Holocaust denial: it’s catching
Baron Bodissey at Gates of Vienna has written a fascinating post comparing Iran’s President Ahmadinejad to Hitler.
Oh, I know; it’s become downright fashionable these days to compare all sorts of world leaders to Hitler–particularly President Bush. But Ahmadinejad really does exhibit parallels with Hitler, at least in his rhetoric, if not in his ability to fulfill that rhetoric by acquiring the vast territory Hitler conquered.
But the sad–and very ironic–fact is that it’s no longer necessary to have Hitler’s reach to be able to threaten a great number of Jews, due to the establishment of the state of Israel and the relative ease of acquiring nuclear weapons these days. Iran, of course, is very well-positioned geographically and militarily to represent a credible threat–if not now, then very soon.
Hitler had to go to great lengths to gather the Jews from their respective countries in Europe to murder them, but he was more than willing to make the effort. Today, however, thanks in great part to that effort of his, the Jews are more or less gone from Europe. They are also more or less gone from the Arab world, and from some of those non-Arab Moslem countries (such as, for example, Iran) in which they previously had a significant presence. Although Hitler didn’t accomplish this directly, he had an indirect effect, since the ending of the Jewish presence in some of these countries was a result of the establishment of the state of Israel, which probably would not have been approved by the UN but for his Holocaust.
The upshot of it all is that the Jewish population of the Old World is now largely concentrated within the tiny confines of Israel, and if Iran gains atomic weapons it would be far easier to exterminate those Jews than it was for Hitler, although the consequences could be even graver for the world, since Israel itself has a nuclear capacity.
It’s difficult to get the full flavor of how very important the extermination of the Jews was to Hitler. If you want to read about it in his own words and those of his confederates, here’s a good place to start. The following is a tiny sample:
I hope to see the very concept of Jewry completely obliterated. [1939]
Europe cannot find peace until the Jewish question has been solved. ”¦One thing I should like to say on this day [the sixth anniversary of his being appointed Chancellor of the Reich] which may be memorable for others as well as for us Germans. In the course of my life I have very often been a prophet and have usually been ridiculed for it. ”¦ Today I will once more be a prophet: if the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshivization of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe. [1941]
Even though I was born not too long after World War II, statements such as these had always seemed to me to come from a far-off place and time–medieval and dark and very distant. Hitler was like some bogeyman or ogre in a fairy tale, shouting, “Fee fie foe fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman!.” In my lifetime, we already knew how WWII had ended–with Hitler vanquished, shamed and dead by his own hand, just as in the fairy tale the ogre perishes and the beautiful princess and prince (or, alternatively, the brave but humble peasant hero) are triumphant and live happily ever after.
But of course in recent years that happy delusion of mine that this was only “once upon a time,” long ago and far away, has been revealed as just that: a delusion. Many theories have been advanced over the years for the strange and enduring phenomenon known as anti-Semitism, but the one constant is that it is relatively constant, cropping up over and over in varied guises and locations, waxing and waning rhythmically, but always reliably present.
So the words of Iran’s President no longer surprise me with their resemblance to Hitlerian rantings. And it’s no surprise, either, that one of Ahmadinejad’s themes is Holocaust denial, although one would think it could just as easily be Holocaust approval.
Holocaust denial, always reprehensible, is somehow more understandable in Europeans than in someone such as Ahmadinejad. After all, Europe bears more of the guilt for the Holocaust; therefore it stand to reason that Europeans would have more motivation to want to wash their hands of any association with the Holocaust by declaring it a fabrication of those wily and nefarious Jews.
But Holocaust denial has spread to Arab countries, and of course to Iran. The reasons are not completely clear, but it seems to go with the territory of anti-Semitism itself. After all, if one desires to hate Jews and to blame them for all manner of evil, and at the same time one imagines there’s a need to be sympathetic to victims (and to elevate the Palestinians as victims extraordinaire), then the Jews have to be discredited as victims. They must have no sympathy whatsoever in order to become the villains of the piece. And to do that one must deny that the Holocaust ever occurred–so that their re-victimhood may be safely contemplated, and with a clear conscience.
It’s a sad and not-too-well-known fact that the development of virulent anti-Semitism in the Arab world, a 20th century phenomenon (which Iran now seems to have “caught”), was in fact a direct result of Nazi influence in the Middle East during the 30s (see this book by Bernard Lewis on the subject). So the resemblance noted by Baron Bodissey is not so strange, after all: Nazi propaganda is probably the underlying source of this sort of thing–both in the Arab world and, by a sort of contagious spread, in Iran.
Holocaust denial carries a special burden and irony for Holocaust survivors. The incredible Primo Levi, whose autobiographical book Survival in Auschwitz constitutes what I consider an indispensable work on the subject of the Holocaust, indicated as much. (By the way, if you haven’t read it, I recommend it highly; his lucid and comprehensive essays read as though the most brilliant of sociologists had been sent to the death camps for the express purpose of studying them and writing about them with great clarity and insight.)
I don’t have Levi’s book in front of me as I write this, so I have to rely on my memory. But my recollection is that among the many nefarious Nazi mindgames that Levi chronicles was the following: those in charge would taunt the inmates of the camps by saying that none of them would survive to tell the tale, and that therefore the world would never know. Furthermore, they would add that, even if by some strange chance some did survive and tried to tell, they would not be believed.
So it seems that the Nazis may have understood about the possibilities of Holocaust denial. However, they still tried as best they could in the waning days of World War II to destroy the evidence of the camps as the Allied armies advanced. But they were unsuccessful; they ran out of time.
The Allies who liberated the camps made some documentary films of the horrors they found there, because they felt the need to prove what had happened. Some of these films were shown at the Nuremberg trial and some were shown in movie theaters of the time:
General Dwight D. Eisenhower anticipated that future generations might find it hard to believe the horror that they found when Nazi Germany was liberated by the Allies. He ordered that both the Ohrdruf camp and the Buchenwald camp be preserved for several weeks in the state in which they were found and German civilians in nearby towns were forced to visit the camps to view the piles of rotting bodies. American soldiers, newspaper reporters and Congressmen were also called in as witnesses to the Nazi atrocities. But it was the British who had the biggest impact on the public conscience when they released their newsreel film of Bergen-Belsen to movie theaters around the world in the last days of the war.
Of course, all that the liberating Allied soldiers saw was the end result of the death and work camps, not the functioning things themselves. Most of the Bergen-Belsen deaths they found were from a rampant typhus epidemic, for example; the death camp apparatus of most of the camps were no longer in operation by the time the Allies arrived, having been fairly recently abandoned. All that was left was whatever records the Germans themselves had kept, the physical evidence (the ovens, for example), and the stories of the survivors, who represented only an infinitesimal fraction of the number who had been killed outright.
Eishenhower was indeed prescient when he anticipated that future generations might find it hard to believe the horror of the Holocaust. He did what he could to document it. But the need to deny seems to be stronger for many people than the evidence (when I was Googling to find information about the films of the camps, for example, a plethora of Holocaust denial sites came up).
Some deny, I suppose, because they don’t want to believe such horrors are possible. But many deniers have a different purpose for their denial, and it’s a Hitlerian one, I’m afraid: to demonize the Jews once again, and to try to pick up where he left off in their annihilation.
This is why I can’t believe the Bush Administration is stupidly supporting the current Iraqi government, run by the Iran-allied United Iraqi Alliance and defended by their thuggish Shiite militias. We’re essentially delivering Iran and all its resources into the hands of Iran!
FOrtunately, because Iran isn’t allied with the Iraqi government (that would be due to the fact that Iraq is allied to the US), there isn’t much of a problem in the future.
The claim that the Iraqi government is allied to Iran is just plain untrue. Anyone that understood political realities and national security would also understand that if they thought hard enough about them.
Of the genocide in Rwanda, Anon said: “In short, it’s not murder if you kill someone who is trying to kill you.”
I think that’s the definition of self defense.
In legal definition, that is a claim to self-defense, that is not the de facto condition of self-defense in reality. Just because people percieve the other would attack, doesn’t mean their perception is either true or reasonable.
The facts as he presented them have been proven to be wrong.
Perceptions are not facts, and it is still true that it is very plausible they percieved a threat that didn’t really exist, and launched a first strike because of it. Anyone familiar with the human psychological aspects of the Cold War would understand the logic of that.
If we knew or even thought that Russia would launch their first strike against us, and our retaliation abilities would be destroyed soon, we would have no choice but to attack now. Even if that means attacking FIRST.
Finding out you were wrong at the end, when the world is afire, doesn’t really change the fact of the situation back then. Nor does it change the responsibility afterwards.
Facts are also not reconfigurable based upon hindsight either.
When I pointed out that they were provably wrong, he then produced some other revised facts which were also wrong.
Logically, that is not what happened.
To characterize it in an easier to understand, manner. Look at it like this.
It is not provably wrong that America thought we were going to be attacked, if you point out with hindsight that there were no plans by Russia to attack America. That is because there are two disparate facts, and you can only disprove one of them, not both with the same thing.
What Anony did, as any logical analysis would show, is to show using reason, that there need not be a factual threat for there to be a factual perception of a threat.
That reasoning is both acceptable and not very controversial.
Why you don’t seem to see that, is of course unknown.
You can’t understand the nature of human depravity if you’re basing them on wishful thinking, fantasy or revisionism.
There’s nothing revisionist about sound reasoning.
Look at it this way. If you say, using hindsight, that America did not see a threat when America did see a threat, isn’t that revisionism?
Just because you see something today, does that mean it automatically means back in the day they would have seen the same thing?
Isn’t revisionism defacto using hindsight to automatically assume that people in history would have known the same information and should have acted the same, when in reality people in history did not have the same information as we do and therefore did not act the same?
As my first post said, the facts of a Tutsi slaughter is not inconsistent with a percieved threat of annihilation and decision to first strike by the Hutusi as reasoned by Anon.
You should give that more of your attention, rather than who is or is not a holocaust supporter.
Sadly, and ironically, the Bernard Lewis you refer to and whom vitruvius describes as dispassionate and scholarly, has, on repeated ocassions, denied another great tragedy of the 20th century: the Armenian genocide. A simple lesson that nobody, but really nobody is immune to awful moral failures.
http://users.ids.net/~gregan/lemd_eng.html
Mircion
So what would you have Bush do, Hal? Put an end to any hope of democracy in Iraq, rather than risk the Iraqis choosing
a government that isn’t perfectly secular? Install a US puppet dictator, rather than take any chance that women’s suffrage would have to travel the same long road it did in the American republic?
I think Bush would rather let the Iraqis decide what to do with democracy, than try to force them into any preconcieved mold. I know I would.
” The first concentrated attack on the Jews was from allah/mohammed in 7th century arabia”
No, it wasn’t Heloise. Jews were under concentrated attack well before that– from the Assyrians, the Babylonians, and of course from the Romans under Hadrian, who brutalized the Jewish people worse than Hitler. The Holocaust in the 1930s, moreover, wasn’t the first time the Jewish people had been singled out for specific attack in Europe. During the Crusades, Jewish communities were utterly and systematically annihilated in Italy, England and France (a period when Jews and Muslims were ironically on the same side, targeted by Christian bigots). The Iranian nuts like Ahmedinejad are only the latest addle-heads to blame their own problems on the Jews and single the Jewish people out. This is nothing new.
“You can’t understand the nature of human depravity if you’re basing them on wishful thinking, fantasy or revisionism.”
I agree 100% with this, and this is one of the reasons why genocides and mass murders tend to recur so stubbornly– people always try to claim that the Nazis were somehow aliens, inhuman, that something like their level of genocide could never, ever occur anywhere else. Utter crap. Human nature is capable of genocide through and through, and what happened at the hands of the Nazis was neither unique nor unprecedented nor– for that matter– unlikely to happen again. It’s unfortunately part of the dark human potential to not only identify with one’s tribe, but to hate the other tribes that one considers as competition, so much so that not even the innocents are spared.
It’s even worse when the genocide is committed almost out of sheer contempt. The Belgians killed something like 10 million Africans in the late 1800’s, people who were considered worthless outside of their ability to mine copper. Around the same time, the British slaughtered over 35 million Indians in the decades after the war of Indian Independence in 1857– cut down or seized the farms, executed people in entire villages en masse, even sent millions of Indians to Auschwitzes and concentration camps of their own on the outlying islands in the Indian Ocean. (The British, at the same time, were wrapping up their other genocide against the Tasmanians and other Aussie aborigies.) In the US of course, there’s the little matter of the Native Americans and the many massacres that did, regrettably, occur against them. Hitler had many models to choose from.
The thing is, I tend to see the Jewish people as sort-of canaries in the coal mine, as some wit once suggested. They seem to be especially vulnerable to hatred and envy as you all have posted here (and believe me, I’m seeing a lot of this even in the US these days). If the Jews are being attacked and vilified, you know that thoughts of genocide are in the air (Hitler, after all, targeted quite a few other groups for destruction as well).
All I can say is– I really don’t think that anybody in the world should be owning nuclear weapons, at least no more than a couple here and there to deter an outright invasion. Human beings just aren’t smart or rational enough to control the nukes. The US and Russia still point nukes at each other and we’ve come close to zapping each other over mistakes on more than one occasion– I wouldn’t be surprised if the US and Russia do wipe each other out in the next couple decades despite end of the Cold War. And these are the two countries with the most mature, carefully-controlled nuclear weapons systems. If Iran gets the bomb, the jig is up– we’re f***ed. It’s bad enough that India and Pakistan have nukes, IMHO those two countries may well be in for some nasty nuclear surprises pretty soon. But Iran? Especially if there’s a square-off between a nuclear Iran and Israel, the whole world’s in for a lot of pain. This is why I can’t believe the Bush Administration is stupidly supporting the current Iraqi government, run by the Iran-allied United Iraqi Alliance and defended by their thuggish Shiite militias. We’re essentially delivering Iran and all its resources into the hands of Iran!
Not really, but then the only people I heard saying Rwanda was about self-defense comes from you, Mary.
Of the genocide in Rwanda, Anon said: “In short, it’s not murder if you kill someone who is trying to kill you.”
I think that’s the definition of self defense.
Anon also said:
“Yes, their response was barbaric, but they had every reason to believe a genocidal attack from the Tutsi was under way, and they carried out their own genocide first.”
The facts as he presented them have been proven to be wrong. When I pointed out that they were provably wrong, he then produced some other revised facts which were also wrong. We can debate about his intentions, but that doesn’t change the fact that his analysis is based on false information, and is therefore useless and most possibly biased.
You can’t understand the nature of human depravity if you’re basing them on wishful thinking, fantasy or revisionism. If you base your actions and tactics on revised or false information, you won’t win.
Genocide and war are two different issues,
Regardless of whether they are or they are not, they are perpetrated by humans. We are humans just like Rwandans, Nazis, Jews, and Palestinians.
Regardless of the massacres of a genocide, it doesn’t mean that they are fundamentally different in nature that cannot be compared and contrasted however.
So using the normal laws of war, you can indeed apply it to what happened in Rwanda to get a clearer understanding. I don’t mean laws de jure, but laws de facto. The Laws of Human Nature that operates in the Chaos of War.
‘Know thy enemy’, isn’t a Hail Mary to cleanse your soul. But the simple matter of predicting a foe and defeating him.
The same human nature that controls the chaos of war also may be used to predict the actions in Rwanda. There are no fundamental differences. Genocide and War are called different names, but so are War and Politics, but they are not fundamentally different.
And I don’t think that it makes the points invalid, the points of congruence between the two, without providing a very good reason for that belief.
In the end, just because there is genocide and then there is war to describe certain events, does not mean that they stop being human events explainable by human causes, fears, and motivations.
He’s not explaining history, he’s revising it, as David Irving, David Duke and Noam Chomsky do every day.
I’m sorry, but I’ve read his accounts, and I don’t detect that. What I do detect, and I say this with no real personal malice, is that you became angry at a different point of view and associated it other points of view you were angry about. One of the things that Generals have to learn is not to fight the last war, but to adapt to the conditions of the current war. And to do so, they must overcome their petty prejudices and dislikes of the enemy. Because such emotions will cloud the proper analysis of an enemy General, and thereby increase the chances of ultimate defeat. Just because you think he sounds like these other morally reprehensible people, is not a justification to treat him the same way.
One of the reasons why I went into such detailed study of the nature of man is because of the weird irrational episodes I saw on the internet, when debating. Such irratinal episodes are rarely intellectual exercises in point and counter-point. Aggression and confronting the enemies of the United States are things I don’t shy away from, but you also have to learn how to discipline those things too.
According to nearly every source (other than “Anonymous”, of course) the French government and the Hutu militias worked together to slaughter an entire group of innocent civilians.
Again, that isn’t inconsistent with a perceived threat by the Hutu, of Tutsi first strikes.
I’m not saying Anon was right about the Hutu’s intentions, but it also doesn’t mean I’m angry that the Hutus might have had human justifications. Since they are human, and the French being what they are, it is not really surprising to me if what Anon said were true. Or even if they were not.
They killed them, not because of what they did, but because of who they were.
Now you’re offering their intentions. What evidence and justifications do you have to back that up? Anon uses classical war psychology to back up his statements, ones which sound good to me. If you believe something different, challenge his arguments and the arguments of human nature with your own.
Not only would that make communication easier, but it also helps people form stronger beliefs about previously held ones that were just murky and indefinable.
Genocide is not synonymous with war.
No, but then neither is it radically different. So you can’t say that someone saying it was a war and analyzing it like it was one, is so wrong you’ll call him a knucklehead for it.
It is always synonymous with authoritarian or totalitarian forms of government.
I’m not a real favorite of Occam’s Razor, but I’ll use it just this once.
Never ascribe human actions to actual malice, when sheer stupidity is a much more plausible and simpler explanation. Pol Pot didn’t want the city people to all die, he just didn’t care so long as he got them to farm. And Pot didn’t know how to do it any other way.
Human stupidity is probably easier in totalitarian governments to see, because no one has the guts to tell the leader NO when he says something stupid he is about to do.
The idea that an organized, armed group would slaughter hundreds of thousands of innocent, unarmed civilians in self defense, when no war had been officially declared, is absurd to say the least.
You should not use the word “self-defense” with moral connotations. That is extremely false and misleading. Because if you go back to Anon’s first post, the only place he used the word self-defense was in the context of the Nazis. And he was clearly using it to subtly show how that justification was too weak to offer any real protection to the Nazis in their death camps.
So his position is not the one you describe it as.
I don’t have a personal stake in either Mary or Anon’s position, but this kind of gross malfeasance just can’t be toleranted by any intellectually honest person, I tell ya.
Does that sound like self-defense?
Not really, but then the only people I heard saying Rwanda was about self-defense comes from you, Mary.
There are no recognized treatises of war that would recognize these tactics as legitimate.
You miss the fact that there are definitely treatises of war that explain the motivations. Whether you call Rwanda war or genocide, doesn’t really matter when human motivations are human motivations.
The Rwandan genocide, preplanned though it may have been, was not carried out in cold blood. The Holocaust, on the other hand, was, and that, if you could pause in your breathless denunciations long enough to look back, was my original point.
Concerning Anon’s original point.
The Rwanda incident, by reading Mary’s quotes, sounds a lot like a slave rebellion with the promise that their actions will not be retaliated by the international community. And just as brutal, if not more so as slave rebellions have been historically. They must have trusted the French to protect them, as Saddam did. But in this context, that meant that the only retaliation the Hutus expected would be from the blood tribes that they overthrew. So in a tribalistic sense, in which blood feuds occur forever and ever, it then makes real sense to destroy every man, woman, and child of the opposition. If they knew that the US would drop a nuke on their arse if we ever found out about any systematic genocides, they would not have done so. If Saddam knew we’d kick his ass back to Iraq, he wouldn’t have invaded Kuwaitt. Human nature is predictable, because it is constant and everyone has it.
The control of the state, then can be seen in the light of consolidating control after a coup. But without the institutions of security and justice, the Rwandans go back to their tribalistic hatreds and violence and depravities. They must have seen the need to eliminate all opposition, or the opposition would never forgive what they had done and would seek to end them. To understand is not to forgive, nor is forgiveness understanding.
I remember the guy who held Michael Durant prisoner, the actor in Black Hawk Down, who said the lines “Do you think anything will be different, when you leave”? Nothing was different when we pulled out of Somalia, because they knew and we knew it at the same time. If we were not willing to make Somalia part of the US tribe and sphere of control, then they would just have to fight to determine their own destiny. I feel regret, but that doesn’t mean I don’t recognize the facts of reality. People do what they have to do, people learn solutions from the environment around them, and their environment is the most savage in all of the world.
If anyone wonders how I can consider the point of view of rapists, power mongers, thugs, and barbarians so clearly and without emotion, then there is something you must understand. If your duty is to the Constitution of the United States of America and the people, to protect them from foreign and domestic enemies, how could you do your duty without understanding the enemies out there? And could you understand those enemies if you were bilnded by disgust, hate, or fear? Those emotions are nothing but burdens. They provide no benefit to the intellect other than an increase in determination. Or lessening of it. Many good people have been conditioned by fake liberals to scorn “understanding the root causes” or “looking at it from the victim’s POV”, but I’m telling you right now, if you don’t do those things and do them right, you won’t win.
Without a proper understanding of the enemy, you could not find their weak spots. And you cannot understand the enemy without understanding your own nature, the nature that you will always share with these genocidaires. Their Abyss is yours, and until you look in it and It looks back, you will never be confident enough to know that you can resist the lure of the savage human soul.
The difference between a barbarian and a United States Marine warrior is that the warrior has a duty and an oath he will never break while the barbarian is beholden to nothing but his personal lusts and power. In all other matters, they are very similar. Both are savage, both will do whatever it takes to survive/accomplish the mission. Both are hardened to pain and hardship, both are superior individual fighters. The difference, slight as it may seem in their natures, makes all the difference in the world between what is known as the United States Marine Corps and the Hutu tribesman.
The more one understands about the nature of human depravity, the more they seek to protect the only Institution on Earth that has a chance to defeat it, America. Pity those who have no hope that America will save them in their lifetimes, because their lives are living Hells.But those people won’t be saved by giving into human nature instead of harnessing it.
In every US state, there is a recognized difference between murders committed in the grip of great emotion (anger, fear, etc.) and murders committed in the absence of such emotions, legally termed murder in cold blood.
In states with the death penalty, it usually means the difference between life without parole, and a date with the needle.
The Rwandan genocide, preplanned though it may have been, was not carried out in cold blood. The Holocaust, on the other hand, was, and that, if you could pause in your breathless denunciations long enough to look back, was my original point.
Much of what he says, Mary, does make sense. Wars happen cause of perceptions, it really doesn’t matter if those perceptions are accurate or not. But explaining the causes, also doesn’t mean people are excusing them.
I really don’t think you should be insulting people that have shown an excellent understanding of war and the treatise of war.
Ymarsakar, I usually agree with most of your comments, but I have to disagree here. Genocide and war are two different issues, and ‘Anonymous’ description of the events is at odds with every other source available. He’s not explaining history, he’s revising it, as David Irving, David Duke and Noam Chomsky do every day.
Analyst Rudy Rummel calls incidents like the Rwandan Genocide democide, not war or self defense.. According to nearly every source (other than “Anonymous”, of course) the French government and the Hutu militias worked together to slaughter an entire group of innocent civilians. They killed them, not because of what they did, but because of who they were.
Communism is responsible for more than 100 million deaths, and very few of those deaths were the result of war. Genocide is not synonymous with war. It is always synonymous with authoritarian or totalitarian forms of government.
The idea that an organized, armed group would slaughter hundreds of thousands of innocent, unarmed civilians in self defense, when no war had been officially declared, is absurd to say the least.
According to Human Rights watch:
By late March 1994, Hutu Power leaders were determined to slaughter massive numbers of Tutsi and Hutu opposed to Habyarimana, both to rid themselves of these “accomplices” and to shatter the peace agreement. They had soldiers and militia ready to attack the targeted victims in the capital and in such outlying areas as Cyangugu in the southwest, Gisenyi in the northwest and Murambi in the northeast. But elsewhere they had not completed the arrangements. In the center of the country, they had successfully disseminated the doctrine of Hutu Power, but they were unsure how many ordinary people would transform that ideology into action. In other areas, particularly in the south, they had not won large numbers of supporters to the idea, far less organized them to implement it.
This was before Habyarimana’s assasination.
More from Human rights watch:
The genocide was not a killing machine that rolled inexorably forward but rather a campaign to which participants were recruited over time by the use of threat and incentives. The early organizers included military and administrative officials as well as politicians, businessmen, and others with no official posts. In order to carry through the genocide, they had to capture the state, which meant not just installing persons of their choice at the head of the government, but securing the collaboration of other officials throughout the system…
..By mid-May, the authorities ordered the final phase, that of tracking down the last surviving Tutsi. They sought to exterminate both those who had hidden successfully and those who had been spared thus far–like women and children–or protected by their status in the community, like priests and medical workers. As the RPF advanced through the country, assailants also hurried to eliminate any survivors who might be able to testify about the slaughter.
Throughout the genocide, Tutsi women were often raped, tortured and mutilated before they were murdered.
Does that sound like self-defense?
As Andre Glucksman said:
Wherever you go, this belligerent [genocidal, terroristic] hubris is considered lethal. In the huts of the Amazon, young men are taught to conquer this capacity for excessive violence. You can fight together, but you cannot fight in any way that comes to hand, and you don’t set out to fight just anyone. The same idea occurs in the teachings of the Greeks, the paidera. All European education is based on the same principle.
War and genocide are entirely separate issues. Genocide often occurs during what the UN would call “peace”, entirely within the borders of a nation that is not aggressive towards its neighbors.
Claiming genocide in self-defense is just plain sick. There are no recognized treatises of war that would recognize these tactics as legitimate. There are very few genocidaires who would have the gall to claim that they acted in self-defense. I’m not sure why this Anonymous person is defending the genocidaires who know enough not to try to defend themselves, but an apologist for genocide (and a revisionist) deserves no respect.
To Tom Grey and others associated, and the rather unpleasant brawl about Rwanda. Please skip to the end of this post for Rwanda, I feel you won’t be disappointed.
The “crime” of not accepting their children marrying a non-Jew doesn’t justify any action at all. But it does mean the Jews are not quite completely innocent–they were racist first, without being willing to fight to the death for their own country.
Some were willing to fight to the death for their own country. But of course, there were not enough of them to make a difference. Their hardworking traits, inherited perhaps, also made them superior fighters. As you can witness in the IDF. But the problem I see, is that the majority, the middle class Jews, that represented the decision making weren’t like that. They weren’t willing to shed blood, kill their enemies, and etc. They were happy being shop keepers, bankers, usurialists, until the night the Nazis came for them and shattered their glass covered dreams.
I wouldn’t call the Jewish behavior “racism” really, but I would certainly term it rather xenophobic. How else to explain Jewish ghettoes? It wasn’t other people making the Jews into ghettoes cause they hated them. The Jews themselves asked for the ghettoes, to be separated from others. How in God’s Green Earth could a people expect to rise in a society, and also be kept apart from that society? Of course that breeds resentment, hatreds, and petty jealousy. When a Pakistani has never met or spoken to an America, do you really expect a mjaority of them to hold positive impressions of us? Of course not, which is why the polls in Pakistan jumped 25% in favor of Americans after they saw our aid workers and military help them after the Quakes.
The Jews didn’t have to go into Israel for safety from future genocide. All they had to do was to go to America. We would have kept them safe, as they knew it when we liberated the death camps. But they didn’t, most didn’t in fact. Why? Xenophobia, not a rational reason at all, just an instinct. It must have been. Going to Israel was a religious ideological decision, a hope and a dream, the ultimate “ghettoe” as I heard it mentioned here before. But most people would want safety for their children first, rather than zealotry. But the Jews are different. The same hardworking traits and religious faith that makes them superior bankers and workers, also makes them blind to their own shortcomings and irrationalities.
If I was a Jew, fresh from a concentration camp, I would have done my best to move to America and stay there. Forever. That was the smart thing to do. It is not as if Israel would have survived without American help anyways, and it isn’t as if we benefit a lot by having Israel in the ME either. Whole reason why we went to Iraq. Cause Israel wasn’t drawing in the Arabs. Don’t know why they didn’t build a wall in the first place… Did they think that being a nation would accord them respect and love? They didn’t understand the nature of a Jew. What is the nature of a man?
ews from the dark ages (post Muhammad) were required to wear black baggy clothing, strange cloaks, remove their shoes when passing mosques, were beaten at the pleasure of passing muslims, had to make obeisance when passing casbahs, and on and on…
I really don’t think Islam singled out the Jews for special treatment, I rather think that if you look at history, they treated all infidels about the same way.
Let me guess: a paraphrase from “Der Stuermer,” 1936, special edition: “10 easy ways to tell a Jew from an American.”
Holy David Duke.
Never read that book.
But the Grand Wizard of the Klu Klux Klan did had some Jacksonian leanings. But we phased racism out a long time ago. Jacksonianism version 5.6 now, please get updated ASAP.
Good night and good luck. God I wish Bush could have said that at the end of one his speeches decrying the media’s anti-American efforts. His approval rating would have jumped up by another 10%.
I hope I haven’t offended anybody dishonestly.
Most intellectually honest people, who are open minded and don’t have an axe to grind, probably wouldn’t be offended. You will offend the people who are dishonest however. But I never worry about those Jeffersonians anyway. They wouldn’t know a Jacksonian Nuclear Bombardment if it hit them on their arse.
They love Cindy Sheehan too. Wonder why.
Cause she is free, white, and 21?
I remember the incident – the bombing, and the remarks that followed. Unlike Ms. Malter, I think the Prime Minister said exactly what he thought. Oh, not that he wished to say it in a public way, of course not. But I believe it is the belief of Jew-Haters that Jews are ‘Guilty’.
This is why Jacksonians like me are so distrustful of the French when they start acting “Complex” and “nuanced” and “diplomatic”. They wouldn’t know how to do those things if we injected it into them.
Jews have a reputation for helping “their own”. So do other ethnic and religious groups, but the Jews are the ones who have remained in existence for millenia as a recognizable group.
The only other congruent group I can think of are the Gypsies. They were as much hated as the Jews, and for much of the same reasons.
Judaism is not about blood. Anyone on earth, from any race, can (and has) become a Jew. It is about membership in both a religion and what’s called a “people”. You will find Jews of all racial backgrounds.
We probably will. But that doesn’t change the fact about the Jew’s “special insularity”. Even people who don’t see the Jews in the light I do or Jacksonians do, notice this trait you know. It isn’t made up.
Are you the same anonymous who claimed that the Hutus (and their allies, the French) committed genocide in self-defense? You have to be. There can’t be two.
Much of what he says, Mary, does make sense. Wars happen cause of perceptions, it really doesn’t matter if those perceptions are accurate or not. But explaining the causes, also doesn’t mean people are excusing them.
I really don’t think you should be insulting people that have shown an excellent understanding of war and the treatise of war. We need far more of them than we have currently.
It certainly isn’t the worst name I’ve been called.
I’m sure it isn’t. You seem have more interest in Rwanda than most. Have you ever been there?
Well, if knowing that Rwanda didn’t just spring into existence on April 6, 1994, makes me a chucklehead, then a chucklehead I will have to be.
It certainly isn’t the worst name I’ve been called.
The Hutu, for their part, saw the assassination of their president as a first strike by the Tutsis against them. They, too, remembered the Tutsis’ 1990 war against them, and chose this time to act in the face of another attack that, in fact, was never even planned.
Are you the same anonymous who claimed that the Hutus (and their allies, the French) committed genocide in self-defense? You have to be. There can’t be two.
Genocidaires and holocaust deniers tend to be a chuckleheaded bunch – it takes a special mentality to guiltlessly slaughter thousands of unarmed innocents, or to make lame excuses for those who do – but very few are chuckleheaded enough to claim that these monstrous acts were done in self defense.
Anonymous, you are a rare breed. Thank goodness.
“First strike implies that an enemy is prepared for a fight. If the Tutsis were planning a first strike, they would be organized, prepared and well-armed They weren’t.”
And there we get into the difference between “perception” and “reality.” The Tutsis never had any intention of attacking the Hutus. Nor did they think the Hutus would attack them, because they had demonstrated their power in 1990 when they massacred the Hutus with smaller numbers but better weapons. Plus, they had UN troops to protect them. They very likely felt that the Hutu would at least wait until the UN investigated the president’s assassination, an investigation that was certain to exonerate them.
But the Hutu didn’t wait, and the UN troops bailed out on their promise to keep the peace, even going so far as to gather up Tutsi refugees with promises of shelter, and then hand them over to the first armed Hutu mob they saw.
The Hutu, for their part, saw the assassination of their president as a first strike by the Tutsis against them. They, too, remembered the Tutsis’ 1990 war against them, and chose this time to act in the face of another attack that, in fact, was never even planned. The Hutu militias were untrained civilians, not regular troops, and so instead of a military assault, they launched a nationwide vigilante riot. By the time it even occurred to the blood-crazed
mobs that the Tutsi would not have been so easily overwhelmed if they had been planning to attack them, they had already killed all the Tutsis and “traitor” Hutus they could find.
To Tom Grey:
Judaism is not about blood. Anyone on earth, from any race, can (and has) become a Jew. It is about membership in both a religion and what’s called a “people”. You will find Jews of all racial backgrounds.
A traditional Jew such as Tevye in “Fiddler” wanted his daughters to marry a Jew, just as traditionally a Catholic would have wanted his daughter to marry a Catholic, and on and on around the world for religious groups.
In fact, the so-called “Old Testament” contains a very clear statement on adoption into the group of an outsider willing to be so adopted, that of the story of Ruth. Ruth is a convert who decides to become a member of the Jewish nation, and is revered. She also is the ancestor of King David.
I followed the Amazon link to take a gander at Lewis’s book, “Semites and Anti-Semites: An Inquiry into Conflict and Prejudice”. In my present poverty-stricken circumstances, I will have to wait to buy a copy, but I did find the reviews interesting.
Among them was this one, by Jill Malter: “Violence is often linked to propaganda, incitement, and biased perceptions of others. That is why I think Lewis was right to begin his book by giving an example of a bomb that was exploded in 1980 in Paris, at a synagogue. As Lewis explains, the French Prime Minister said, “They aimed at the Jews and they hit innocent Frenchmen.” Now that is clearly not the way he meant to say it. But the implication that to some extent, many French people view the Jews as neither French nor innocent is worth investigating.”
I remember the incident – the bombing, and the remarks that followed. Unlike Ms. Malter, I think the Prime Minister said exactly what he thought. Oh, not that he wished to say it in a public way, of course not. But I believe it is the belief of Jew-Haters that Jews are ‘Guilty’.
Of what? Well, just about everything! Because of the special insularity of Jewish people wherever they live, they are easy targets for Conspiritorialists.
Jews have a reputation for helping “their own”. So do other ethnic and religious groups, but the Jews are the ones who have remained in existence for millenia as a recognizable group.
Thus ‘they’ control the finances of the World, they control the publishing houses of the World, they control everything. So when anything goes wrong it is the Jews that we can easily point to as the culprits.
Takes a load off our minds that we aren’t responsible. It wasn’t our poor choices in life that made this mess, it must be the Jews’s fault!
Such easy targets to hate and blame. And with such small numbers, so easy to kill. Denial, thus, is simple. We prefer to disbelieve something as ugly as the “Holocaust”. We can sit back, in polite company, agree with our peers that the “Holocaust” was a terrible thing, all the while in our minds we may well be thinking, “If it happened. Only If it happened.”
All the decrying of the Holocaust Denyers statements amount to little. Because so many of us simply will not allow ourselves to see the facts. So in our own way, many of us are denyers as well.
Perhaps the ugly statements of Iran’s latest leader would not worry me so much if I didn’t know that much of the world agreed with him.
SCA was dead on, too. After all, genocide is easy if the group is small enough.
Jeezz, did this ramble enough? Sorry about that!
The Holacaust occured!!! And to think that humanity let it happen.
They love Cindy because she said something negative about Israel, which is ALMOST always really about jooooos, as MLK made clear.
Make no mistake, the bigotry on this issue is not that people are upset with jewish people because of what Israel does, it is because Israel is full of jewsih people.
What the nazis had to say about jewish people merely is consonant with what, according Islam, Muhammad and the lord said…ie. The Stone and Tree, and Apes and Pigs.
Put each in quotes and google.
The nazis did NOT create modern arab anti semitism, they merely were convienient allies against those god condemned and as ardent muslims must made dhimmis or killed, or driven into Dar Al Harb.
Actually, here where I live (US) there are active white supremacist groups who hate just about everybody.
They don’t hate the Palestinians, the ‘insurgents’ or the fascists in Syria. They love Cindy Sheehan too. Wonder why.
They do hate Bush and the Republicans.
Doesn’t seem to be an inconsistency in dead Tutsis and a first strike against the Tutsis to prevent a Tutsis first strike.
First strike implies that an enemy is prepared for a fight. If the Tutsis were planning a first strike, they would be organized, prepared and well-armed They weren’t.
If the Tutsis were planning a first strike, they wouldn’t have been killed by the hundreds of thousands. They were.
Y, the anti-hybridization of Jews is almost certainly a signficant issue:
“They would be, but in the last 2 thousand years or so, they’ve been making pretty sure that their blood wasn’t diluted and spread around so as to “hybridize” the Jews out of existence.
This focus on blood, not an American theme, is what keeps anti-Semitism alive and kicking.”
In fact, Jews are racists. (Def: not wanting your daughter to “marry one of them“)
The Fiddler on the Roof renounces his own daughter when she would rather marry for love than for (Jewish-only) blood.
It is very strange that only the Y chromosome is passed down from father to son to granson; all others, like a woman’s X, are a mix. (A woman has XX; x1 from mother, x2 from father. Each egg has one x3, which is a combination of x1 & x2, not a copy of either).
Genetic tracking shows high purity among Jews, indicating there WAS a common “Abraham” ancestor of “all” Jews. And, since Jewishness is supposed to be passed by the women, the purity (95%?) indicates a huge amount of faithfulness.
Smart. Hardworking. Faithful. No wonder the Jews are usually economically successful; like foreign Chinese wherever.
Racist: unwilling to accept their daughters not marrying (the inferior) non-Jews. This small true “injustice/ intolerance” by the Jews, is rationalized to justify the hysterical Jew-hatred by the racist anti-Semites.
The “crime” of not accepting their children marrying a non-Jew doesn’t justify any action at all. But it does mean the Jews are not quite completely innocent–they were racist first, without being willing to fight to the death for their own country.
I condemn the Hitler like anti-Semitism, and do NOT condemn the Jewish mild racism. But I do try to name it honestly, and occassionally point it out.
I actually think “Jews” are, on average, intellectually superior; and think most people think this. But it’s not PC to talk about it.
I hope I haven’t offended anybody dishonestly.
Y wrote:
“There would be no anti-Semitism if you couldn’t tell a Jew from an African, an American, a European.
But you can, and it’s pretty easy too…”
Let me guess: a paraphrase from “Der Stuermer,” 1936, special edition: “10 easy ways to tell a Jew from an American.”
Holy David Duke.
Again, good night, Mrs C. Don’t let the Wanzen bite.
Unfortunately, I am astounded at some of the ignorance.
There is no doubt that anti semitism is racism, and is no different in that vein from blacks can’t swim, white’s can’t dance, yadda yadda, but one look at islamic history, one reading back into medieval times thoroughly trashes the naieve notion that arab anti semitism is something imported. Jews from the dark ages (post Muhammad) were required to wear black baggy clothing, strange cloaks, remove their shoes when passing mosques, were beaten at the pleasure of passing muslims, had to make obeisance when passing casbahs, and on and on…the clothing designed to identify jews was codified in the 12th century and gee willickers, in the 13th century the jews were required to wear identifying clothing in western europe. Coincidence?
People had better enlighten themselves.
This is easily findable stuff..
Bernard Lewis
Bat Yeor
many many others
European travelers from the middle ages onwards created a record which is unassailable of the myth of Islamic tolerance.
I hope people are paying attention, cause this is what happens when people ask questions they don’t want answers to, and rely too much on other people to do their thinking for them.
They start inventing up fictional characters as Jimmy Durante did.
For years, Jimmy Durante ended his radio and television shows with that unusual sign-off. Most people thought the mysterious Mrs. Calabash must have been some fictional character that Durante dreamed up just to tease his audiences.
I wonder if the Jeffersonians will ever really become a viable political platform anymore.
“Good night, Mrs. Calabash — wherever you are.”
To Erasmus, then Troutsky, then Anon, then Erasmus.
What, in the name of Belzebub, is he suggesting here? That, “anyway,” being strong and weak is consistent with the “human nature” (whatever these two words may turn out to mean to him)of Jews, but perhaps not with the the “human nature” of others?
Human nature is what it is, not “human nature”.
Until you start to understand it, instead of treating it as an alien concept, you will have a hard time understanding some of what I mean. And nothing I can say is going to change that one way or another.
I wonder if there are any Jews who hate Muslims? I wonder if there are any Christians who hate Muslims or Jews? Actually, here where I live (US) there are active white supremacist groups who hate just about everybody.
More Jews have been saved by Christians than have been saved by Muslims. More Muslims have been saved by Jews than Jews saved by Muslims. And more Muslims have been saved by Christians, than Christians saved by Muslims.
In the moral calculus, that outweighs the simplistic and unnuanced viewpoint of yours, Troutsky.
What happened to your belief in life anyways, is that part of the hate you speak of?
Last time I checked Jews were part of the human race.
They would be, but in the last 2 thousand years or so, they’ve been making pretty sure that their blood wasn’t diluted and spread around so as to “hybridize” the Jews out of existence.
This focus on blood, not an American theme, is what keeps anti-Semitism alive and kicking. There would be no anti-Semitism if you couldn’t tell a Jew from a African, an American, or a European.
But you can, and it is pretty easy too and they want it to stay just the way it is. For whatever reasons.
Probably a psychological one.
Do they have a human nature separate from the human natures of Christians or Hindus?
Is the nature of Ice separate from the nature of Liquid Water and Gaseous Form water? Is that any different from the “nature of H2O”?
Maybe if you studied the nature of humans, you might be able to answer those questions. But until you do, your ignorance is rather glaring and very uncomfortable looking.
why not let it go at that?
I really don’t know. Maybe it is because a Special Forces operator is both kind but also bloodthirsty and a vicious killer.
Why not let it go at that, and just live with contradictions and not figure out the meaning, Erasmus.
I don’t know, why don’t you tell me why you have so much trouble with the contradictions in human nature and maybe I can tell you about mine.
I do have to ask this
Why do you spend so much time on confusion and not any on figuring out the answers for yourself?
If you spent as much time learning about human nature as you did the states of a liquid in different temperatures, do you think you could have figured out how human nature related to the Jews by yourself?
I’m curious, pray tell. I’m also curious about why you act like you’re talking to yourself, Erasmus. Is there somebody around here I should be aware of? Pray, introduce me if there is.
Now, he did not mean these two sentences in an unpleasant or nasty way.
Actually, that’s where you are wrong, but it isn’t a first so that is unsurprising.
It is meant to be unpleansant, nobody wants to be weak, especially to have all the detriments of weakness and none of the perks of strength.
An inconsistency would not exist, since this does, it is both nasty and unpleasant.
One reason why anti-semitism still
exist is because people use the word “anti-semitism.”
It seems that jews are the only group who have a special unique category.
What ever happen to saying “hey this guy is racist” rather then “his anti-Semitic”. Last time I checked Jews were part of the human race. You will never ever catch me saying “this guy is anti-semitic”. I just say his a Jew hater.
“I wonder if there are any Jews who hate Muslims?”
I wonder if you ever get tired of trying to draw false moral equivalences. I guess it doesn’t take much mental effort to do, though. Maybe it could be fun, even.
I wonder if there are any dogs who hate cats?
Nah, I just don’t see the fun in it either. I have better things to think about than that crap.
At 3:15 p.m. yesterday Ymarsakar wrote these two sentences:
“I have begun to see that Israel is both strong and weak. And that is not inconsistent with human nature, the human nature of Jews anyway.”
What, in the name of Belzebub, is he suggesting here? That, “anyway,” being strong and weak is consistent with the “human nature” (whatever these two words may turn out to mean to him)of Jews, but perhaps not with the the “human nature” of others? Why else that “anyway,” if not to distinguish?
What is this thing he calls “the human nature of Jews?” Why “of Jews?” Do they have a human nature separate from the human natures of Christians or Hindus? If being strong and weak is “not inconsistent with human nature,” why not let it go at that? Is it inconsistent with the human nature of all Jews–the radiologist in Shaker Heights and the carpenter in a small Russian village? How does he know what is or is not consistent or inconsistent with the “human nature of Jews?” Should such a thing exist, of course.
Now, he did not mean these two sentences in an unpleasant or nasty way. But I’d bet my yellow star some Jews might take it that way. They’d be wrong.
What he wrote are just words. I suspect he did not step back and ask what they actually meant, if anything, and how they might be read.
We all do this. But please, what is this thing “the human nature of Jews?” Jews and others are eager to find out. Anyway.
I wonder if there are any Jews who hate Muslims? I wonder if there are any Christians who hate Muslims or Jews? Actually, here where I live (US) there are active white supremacist groups who hate just about everybody.
Yes, their response was barbaric, but they had every reason to believe a genocidal attack from the Tutsi was under way, and they carried out their own genocide first.
Umm..no. In the Rwandan genocide, most of the dead were Tutsis – and most of those who perpetrated the violence were Hutus. The killing was inspired by messages of hate spread on the radio, calling Tutsis “cockroaches” among other things.
Doesn’t seem to be an inconsistency in dead Tutsis and a first strike against the Tutsis to prevent a Tutsis first strike.
Yes, their response was barbaric, but they had every reason to believe a genocidal attack from the Tutsi was under way, and they carried out their own genocide first.
Umm..no. In the Rwandan genocide, most of the dead were Tutsis – and most of those who perpetrated the violence were Hutus. The killing was inspired by messages of hate spread on the radio, calling Tutsis “cockroaches” among other things.
From the BBC:
In Kigali, the presidential guard immediately initiated a campaign of retribution. Leaders of the political opposition were murdered, and almost immediately, the slaughter of Tutsis and moderate Hutus began.
Within hours, recruits were dispatched all over the country to carry out a wave of slaughter.
The early organisers included military officials, politicians and businessmen, but soon many others joined in the mayhem.
Encouraged by the presidential guard and radio propaganda, an unofficial militia group called the Interahamwe (meaning those who attack together) was mobilised. At its peak, this group was 30,000-strong.
Following its long standing policy of supporting French speaking groups with the same vigor that the Soviet Union supported communism, France armed and trained the french-speaking Hutu militias. Look up “Operation Turquoise” someday. Rwanda’s current leader has accused the French of genocide. This genocide was not fought in self-defence, it was, like most genocides, an attempt to destroy a group of people who were hated not for their actions, but for their cultural and racial identity.
Rwanda’s genocide, like the genocide against the Jews and like the current Islamist genocide against moderate Muslims, blacks and christians in the Sudan is comparable to any other genocide because it’s motivated by hate. Hate has killed more people than any nuclear weapon. Hate is the weapon that the Islamists are using against the Jews, and against anyone who opposes them. We don’t have to wait until they get nukes to worry; we should start worrying now, because Islamist hate is a WMD that’s killing people everyday.
(I’m posting on behalf of Vaguely Sinister Wife.)
Neo’s post was very much to the point. There is one aspect that she didn’t actually put into words but could have done: that the European “constructive dialogue” with Iran is simply a way of giving the Iranians time to perfect the means to destroy Israel (appeasement redux).
The upshot is that Israel represents the ultimate ghetto, which can be liquidated with relative ease while the rest of the world wrings it hands and says “oh, how sad.”
Israel’s purported second-strike capabilities aren’t of much use here, since it’s a price that senior members of the Iranian leadership have openly stated that they will happily pay in exchange for reducing us to ashes.
I suppose we should be grateful that all this can be accomplished without our having to leave the comfort of our own homes. Sort of nice to miss the intermediate step, which is a doozie….
In any case, if the incineration of Israel comes about, historians of the future probably will see it all as part of a continuum: Europe exterminates or expels its Jews, encourages the establishment of a Jewish State (this time in Palestine instead of Poland), then gives weapons to a third party for use in annihilating whoever somehow slipped through the net last time around.
Gotta love the European capacity for utmost sleaziness.
At a lecture last year, I heard Bernard Lewis make the point that the Nazi Gestapo was instrumental in sowing the seeds of anti-Semitism throughout the Middle East during the 1930s to undermine British and French domination of the region at the time. The Baath Party, in particular, was a vehicle for advancing Nazi interests. Baath (under Saddam) controlled Iraq, and still controls Syria today.
In that sense, what we are confronting is the last vestige of Nazism on the face of the planet. Our fathers and mothers did the really hard work of exterminating Nazism in Europe. We now are confronted with finishing the task in the Middle East.
neo. Glad to hear about the Mieps.
My father had a friend who’d been a kid in Poland during the German occupation. People caught messing around with the EssenKart (sp) and getting rations for those who were supposed to have been rounded up or turned in or something were hung and left until they disintegrated.
The Mieps were taking a hell of a chance, and the Dutch resistance was serious enough that the Germans were particularly severe when they got a whiff of it.
BTW, Corrie ten Boom talks of stealing the Jewish kids from an orphanage just before they were to be shipped east, and handing them out to various Dutch civilians. More risk, no more food.
Indeed, I don’t think anti-semitism has even disappeared from Europe except insofar as Hitler removed the immediate opportunity to practice it.
“Disappeared” is not the word to describe it. Not even close. Violence against the Jews is at an all time high. Intimidations, gang rapes, and gang violence will target anyone in Europe that looks at them wrong, including the Jews. The Jews will just be the first prefered targets.
Oh, and don’t forget anti-Semitism in the United States (see Henry Ford, Charles Lindberg, etc.)
One of the things people should avoid doing is putting Jews on a pedestal cause they were victims. Many Jews saw Nixon as anti-semitic or just plain hostile to Jews, but Nixon was the one that aided Israel in the darkest hour, and the Jews didn’t vote nor care for his actions.
The sense of loyalty to a cause and a fight, is not a Jewish theme. Certainly not in America. They are as politicized, as human, and as blind as the rest of humanity. The problem with anti-semitism applying to America is not that it is aimed against the Jews, but that the Jews are just first among many.
There are no anti-Semitics in the US for the sole reason that the US is the reason that both Israel and the Jews still exist as an ethnicity. Only politics could make it any different.
Richard Aubrey: If you’re interested in the story of what happened to those who helped the Franks, there is an excellent book on the subject written by Miep Gies, the “Miep” of the diary, who helped hide Anne and her family.
By the way, the people who were arrested for helping the Franks did not stay in prison very long. Miep herself lived a very long life, and died only quite recently.
It is unfortunate that, as a society, we have decided that victimhood trumps all and provides moral authority.
That being the case, the victim status of the Jews due to the Holocaust can be implied retroactively to be a scam designed to promote favors.
Current scams discredit earlier realities.
That said, some Jews go overboard.
There was a documentary years ago talking about a group of Jews rescued from the Germans in Italy. They were taken to military facilities in upstate New York which were empty on account of the previous inhabitants having shipped out.
This was a good deal for them. Brick buildings, three squares, indoor plumbing, warm and dry sleeping.
Problem was, not all who were rescued were shipped to the States. Some stayed in whatever facilities the Allies could put together in Italy. Some Jewish commentators accused the Allies not only of anti-Semitism, but implicitly as leaving the other Jews to the Germans. It was, of course, not true.
This sort of thing is not helpful.
I have spoken to a number of folks who blame the US for not having bombed the camps, or the railroad spurs to the camps. The people who do this are ignorant, or deliberately obtuse. It is maddening. Among other things, bombing the main lines is more effective, since that stops the transports of the Jews anyway, and helps win the war faster. If the spurs had been bombed, the Jews would have been taken off the trains and forced to walk the last miles.
And bombing is not cost-free. Depending on your opening and closing dates, the Eighth Air Force lost from thirty thousand to forty thousand guys. RAF Bomber Command was worse. You need to get the most for your casualties. And the circular error of bombing from the B17’s usual altitude of five miles more or less was about a quarter of a mile. Bombing the camps would have killed many of the inhabitants. Hard to see who this would have helped. And there are other ways to kill masses of civilian prisoners, in case the gas chambers had been damaged.
Insisting, against facts, that this meant anti-Semitism is not helpful, either.
The Holocaust was bad enough. Attempts to make the US bad guys, too, are transparent and not helpful.
To put it another way, it gives ammunition to the deniers.
There are many of my generation whose fathers and uncles had nightmares–or daymares–to the day they died of what it cost to get to the camps. Many, of course, fought and fought and their units did not liberate any camps, by the luck of the draw. But they suffered then and for decades later.
Hearing their sacrifice demeaned is…not helpful. And tends to put off natural allies.
In the play, The Diary of Anne Frank, there is a mention that the Dutch family who had been fiddling the ration system to provide the Franks food had been arrested. End of the matter. Ought there not be a play about them? What happened to them? Unlike the Franks, they volunteered.
Newvic. My wife and I worked with exchange students for years and one of our favorites was an ethnic Chinese Christian from Malaysia. The Chinese have a different attitude toward homework than the Malaysians, with the result that the Malaysian universities have Malaysians in them only by limiting the Chinese. So our friend got her BS and MS in Chem Eng here, got a hubby and is a credit to her family and an asset to the US. This is a parallell with the Jewish experience. We win. Like Malaysia can afford to drive Chemical Engineers away. Maroons.
The Holocaust, although unique, will at some time become a historical fact with considerably less impact than it now carries, as the decades or centuries pass. Who remembers the catastrophes of the FolkWandering set in motion by steppe nomads causing European tribes outside the Roman Empire to bounce around like billiard balls, fighting each other for land and security? The holocausts of pagans by the forces of Charlemagne?
The problem is not the Holocaust or its denial. The problem is anti-Semitism in matters large and small.
My best guess why this roach is yapping his mouth off is either the country already has the “nukiller” and is looking for an excuse to use it or is about to get. Either way ball is in his court. And no international sanctions will help either. The country will find another country to make deals with. Russia is a strong supporter and china is more then happy to be a strong investor in that country. Premptive strikes will be all out war so get ready to bleed.
It’s the same old gestapo, just in a different time and language and culture. Who is surprised over the statements coming out of Iran? We should be talking about who is going to take Iran’s nuclear potential out and when. When they have it, the playing field is forever and radically altered in a very negative way. Iran has very lucrative energy contracts with China. Cash and nukes, the dream of every mullah. We should be applying pressure on our leaders to take military action against Iran’s nuke program. We all know and have known for a long time that islamofacists would put Jews in the gas chambers just as hitler did.
Oh, and don’t forget anti-Semitism in the United States (see Henry Ford, Charles Lindberg, etc.)
I am not a religious believer, but to my mind one of the strongest proofs that Satan exists and is active in the world is the never-ending effort of various evil regimes to destroy the Chosen People of God.
My own sense is that anti-semitism in the Middle East – Arabs and Persians alike – was largely imported from Europe in the early part of the last century. So the similarities to Hitler are not that big a surprise. Hitler was not a unique and fresh voice in Europe. Now anti-semitism is spreading from the Middle East to other Muslim countries. The European diseases that ruined that continent in the twentieth century are still working their way out. Indeed, I don’t think anti-semitism has even disappeared from Europe except insofar as Hitler removed the immediate opportunity to practice it.
The genocides in Darfur, Rwanda, etc. are not considered in the same as the Holocaust, for much the same reason the deaths of captured Communist soldiers in the Nazi camps goes similarly unremarked. It’s because, as horrific as any killing is, the condemnation of killing needs to be weighed against the right to defend one’s life, and the lives of those you care about.
In short, it’s not murder if you kill someone who is trying to kill you. The Hutus of Rwanda watched their president, the first Hutu president ever elected in a free and fair election, get blown out of the sky by a SAM, a weapon that only the aristocratic Tutsi minority could afford. (Them and the army of neighboring Libya, of course.) Yes, their response was barbaric, but they had every reason to believe a genocidal attack from the Tutsi was under way, and they carried out their own genocide first.
Terrible and sad, but most people in the know see it as two angry and frightened enemies trying to exterminate one another before they themselves were exterminated.
The Communists in the Nazi death camps, too, pass unremarked in comparison to the Jews, because despite their fate being the same, and the underhanded actions of Hitler that led to war between Germany and Russia, the fact remains that their goal was to kill all the Germans they could. The actions of the Nazis against them, extreme as they may have been, were still tempered by what little tatters of their claim to self-defense remained.
But the Jews… they fought no war against Hitler, and committed no betrayal outside his paranoid delusions. They did not even strongly resist internment in the camps, and even worked to support the Nazis war machine… literally “feeding the alligator in the hope it devours them last,” in many cases.
Their patience and pacifism made no difference in the end. They were all sent off to the camps, and then marked for annihilation, not for anything they had done, nor for anything they had failed to do, but merely because Adolf Hitler said so. And, most horrifying of all, their extermination was engineered and carried out with the precision and efficiency of the most brilliant intellectual revolutionaries of the twentieth century.
“Never Again” was a pledge, taken by those who realized just how horrific the results of science and technology could be, if allowed to be used in the service of monsters like Hitler.
But now this is forgotten, as postmodernists try to convince the world that Darfur is just like Rwanda, that Iraq is no diferent from Vietnam, and – most disgusting of all – that Israel is no different from Nazi Germany.
I don’t think he is going to destroy Israel. If he wanted to start killing Jews he would have to start in Iran. Even if he were to start I don’t think the government in Tehran is strong enough to survive the civil unrest that it would create. You need to factor in Israel’s ability to put warhead on foreheads also.
-Mike
The first concentrated attack on the Jews was from allah/mohammed in 7th century arabia. The Jews refused to accept mohammed as a Jewish prophet and made fun of his new religion. Woe be unto them! The new prophet and his believers cleansed the arabian peninsula of the Jews, called apes and pigs by allah, who wouldn’t submit to islam. 10.6% of the koran of Medina is anti-semitic versus 6.8% of Hitler’s mein kampf. Check out the website memri.org for confirmation of this. Or even better, read the koran and dip into the hadiths of Bukhari.
The operative principle is that nothing since this oldest oppression and bigotry came into being, is different.
Hitler only married the might of an industrial state to that bigotry
There is the same continuum in effect.
The Holocasut is a single episode in this sickness notable for it’s technical ‘expertise’, not for its cause, not for its desire, not as an exception to something else.
Why then today is there ANY shock when the galactically stupid ignoramus nuke seeking racist twerp of Iran utters what has been said of jewish people for 2000 years and more?
Why then today is there ANY shock when credence is given to blood libels today?
Why then today is there ANY shock when Mahathir claims jews kill for their own purposes by proxy?
Why then today is there ANY shock when the protocols are accepted as real?
Why then today is there ANY shock when the holocaust is both denied and regretted as not having been successful enough by the same people?
Why is any of it shocking?
We are no different.
Bigotry is no different.
— as a sufferer of Holocaust Fatigue, I’m saddened and tired by the deniers. And sad for the “never again” LIE, when applied to Cambodia, to Rwanda — and to Sudan, today.
Holocaust Denial today is actually LESS BAD than anti-Vietnam war protesters who denial supporting commie victory, and thus commie genocide.
Not only a great post, but great comments.
Destructive Envy is certainly the most terrible human emotion — and Leftists (who hate the “tax cuts for the rich!”) are full of it.
Holocaust deniers always seem to be folk who think it was the right idea.
R. Heinlein’s classic “Stranger in a Strange Land” has the Martian raised human finally understand people by looking at monkeys in a zoo.
A middle monkey get’s tossed a peanut; a big monkey hits him and takes the peanut; the middle monkey sees a little monkey and beats the crap out of him.
Too many folk act like the “middle monkey”.
Not a substantive comment, but an off the cuff offering: Bernard Lewis, whom you mentioned, seems so far to be an excellent resource to calm, scholarly, dispassionate information about Islam’s culture, politics, and movements.
I’ve been working through two of his books recently (“The Muslim Discovery of Europe,” and “The Political Language of Islam,”) and have found them very agreeable, succinct, and well-researched.
They have the benefit of being written in the mid to late 90’s, which means that they are at once fairly recent, but also free of any suspicion of axe-grinding due to September 11.
Primo Levi was always dissatisfied with the way he believed the Holocaust was cheapened and exploited in modern political life.
After all, he wasn’ the one who titled his book ‘Survival in Auschwitz’. It was supposed to be called ‘If This be a Man’.
But of course in recent years that happy delusion of mine that this was only “once upon a time,” long ago and far away, has been revealed as just that: a delusion. Many theories have been advanced over the years for the strange and enduring phenomenon known as anti-Semitism, but the one constant is that it is relatively constant, cropping up over and over in varied guises and locations, waxing and waning rhythmically, but always reliably present.
The common human behavior of distributing misery upon one’s weaker members, is not surprising. When a young person believes he has been hurt by the more powerful, he automatically finds someone weaker than him and terrorizes that person, and in so doing makes him feel better.
Part of human group dynamics, I’m afraid.
But all this depends upon the fact that the one being shatted upon is weaker. It would be counterproductive to try and fight against one’s stronger members in the same heirarchy. But if they could fight against the stronger and win, they would.
So besides the fact that there seems to be two basic human archtypes, the person that wants to distribute misery and the person that doesn’t, we have the seemingly inconsistent and contradictive scenario of anti-semitism.
Anti-Semitism is obviously a case of the stronger seeking to abuse the weaker, in order to feel safer, more powerful, and in more control.
Hitler, truly was a true believer. He believed in every word he said. His propaganda and speeches were brilliant and convincing not just because he had good propagandists, but because he himself firmly believed in the Master Race, in the superior blood of the Aryans.
That is why he early on, respected and admired the United States. He respected in his words, how we enslaved the blacks and other inferiors. He came to the conclusion that we had drawn the best and brightest and most adventurous immigrants from Europe, the white pure Aryans. The ones that went to the New World, in Hitler’s view, were smarter, more courageous, and tougher. He ostensibly started the war in Europe to get more resources so as to fight AMerica in the future.
Therefore he saw America’s strength as firmly consistent with his core beliefs.
The fake liberals and the Left might feel the need to see that as a justification for their blame game. But like all their feelings, it would be devoid of the full scenario. Because Hitler when he declared war on the US, had changed his conclusions. He saw how we mixed in the blacks and the whites in our armed forces. He saw the True Nature of America, and he came to the wrong conclusion. He erased his previous conclusion that America was strong, now he thought America was weak and therefore not a threat because we did not focus on the “purity” of blood at all.
His beliefs were wrong, and because they were, he came to the wrong conclusions.
The Jews were weak, and he declared war on them first. America was seen as strong, and so he didn’t want to fight us, but the moment we seemed weak to him, he declared war at the first excuse.
Fighting the weak so as to feel strong, is a human justification and behavior.
But anti-Semitism in that vein, does not seem consistent with that theme. Because the Jews with their nukes and “Zionism” is seen as strong, too strong to be allowed to run free. Yet… yet the Arabs still attack them first, as if they are weak.
So which is true, is Israel today strong and therefore human nature dictates that attacks should leave them alone, or is Israel weak and therefore inviting abuse from more powerful people as consistent with human nature?
I have begun to see that Israel is both strong and weak. And that is not inconsistent with human nature, the human nature of Jews anyway.
As for Holocaust denial, I do believe that they truly think the Jews cooked up their own Holocause propaganda and slaughtered their own people to make others pity them. It is what the Palestinians and Arabs would do, and are.
Much of the Palestinian cause is done for political power games, yes. But that does not cover up the fact that the people using the Palestinians truly believe in their rhetoric against the Jews. They truly believe the Jews are powerful and weak at the same time. They truly believe the Jews will take over the world if they do not.
But they are wrong, as wrong as Hitler was. Because it is not the Jews they should fear taking over the world, it is America and our focus not on purity of the soul or of blood, but on the consistency of human nature. That is what they should fear if their core beliefs were correct.
We believe in the free will of humanity, and our enemies are nothing more than the implements which shall bind humanity in darkness forevermore.
The Muslims are as near-sighted as Hitler. Makes sense, they believe in the same retarded philosophy.
We shall show them the true meaning of strength.
Wonderful post!
I too, published on the story and a reader was kind enough to leave a rather cutting comment: “It’s always struck me as amusing, in a sick sort of way, that the only people who deny the Holocaust are the only one who also think it was a great idea.”
It is also enlightening when the dots are connected. ‘It is only by rewriting history and denying the truth that Muslims can deny the last millenia was a regression into the dark ages for Islam.’
By denigrating and eliminating the accomplishments of Jews and Judaism, Mulsims and Islam somehow believe (incorrectly) they can mitigate the the disaster that was the implosion of the last millenia of Islamic culture.
Can YOU say ‘projection’?
Great post, Neo- as usual.
I believe a large component of historical anti-Semitism is due to that most basic of human emotions–envy. Like the ‘off-shore’ Chinese, Jewish communities were prosperous and eventually the local authorities, and the local bums, always wanted to take what wasn’t theirs…whether in the Middle Ages or 1930s Germany (the ‘big department stores’ putting the ‘little guy’ out of business).
Minor point–I believe the first Hitler quote is from later, and the second is from his speech to the Reichstag Jan. 30, 1939.
I wish to first state my appologies if i offend anyone with this ‘post’.
I have an interest in the holocaust and I am planning to do an A level causework on – if hitler actually intended the mass-murder of Jews. My main argument is with the fact that Hitler was a weak dictator as he did not take part in government descusions during his time in power.
Hitler did move jews out of Germany so that they could be safe after the war, and he was very gratefull to the Jewish doctor who helped his mother. I am looking for historical opinions for both sides of Hitler’s intentions.
I can see form these other posts that the Jews would seem a threat to Hitler’s rule as they did have striving businesses and were in main industries.