자료

The article reviews anti-Semitism from a multi-disciplinary perspective by focusing on the influence of American anti-Semitism on the German Nazis; exploring the endurance of anti-Semitism in Germany via its intellectual and scholastic elite; and exploring the political psychology of Hitlerism prior to the Second World War. The article then examines the problem that although anti-Semitism may be a necessary condition of genocide, it is not a sufficient one.  This required the understanding of the jump from anti-Semitism, that is repressive and dominating, to the decision to exterminate a population of human beings completely. This also required a more carefully exploration of the specific features of the Nazi decision process as well as its framework of social control. With this background, the article focuses on developing the theoretical and methodological intellectual skills that have been developed in the context of the policy sciences in order to provide an approach to the challenges generated by the problems of mass murder and genocide, which would guide policy makers  to  more  realistic,  timely  and  effective  interventions. The article then explores distinctive but interrelated intellectual tasks that are required for research to guide inquiry and policy making and which include a disciplined commitment to the clarification of the value goals implicated by the problems of mass murder and genocide. These intellectual tasks require a careful specification  of  the  trends  in  past  decisions  that  have  sought,  in  some  measure  of  efficacy,  to respond to these problems. They would also require an understanding of the scientific conditions that have shaped the nature of these trends in order to be able to forecast about the prospect of genocide and mass murder, which could be understood as a tentative forecast of an optimistic and a pessimistic nature, and the possibility of constraining it.  Finally, theory requires an element of creativity. That creativity would be expressed in terms of the provided interaction between human values and the art/aesthetic process, which is suggested as a tool for realizing the never again goal. The creative aspect of this would be the invention of strategies that might direct intervention of a trend in the direction of a more optimistic possible future. (By the author)