Paper Short Abstract:

(White) discourse in the West centered around “catastrophic thinking” functions as an extension of settler colonialism and genocide denial. “German guilt” (over the Holocaust) is being weaponized to deny the ongoing genocide in Gaza by erasing the Nakba and exceptionalizing Antisemitism.

Paper Abstract:

Germany is home to the largest number of Palestinians living in Europe who have been resisting aggressive silencing, censorship, surveillance, violent arrests, raids and deportations for decades. In extension to the “war on terror”, German public discourse and governmental policy propels what Anna-Esther Younes terms “war on Antisemitism” (2020). It is a discursive framework, part of “new Antisemitism”, which conflates Antisemitism with critique of Israel (e.g. IHRA definition), hollowing out the meaning of the term as such. This results in even Jewish activists, scholars, and artists to be accused of Antisemitism, in itself a case of, exposing the underlying moral corruption and white panic. Major target of the “war on Antisemitism” are the Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims, and migrants living in Germany today, criminalized by both politicians and the media to “be bringing” Antisemitism to Germany (i.e. “imported Antisemitism”). This is in itself a dangerous erasure of the Holocaust, the Nakba, and German colonialism, three catastrophes being denied, to absolve (white) Germans of any guilt and complicity thereof. The genocide denial and the violent crackdown of the Palestine solidarity movement have been happening under a thriving climate movement and (white) feminist green-leftist foreign policy. To de-center white and neoliberal discourse on “catastrophic thinking”, I highlight Kara Keeling’s (2019) powerful analysis of Afrofuturism, focusing on settler colonialism and the Middle Passage: Sun Ra’s lyrics echoes “It’s after the end of the world. Don’t you know that yet?”.