that concerning for some reason or another (perhaps they thought that the conditions for Japan's rise were more unique, or they were happy that the semi-permanent US occupation force plus denuclearisation were enough, or they figured that ultimately China is inevitably going to dominate the region and they can't do anything about it even if they wanted).

After all, the "Soviets only won because of lend-lease" narrative never really caught on, giving the Soviets at least a roughly equal share at the table of WWII winners in the public mind, thus not on its own really painting America as exceptional.

I actually just had to explain to my boomer dad the other day that the USSR was on our side in WW2. I'm honestly not sure how much credit they get in the view of the general public.

I've heard similar sentiments from the US before, so maybe it's different there compared to Europe (where, in the recent years, the "US did more" narrative has been winning out, but it's still not "Russia did little compared to it" outside of boo-lights discussions inspired by more recent events). In what country do you consider the maintenance of America's "triumphalist narrative" to be important? I find it hard to imagine that Americans would stop thinking of America as exceptional just because WWII receded into boring ancient history, whereas I do still think that in Europe its reputation never was exclusively dependent on it.

If even the Holocaust is turned into "boring reality," devoid of those more powerful and special qualities of narratives, reduced to another part of the "outdated" and "misinformed" story that conservative, religious boomers tell themselves about how America was great, and becoming a "race card" that Israel plays whenever it's criticized for whatever it did in Palestine on any given week, I suspect that not only will the Nazis be turned into "just another war-monging power" from an age few remember as anything but the boring, deadly past

If?

When.

The horrors of history always end up being mundane, and so it will end up too with the XXth century. It's only a question of time.

The horrors of history always end up being mundane, and so it will end up too with the XXth century. It's only a question of time.

I'm more pessimistic, I think ideology can buttress whatever gap the passage of time leaves. Anti-semites still hate Jews for things that happened in Biblical times (or Quranic(?) times), Irish nationalists were more militant against the British in the 1920s than they were in the 1840s.

On the other hand, the past can be scoured indefinitely long ago and reinterpreted to fit the current narrative. See how Columbus went from being a point of pride of Italo-Americans and that celebrations were held to commerorate the 500th anniversary of his discovery, to him now being vilified.