Twenty years ago this week, my book, IBM and the Holocaust, exposed—backed up by a tower of documentation— that IBM knowingly organized all six phases of the Holocaust: identification, exclusion, confiscation, ghettoization, deportation, and even extermination. All of this occurred under the micromanagement of IBM’s celebrated CEO, Thomas Watson, Sr., operating from his New York office on Madison Avenue, and later through European subsidiaries. In view of what IBM was able to accomplish on behalf of the Nazis prior to the era of the computer, the thought of what big tech can now do to surveil, censor, and control human lives is sobering indeed.
  • hellinkilla [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    20·
    7 days ago

    A while ago I looked this up because I thought it was very common knowledge and accepted history that IBM was key to the Holocaust. But I was talking to someone who didn’t think it was true. The wikipedia successfully confused me.

    Richard Bernstein, writing for The New York Times Book Review in 2001, pointed out that “many American companies did what I.B.M. did. … What then makes I.B.M. different?” He states that Black’s case in his book IBM and the Holocaust “is long and heavily documented, and yet he does not demonstrate that I.B.M. bears some unique or decisive responsibility for the evil that was done.”[8] IBM quoted this claim in a March 2002 “Addendum to IBM Statement on Nazi-era Book and Lawsuit,” after the publication of Black’s revised paperback edition:

    Mr. Black is asserting that IBM is withholding materials regarding this era in its archives. There is no basis for such assertions and we deplore the use of such claims to sell books.[9]

    I don’t find the argument “what makes IBM different?” very compelling. As it would seem they are saying that many capitalist organizations acted in furtherance of fascism when presented the opportunity. While true, it is hardly a defense.

    Is the denial about “withholding materials” a deflection? Surely an accusation like that would not be among the most serious…?

    I was overall surprised the extent to which this whole idea is attributed to a single author only since the 21st century. I haven’t actually read the book to learn what the claims are. But does anyone know if they are substantiated by the work of others, or well accepted among historians?

    (see also a fairly rare self reference IBM and the Holocaust > Wikipedia editing controversy)

    • TreadOnMe [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      17·
      7 days ago

      A better question is why you would take anything Richard Bernstein says seriously? He was literally one of the prime purveyors of the myth of ‘China killed hundreds of students in Tienamin Square’, plastering the claim throughout the New York Times and other newspaper publications without evidence for years, and crying ‘authoritarian cover-up’ when the historical evidence didn’t actually reveal his story to be true. As well, he was among the first liberal critics of ‘multiculturalism’ and was an obvious American exceptionalist.

      To this, I would suggest that Bernstein is knowing he is being flippant, as if he was a serious scholar (which he was not) and not just an Ivy League educated propagandist for the NYT rebranded as a ‘scrappy hard nosed truth teller’, he would know he is actually under the obligation to prove that other companies have just as much responsibility for the Holocaust as IBM. If he disagrees, he is under the obligation to provide sources for his disagreement. None of his 10 books actually address this issue, which means he did not. As such there is no reason to take his criticism as anything other than another flippant book review from the New York Crimes.