"It Happened Before and It Will Happen Again": On line User Comments as a Noncommemorative Site of Holocaust Remembrance

Abstract

By addressing the vernacular versus official memory dyad in collective memory studies, this article explores user comments on four Israeli news websites that covered the Iranian fi lm A Separation's (Asghar Farhadi, 2011) Academy Award win for best foreign language fi lm in 2012. Against the backdrop of Israeli-Iranian relations, this study focuses on the use of the Holocaust as an interpretive framework and new media users' construction of collective memory. Through qualitative analysis of user comments, I show how the memory of the Holocaust supports a circular narrative of Jewish history, intertwining past, present, and future events into a single metanarrative of persecution. The study also emphasizes how remembrance goes beyond intentionally commemorative practices, and questions the place of online platforms in enabling and constraining alternative and critical political discourses.