UVM Theses and Dissertations
Format:
Online
Author:
Farkas, Sandor
Dept./Program:
History
Year:
2023
Degree:
M.A.
Abstract:
From 1930 to 1985, reactions to Nazi atrocities in the Saturday Evening Post, Wall Street Journal, and National Review represent a sampling of the American political right's understanding, memory, and use of the Holocaust. A touchstone for evil in American culture and politics, few scholarly works have explored the origins of the Holocaust's outsized role in American political discourse, and fewer have seriously considered the American right's role in this evolution. Nazi atrocities assumed their role in American politics because the novelty of Nazi crimes against Jews and their post-war consequences received persistent media attention. On the American political right, the perception that the Nazi persecution of Jews was a matter of conscience and not identity enabled periodicals on the right to universalize the Holocaust as a violation of liberal and Christian values. This vision of Nazism and Communism as aspects of a modern "totalitarian" threat invited a conservative reaction, conflicting with identity-based understandings of the Holocaust that called for progression beyond a longer history of persecution.