Webinar: A Critical analysis of Ken Burns PBS Holocaust documentary, Monday, 03/20/2023. 7 PM PDT, 10 PM EDT

Charles O'Connell & Richard Platkin:

Monday, March 20 7:00pm PDT, 10:00pm EDT organized by LA Jews for Peace

https://Zoom.us/j/494219103

2. The film erred in asserting that the U.S. rescued more Jews than any other country; the Soviet Union saved more.

3. The film asserts that opposition to authoritarian governments was the main reason for U.S. opposition to Hitler’s regime and to Japan. But post WW-II U.S. support for, and even creation of, fascist, genocidal, and authoritarian regimes around the world suggests otherwise.

5. Why did the film avoid any discussion of nationalism? That was the morally acceptable principle used to create new countries ("nation-states") in the lands of the collapsed Austro-Hungarian, Russian, and Ottoman Empires after WW-I even though it resulted in the forced removal of millions of people from places where they had lived peacefully within ethnically-mixed environments. This principle of establishing a national community through the ethnic cleansing of the homeland was the basis for Hitler's National Socialism. Because all nationalism involves the principle of dividing people in society into those who belong in the "homeland" and those who don't, isn't nationalism just another form of racism?

6. If Hitler had declared “Bolshevism” the great menace to Germany and Western civilization rather than the “Judeo-Bolshevism,” would he have been judged morally and politically acceptable?

Chuck O’Connell lectured in Sociology for over 25 years at UCLA, UC Irvine, and Pierce College where he taught that understanding the modern American situation involved race, ethnicity, nationality, and war. His interests include management-labor conflict and the destruction of the union movement in the U.S., the dominance of business interests in the modern state, the global reemergence of nationalist and fascist movements, and conflicting interpretations of German fascism and the Holocaust. Chuck's doctorate in sociology is from UCLA; he received his bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Loyola Marymount University.

ICAHD-USA board treasurer Dick Platkin has been involved with Israel-Palestine peace groups since the 1970s. He is a retired city planner with over 30 years of experience in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. As a graduate student in Sociology at UCLA he studied ethnicity, nationalism, and fascism. Since retiring from the LA City Planning Department, Dick taught planning classes at USC and California State-Northridge and consulted with many community groups in Los Angeles. He writes the weekly Planning Watch column for the LA Progressive and CityWatchLA.

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