Daniel Jonah Goldhagen (b. 1959), an internationally acclaimed author, public commentator, and academic, has devoted his scholarly endeavors to deepening public knowledge about genocide, specifically the Holocaust. He coined the term “eliminationism” to describe the political impulse that drives genocide, which served as a reciprocal influence with anti-Semitism during the Holocaust in the extermination of Jews.
Goldhagen is credited as the first scholar to attempt to tackle genocide as both a violation of humanity that cannot be ignored and a political problem that can be solved. Worse Than War: Genocide, Eliminationism, and the Ongoing Assault on Humanity (PublicAffairs 2009) – the title of a book and a feature-length documentary (PBS.org) – is Goldhagen’s gauntlet, meant to challenge the public’s assumptions about causes of genocide and inspire the political will to end eliminationism. Worse Than War, equally as ambitious as his earlier works on related subjects, calls attention to...
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Myers, R. (2011). Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah. In: Chatterjee, D.K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Global Justice. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9160-5_741
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