The concentration camps are hell for a world whose heaven is a supermarket

The concentration camps are hell for a world whose heaven is a supermarket

"Why is this phrase unacceptable? Why does the leftist, forgetting everything we've just said, forgetting even Antelme whom he may have read, understand this as an odious comparison between a gas chamber and people queuing at Tesco's? Because, although he does not love supermarkets, he sees no horror in them. Just as he would like a democratic society with reduced wage differentials, he dreams of a consumer friendly shopping centre, with bicyle lanes, linking together the local community, displaying more educational CD-Roms than Barbie dolls, selling organic food and "fair" priced Bolivian coffee. In other words, commodity with a human face. For those who have no critique of the supermarket as a concentration of market relations and a place of overall deprivation, La Banquise's turn of phrase sounds weirdly paradoxical, even abominable."