German Apartheid Politics - Memory, Democracy, and Genocide #859051

No one denounces racism like Wieland Hoban. Best known for his translations of philosophers Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin into English, the Frankfurt-based Jewish composer and activist wears his work on his sleeve.

Incensed by the weaponisation of Antisemitism in German politics to discriminate against Palestinians, in 2020, Hoban began detailing his concerns in The Battleground.

Covering everything from non-Jewish officials attacking Jews for Antisemitism to interviewing Palestinian and Israeli expats about living with German racism, German Apartheid Politics is an eye-opener for those who believe the country purged itself of Nazism.

Nothing drives this home better than Hoban’s article on Germany’s Roma-Sinti community and how, to this day, it struggles with being recognised as an equal victim of the Nazi genocide.

Even at the European Union level, Wieland Hoban struggles to find something different from German Holocaust remembrance culture.

So pervasive are German efforts to lead the fight against Antisemitism that the EU Handbook for Fighting Antisemitism repeats everything wrong with its national approach across the bloc.

Criticising Israel is not Antisemitism. Yet, given the EU’s faltering approach to the Gaza war and its inability to adopt a unified approach, its German ideological leadership is partly to blame.

Wieland Hoban’s book is long overdue. A sign of the German Jewish community’s growth in recent years, particularly the immigration of progressive Israeli and Anglo Jews to the country, German Apartheid Politics is a statement of its time.
Though some Germans will give it a thumbs down, the book is a testimony to the German Jewish zeitgeist and what to expect from the country’s rapidly changing community in the future.

Advance Praise for German Apartheid Politics:

Wieland Hoban is a candle in the darkness of German discourse on Israel/Palestine. Every German should read him to understand how much more humanity, diversity, and integrity exists among Jews grappling with one of the great moral crises of our time.
– Nathan Thrall, journalist and researcher, author of A Day in the Life of Abed Salama (2024 Pulitzer Prize)

Wieland Hoban’s analysis of the horror that takes place in Palestine and Germany is desperately needed in a country where dissident opinions are not only censored but criminalised. His writing brings about a fresh perspective in Germany, where a pro-Israel bias dominates every major media outlet. Seldom do we see a clear analysis that gives us, the reader, insight on how in denial Germany is about the ongoing genocide in Gaza and even its own dark colonial history.
– Hebh Jamal, journalist and activist

Part ethnography, part journalism, Wieland Hoban’s observations of German memory politics are trenchant, perceptive, and timely. The chapters in German Apartheid Politics detail episodes in the making of liberal authoritarian culture, the existence of which much of the German political class either ignores or welcomes. The author’s critical Jewish perspective, which prizes pluralism and openness, is a necessary counterpoint to the politics of fear that drives so many actors in that troubled country. A welcome addition to the critical history of contemporary Germany.
– A. Dirk Moses, The City College of New York, author of The Problems of Genocide