gunduz-aktan-kitap-soyledikleri-ve-yazdiklari

WHAT HE SAID AND WHAT HE WROTE
Diplomats for centuries have been entrusted with the task of
maximizing their countries national interests, without causing
war. This was already a difficult and serious task by itself. One
day, we woke up to see at our doorstep a new task, that of human
rights. We are now asked practically to solve all the riddles of
humanity, namely, eliminate violence and violations within and
between our societies, help establish democracy together with
socioeconomic rights etc. Since what is expected of us is extremely
immodest. I thought, as a diplomat I could deal with an equally
immodest subject.
Let me make it clear at the outset that racism as a concept and
mechanism should logically cover antisemitism. But antisemitism
has been for almost two millennia the only extremely dangereous
from of racism. As such, antisemitism can be conceived as the
fountain-head of racism. Therefore, it is not wise to merge
antisemitism into racism.
As I have said, the subject is vast. We have to reduce it to
manageable proportions in order to deal with it effectively within
the time-span of the conference.
Consequently, I depart from the assumption that you already
know various aspects of racism and antisemitism, perhaps much
better than I do.
For instance, antisemitism goes back to pre-Christian,
Hellenistic and Roman era, although the term is a recent invention
that early Christianity, having been born out of judaism had a
ferocious identity struggle with the mother religion; that since St-
Augustine, the wandering Jew without homeland was not
considered only as a sing of an enternal punishment but used also
as a scapegoat in Christian societies; that the first Crusade has
started by massacring Jews; that in the late Middle Ages the
expulsion of Jews from England in 1290, from France in 1394 and
from Spain in 1492 coincided wtih the beginning of the nationbuilding
processes in these countries; that neither the Westphalia
system, nor the following Enlightenment, nor the emancipating
French Revolution solved or alleviated the problem that the racial
and linguistic theories of the XIXth century together with its ‘Aryan
myth’, ‘master race’, ‘racial hygiene’ ended up in the Shoah.
Antisemitism has proved extremely resilient and protean. It has
adapted itself to changing conditions by always developing new
118
Gündüz Aktan