On Muselmänner
“If the survivor testifies not about the gas chambers or Auschwitz, but for the Muselmann; if he speaks only from a place of impossibility to speak, then his testimony is undeniable. Auschwitz — that which cannot be testified to — is proven in an absolute and irrefutable way.”
Giorgio Agamben, Auschwitz
Amichai Chikli, Israel's Minister for the Diaspora and a member of the right-wing Likud party, has invited far-right leaders from several Western countries to attend a conference on antisemitism scheduled in Jerusalem for March 26-27, 2025. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, also a member of the Likud party, is set to speak at the event. One can reasonably suppose that the main topic will focus on portraying Islam and the left as the primary threats.
We don't ask ourselves enough why, in the West, far-right governements, political parties, politicians, and intellectuals have supported Israel since the Hamas massacres on October 7, 2023, even though their own ideological foundations are deeply antisemitic - they are the heirs of those who once forced Jews to become Muselmänner.
In Nazi concentration and extermination camps, the Muselmann — literally meaning "Muslim" — referred to prisoners (mostly Jewish) who had entirely abandoned the will to live, their humanity reduced to a state where they were considered more dead than alive. This term arose from the visual resemblance between those prisoners, too weak to stand, and the posture of a Muslim performing sujud, the prayer position in which one prostrates with their face to the ground. The Muselmann was the one who had abandoned the core guidance for survival: to live long enough to witness the horror.
It is too easy to dismiss this as a mere circumstantial alliance — that Israel and the Western far right find common ground in Islamophobia, which has become the primary driving force of right-wing populism in Europe.
Supporting Israel as it openly commits genocide — and moreover, with the more or less open backing of democracies that dare not, in Israel’s case, speak of ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people — is, for them, a way to support Jews committing genocide. It serves to obscure the fact that only antisemitic ideology ultimately aims to turn the "other" — the marginalized, the displaced, the enemy — into Muselmänner.
This shatters a barrier that, solid since the end of World War II, had prevented us from once again descending into fascist horror. It is a way to ultimately relativize the Holocaust and return to systemic antisemitism, to “objective” xenophobia, to a completely unrestrained racist worldview — and, for fascist parties and ideas, a pathway to accessing power in Western countries.
The warning signs are not trivial: the reckless use of antisemitism accusations against the enemies of far-right supporters, Nazi salutes dismissed as “just a joke,” anti-woke rhetoric deployed as an anti-liberty stance, and consistent support for the "strong" in all global conflicts.
Now, Israel — whose creation was accelerated by the trauma and survival of Holocaust victims — is imposing a similar fate upon Palestinian, not by making them pray, but by driving them to abandon their humanity, their identity, and their will to live with dignity — and with it, their power to bear witness to the horror. To give itself free rein in its crimes, the Israeli government makes a pact with the ideological forces that have historically sought its destruction and that of the people it claims to represent. The Israeli government abandons the Muselmann of the camp, abandons its neighbor, and no longer testifies for those who can no longer speak.
This conference on antisemitism, organized by a state that no longer hides its descent into fascism and invites its like-minded counterparts — even though their ideological foundations were built on antisemitism — should thus not be taken lightly. This could mark a turning point whose consequences are difficult to predict.
