12 - Holocaust Memory, Exemplary Victims, and Permanent Security Today

Summary

This book argues that the problems of genocide are as much conceptual as empirical: that the crowning of genocide as “crime of crimes” depoliticizes the language of transgression; and that depoliticization means screening out how genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the wanton infliction of collateral damage are driven by the permanent security imperatives of states and political movements seeking to found states. As a consequence, the connections between the postwar order of nation-states, the violence with which they were founded, and the international legal order are largely hidden from view. However, the appeal of making the world “safe for democracy” and “saving strangers” in the name of humanity has waned with the election of populist nationalists who express disdain for “globalism” and emphasize national security. Even so, whether in the name of an “international rules-based order” or making one’s country “great again,” US geopolitical domination is the enduring imperative that drives the permanent securitization of subaltern actors that challenge liberal empire.