The Third Reich without the Holocaust : Climbers in Sweden and Austria explain history

• The article discusses the different national narratives about National Socialism and World War II within sports-related subcultures. Based on a recent debate in Swedish and Austrian media concerning the use of Nazi-related names and terminology in climbing routes, the authors analyze the influence of official memory politics on the "Grenzen des Sagbaren", the boundaries of what is utterable and its relation to the acceptableness of certain words, names and concepts connected to WWII within the context of leisure activities. The discourses show a process of separating WWII from the Holocaust and thereby depriving it of its moral and ethical implications. National Socialism becomes a cipher for a system that oppresses freedom of speech, its perpetrators are turned into metaphors of evil instead of protagonists of a widely spread ideology, and the Holocaust itself and its victims are basically ignored. Despite a general moral condemnation of National Socialism, especially in Sweden this dissociation provides a space for anti-semitic statements.

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Historia och arkeologi -- Historia (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- History and Archaeology -- History (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

politics of memory

anti-Semitism

Sweden

Austria

sport

discourse analysis

History

historia

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

art (ämneskategori)