Open Letter to Tony Judt

Tony Judt heads the Remarque Institute at New York University and is the author of Postwar : A History of Europe Since 1945.

Dear Professor Judt,

I am a great admirer of Postwar. Your book is an impressive achievement and it will likely remain unmatched for decades to come in terms of its breadth and depth.  The story of how Europe transformed itself from the rubble of war to peaceful, democratic prosperity is inspiring. I was therefore disappointed when I learned of your interview in the March 24 issue of the neo-fascist weekly Junge Freiheit.

Junge Freiheit stands for the opposite of a free and peaceful European Union, the birth of which you describe so vividly in your book.  On the contrary, JF promotes a reactionary völkisch nationalism that seeks to turn back history to a prewar era.  Here are some other considerations concerning JF:

• JF consistently relativizes the crimes of the holocaust by equating them to the firebombing of German cities in WWII.
• JF is hostile to women’s rights – promoting a retrograde Kinder, Kueche, Kirche mentality. The basic complaint of the editors of JF is that Muslim women are outbreeding German women in Germany, which will lead to racial and cultural calamity.
• JF is a racist publication. During the Katrina crisis they blamed the chaos of the reovery effort on the victims of the hurricane – the "blacks" – rather than on the incompetence of the local and federal officials.  The lack of a "racial homogeneity" in the United States was the root cause of the human disaster.  I wrote about JF’s Katrina coverage on Dialog International.

JF desperately seeks legitimacy among mainstream German readers so that it can put across its radical right-wing message to the broadest possible audience.  Its principal tactic is to seek out well-known thought leaders – such as you – to interview.  This tactic was discussed at length in the book Nation statt Demokratie. Sein und Design der Jungen Freiheit in a chapter: Wenn die ‚Junge Freiheit’ das Gespräch sucht …:

Die so deutlich zur Schau getragene pluralistische Auswahl der Interviewpartner soll die Zeitung vom Ruch des völkischen Nationalismus frei machen.7 Zudem dürfte für einen Teil der Leser das Blatt dadurch auch inhaltlich attraktiver werden.

Your critical comments in the JF interview concerning the United States fit in perfectly with the message the editors are seeking to convey.  They have zero interest in the current political problems in the US, but for them the America is bogeyman of German sovereignty- the other constant editorial focus of the newspaper.

Since New York City is far from Berlin, I can surmise that you were not completely informed about the JF and its background; and therefore you agreed to do the interview.  If that is not the case, then I would be very interested in hearing from you about your motivations for allowing them to use your name.  I am not advocating censorship of JF – that only plays into their martyr complex and their grotesque posturing as champions of free speech.  Deliberate disregard is perhaps a better tactic to prevent JF from gaining any legitimacy.

Sincerely yours,

Dialog International

UPDATE: Professor Judt has responded directly to me.  I am asking for his permission to post his response here.  Stay tuned!

UPDATE: Professor Judt granted permission to publish the following response from him:

"Thanks for your letter.

Should one even acknowledge the existence of Far Right outlets like JF? It’s a hard call. It isn’t self-evidently smart just to ignore them completely, nor is silence a consistent position for those of us who claim to favour dialogue over confrontation. I was certainly ambivalent about doing the interview – I had a fairly good idea of who they are. But I decided that while it’s always comfortable and reassuring to tell these people that you’ve nothing to say to them, there is a good case for getting them to hear what you have to say.

In the interview I said what I thought about the US, some of which might, yes, be agreeable to Junge Freiheit. But I also insistently praised and defended the European counter-example. I don’t believe the interviewer liked that – he tried to get me to say something different. But in the end he was stuck with what I did say and – to his credit – he published it.

I’m not sure whether I’d do it again. But just that – not sure.

Best,
Tony Judt "

Junge Freiheit rechtsextremismus