On 12 January, the day commemorating the 1904 revolt of the Herero people against German colonialism, Olaf Scholz’s government announced that it would intervene in the International Court of Justice to oppose South Africa’s charge of genocide against Israel. The move sparked widespread indignation.
The following day, the Namibian presidency published a forceful statement condemning the decision.
“On Namibian soil, Germany committed the first genocide of the 20th century,” the statement said. “In light of Germany’s inability to draw lessons from its horrific history, President Hage G. Geingob expresses deep concern with the shocking decision.”
It is worth dwelling on the word “inability.” Many who condemned Germany’s decision accused it of “failure.”
Germany, they argued, has a sacred responsibility to humanity for its role in World War II. It has failed in that responsibility.
But if Germany’s decision is a failure, then its actions are an aberration, a deviation from some expected historic norm.
“Failure” substitutes open complicity with omission. It replaces the systemic with the particular.
Instead, Germany’s position demonstrates that, despite the horrors that German imperialism has inflicted on humanity in the 20th century, the German ruling class has been able to preserve fascism’s ideological and material basis.
Rather than a “failure,” then, German policy represents a remarkable success. It testifies to the great resilience of the colonial mentality.
And it makes clear that moral condemnation – or, worse still, self-designated “guilt” – is an inadequate framework by which to establish accountability for the crimes of imperial and colonial domination.
TIL the holodomor is a bad faith claim made by literal nazis.