In the Monty Python skit, "The Church Police," a murderer being taken into custody admits his crime saying, "It's a fair cop, but society's to blame."
The detective replies, "Agreed. We'll be charging them too."
Judenhass, is Dave Sim's indictment of society, as the intellectual accomplice in the Third Reich's acts of genocide.
Sim here, as in his other new project, Glamorpuss is working on developing the illustration style of photorealism. Unlike Glamorpuss, where the story is seemingly an afterthought, the art is used in service of an editorial essay in Judenhass.
Bob Mitchell reviewed Judenhass on his blog, but I came away feeling he missed the point of Sim's essay.
From my comments to Mitchell review:
… I don’t see how a ragtag collection of quotes from disparate sources throughout history proves that the Holocaust was inevitableThe point was that the hatred of the Jews permeated world culture (or at least the western world) that some such tradgedy like the Holocaust, if not the Holocaust itself, was inevitable. In fact such genocidal slaughters of Jews did have prior precident, as was cited in Judenhass.The point is that such barbarism does not spring forth from history cold. The widespread hatred for Jews and the intellectual arguments that went largely unchallenged for centuries justifying it made the Holocaust possible, indeed made it probable (even “inevitable”, as Sim puts it) that such an event would happen. Such arguments weren’t just made by history’s villains, such as Hitler, but by respected individuals, such as Mark Twain, Henry Ford, Martin Luther, and others throughout history.
Such hatred not only fueled the genocide itself, but also the shut off escape routes as shown by the refusal of other nations to accept Jewish refugees.
The ultimate point is that just saying “never again” is not enough. You need to see the root cause of the Holocaust as the hatred, and its rationalizations, and confront it in the present.
There’s a lot of excuses still made for Jew hatred today, even by respectable people. (Just read the tail end of Will Eisner’s The Plot)
One last thing:This modern day example of judenhass from a comics creator creates a sad bookend to the opening of the book which named the many giants of the golden and silver ages of comics who are highly respected, who are Jewish.“Randomly, the last page of the book even throws in a line from a previously-unheard-of Soth Korean comic book artist called Rhei Won-Bok who says: “The Jews are an invisible force that controls the US.” The significance of this is lost on me,”
The significance is that such hatred still exists today. And Sim is going beyond just indicting history, an easier task, and pointing out one such example in the here and now, in our own sub-culture of comics.
It's Sim's way of saying could have just as easily been them, and highlighting the sad irony that a creative descendant of these Jewish comics professionals continues to engage in the hatred that consumed so many Jews, and if unchecked, could do so again.
Mitchell, in my opinion, belittles Sim's work further on in the comments when he adds:
"I wouldn’t call Judenhaas a historical essay, and it’s certainly didn’t require enormous research. I think all his quotes are out of context myself, they’re just segments designed to further his own argument."
In the back of the book Sim goes into the his sources and the effort put into making sure that he wasn't taking these quotes out of context.
His sources and research are shown on the Judenhass website in the Production section.
He specifically lists two quotes attributed to George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, that he tossed out as inauthentic, and likely to be created by Jew haters to give false authenticity to their opinions.
He also links to the original material from where several of the quotes he cites comes from, (Including anti-Jewish works by Martin Luther, Mark Twain, and Henry Ford) so that people may look and see for themselves that the quotes were not taken out of context.
Mr. Mitchell, you may "think all his quotes are out of context." But it certainly "doesn't require enormous research" to find that they aren't.
Judenhass is exclusively available in comic shops. Find one and buy a copy. If they aren't in stock, ask them to order a copy for you.
Hi Shawn, thaks for dropping by the blog man, and for taking the time to read it.It's cool with me that you disagree with what I'm saying. I'm surprised at how many hits I've had on this, and most people who have went on to comment about it elsewhere have disagreed with me. Only one person has agreed. I'll stand by what I'm saying though. I don't see how a collection of anti-Jew quotes from throughout history proves that the Holocaust was inevitable. I could go and find a collection of anti-Jew quotes from the last 50 years, I could go and find some from the last year, but that doesn't mean another Holocaust is inevitable. I could go find hundreds of anti-Islam or anti-Christian quotes from the last 50 years, but that doesn't mean a Holocaust against those groups is inevitable. I could probably distill the reasons for the Holocaust down to one man, Hitler.You're right of course to say "the hatred of the Jews permeated world culture" but it doesn't follow from that the Holocaust was inevitable. And I would disagree that there was a precedent of genocidal slaughter against the Jews. Violence, persecution, undoubtedly, but not the systematic murder of six million people in around five years.And hatred towards Jews didn't shut off escape routes from Nazi Germany. Tens of thousands of Jews made it out of Germany, Poland and Austria and were accepted in other countries. The Nazis, and the circumstances of war shut off the escape routes. Not just for Jews, but for everyone.I'm with Sim when it comes to never forgetting about the Holocaust, about learning lessons form the past to ensure it never happens again. I'm just saying his argument that Holocaust was inevitable is flawed.I think you proved my point for me, unwittingly so. You mention the South Korean artist's anti-Jew comments, saying: "The significance is that such hatred still exists today."Your argument is that the hatred which existed throughout all those centuries, the hatred which Sim exposes in his book, that hatred is still around today.So following that logic, if the same hatred is still around, that means another Holocaust is inevitable. And Sim's work cetainly is not a historical essay and the quotes in it are most definitely out of context. I don't see how you can argue differently. If he cuts parts of quotes out of a larger text and presents them on their own without any discussion or comment, that's presenting them out of context.Having a bibliography does not bestow the quotes he uses any context (and it's not even an actual bibliography). The context would have to come in the body of the work. He just presents the quotes. It's not even a proper annotated bibliography, like one you would get in a historical essay. I've got a degree in history, go with me on this. That he tossed out two quotes by Washington and Franklin doesn't grant any context onto the quotes he did use either.And I looked at the section of the website you mentioned. Regardless of the fact that if I'm reading a book I shouldn't need to look up the internet to get the whole story, what he's put on the website is not a comprehensive list of his sources, it's pretty slap-dash. It's nothing remotely like a bibliography. A proper bibliography tells you exactly where each reference is from.Anyway, I'm glad you enjoyed Judenhaas, it's good that you took something out of it. I was pretty disappointed, but each to their own.