The Catechism Debate, also known as Historikerstreit 2.0, is a debate about German Holocaust remembrance initiated by Australian historian A. Dirk Moses with his 2021 essay "The German Catechism".[1] [2] In the debate, Moses challenges the uniqueness of the Holocaust.[2] In May through August of 2021, scholars reacted to Moses's thesis in the New Fascism Syllabus in a series of reflections curated by Jennifer V. Evans.[3]
The German Catechism, as it is outlined in Dirk Moses' article includes these five credal beliefs:[4]
Moses argues that going through a process of internalizing and confronting Holocaust exceptionalism was an important phase in the politics of memory in post-Nazi Germany that arose from historiographic, presentational and cultural breakthroughs in the 1980's, especially in the United States and eventually migrated into German consciousness in the 21st century. However, according to Moses' argument, this way of situating the Nazi Final Solution in relation to other genocides and mass-violence has become an impediment to thinking and investing in global justice and security because it makes slippery distinctions between what happened in the death camps and what happened in--for example--the colonies of the Global South during the period of European and American imperialism, what happened to Native Americans under the regime of manifest destiny, and can be an impediment to thinking clearly about the problems which now confront us in the Israel-Palestine conflict.
A variety of responses have registered in the discussion that arose in the wake of this proposal.