Skip to main content Skip to navigation

Events calendar

Wednesday, February 08, 2023

Select tags to filter on
Tue, Feb 07 Today Thu, Feb 09 Jump to any date

Search calendar

Enter a search term into the box below to search for all events matching those terms.

Start typing a search term to generate results.

How do I use this calendar?

You can click on an event to display further information about it.

The toolbar above the calendar has buttons to view different events. Use the left and right arrow icons to view events in the past and future. The button inbetween returns you to today's view. The button to the right of this shows a mini-calendar to let you quickly jump to any date.

The dropdown box on the right allows you to see a different view of the calendar, such as an agenda or a termly view.

If this calendar has tags, you can use the labelled checkboxes at the top of the page to select just the tags you wish to view, and then click "Show selected". The calendar will be redisplayed with just the events related to these tags, making it easier to find what you're looking for.

 
-
Export as iCalendar
WWIGS: Marlene Gallner on 'The Leftist Self-Betrayal: Jean Améry's Essays on Antisemitism, Anti-zionism, and the Left
FAB 3.31

In the 1960s and 70s, when anti-Zionism became rampant among the independent New Left in Germany, Jean Améry was the first to publicly criticize anti-Zionism as a form of antisemitism. He called it “virtuous antisemitism”, as the new antisemites deemed themselves righteous and morally superior. A survivor of Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps, he is mostly known – if at all – for his reflections on being a Shoah victim, and this experience doubtless bled into all his later work. Yet, the other part of his oeuvre has been largely ignored. Améry’s political essays were not convenient. He has lost his home twice. In the 1930s, he was cast out of his physical home, Austria and the German cultural sphere, by his own compatriots. In the 1960s, he was cast out of his political home, the left, by his former allies. He was a misfit in the literal sense of the word. His loss of trust in the world and the perspective of an outsider rendered his critique piercingly sharp and precise.

Améry’s analyses read as if they were written for the current situation. He showed how closely interlinked antisemitism and anti-Zionism are, and that Israel’s role as a shelter from antisemitism remains indispensable. Today, this notion is repeatedly attacked – not least by leftist groups and individuals. For all those who believe that obsessive criticism of the Jewish state benefits the supposedly weak, Améry’s essays will make for instructive reading.

Placeholder