German YouTubers Heart Ahmadinejad
Holocaust denial goes viral.
For many years now, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been speaking to Germany: in a long letter to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in two interviews with the German weekly Der Spiegel, and in passing remarks in numerous speeches and press conferences. He has been speaking to Germany in terms that Americans might fail to recognize, but that will be extremely familiar to his intended audience: namely, in the classical terms of German revisionism. Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust denial is just one side of this revisionism. The other side consists of the suggestion that Germany itself was somehow a victim of the Second World War, or at least of “unjust” post-war arrangements, and that the victorious Allied powers — first and foremost the United States — are the real “oppressors.”
While suppressing the most overt Holocaust denial from his speech to the UN Conference on Racism in Geneva, Ahmadinejad gave ample space to this second classical theme of post-WWII revisionism. Speaking of the two world wars, he said: “If one had learned something from the occupations and horror of those wars, then there would have been a ray of hope for the future. But the victorious powers declared themselves to be the conquerors of the world, while ignoring or treading upon the rights of other nations by the imposition of oppressive laws and international arrangements.”
Below is a partial translation of the comments to an extract from Ahmadinejad’s speech that was posted on YouTube with a German voice-over. The extract was originally broadcast on Germany’s Phoenix TV and was followed by a Phoenix report on the protests against the speech. Although only a partial translation, I have not made a point of selecting the anti-Semitic entries. Anti-Semitism is rampant in the discussion, as too is anti-Americanism. At least at the outset, the approval for Ahmadinejad was overwhelming and critics were few and far between. The ratio would change somewhat after the German journalist Henryk Broder drew attention to the forum in a post titled “A Lunatic is Never Alone” on the popular “pro-American,” “pro-Israel” Achse des Gutens (Axis of Good) blog. I have given the last word in my translation to two of the critical voices.
The ample evidence of Holocaust denial among the YouTube comments is particularly notable in the German context. As an apparent “joke,” one commenter calls himself “Holoshoa.” Another refers nonchalantly to the “Holohoax.” A third points to an online collection of denial videos: “for those who want to know more about the alleged [angeblichen] Holocaust.” “Matters are very simple,” the commenter adds, “Whoever claims things that are impossible is lying!” (The last comment is not included below.) Holocaust denial is in fact illegal in Germany. The German neo-Nazi Horst Mahler has already been convicted twice this year for denial-related crimes. He faces nearly 11 years in prison as a result of the two convictions. The enthusiasm for denial in the anonymous YouTube forum suggests what some researchers, in any case, have long suspected: that Germany’s criminalization of the public expression of Holocaust denial has only served to push the embarrassing phenomenon into the private sphere.
———————
KraftTakt
Good that Ahmadinejad throws a spanner in the Jews’ works! It is also interesting that the reporter mentions that it was Jewish groups that interrupted the speech. They can get away with anything.
KraftTakt
The concept of racism was invented by the Jew Trotsky as a means of combat for the Communists. If you pay attention, it’s also very striking that racism is always a matter of the oppression of Jews and Blacks. Here too you see how the African bushmen present their “folklore” [the Phoenix report includes scenes of an African dance group]. But, of course, you don’t see any European folk dance groups (…).
(…)
VMTV
Ahmadinejad tells it like it is.
However, I find that in the Middle East there are no good guys.
The Muslims and the Jews are both religious fanatics that are stuck in the Middle Ages.
(…)
funrunkel
All the ziocrats have first to get off their high horses.
holoshoa
Thank you, Dr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad!
Alex from the Central Council of Germans in Hannover
["Central Council of Germans" is a play on the Central Council of Jews of Germany, a semi-official institution that is a magnet for anti-Semitic resentments in Germany.]
(…)
DosensuPPe90
Ahmadinejad is absolutely right!!!
All he is doing is telling the truth!
funrunkel
Ach ma die Nedschad [Ahmadinejad] is a populist, he’s right, but his domestic policies display certain structural deficits. He should establish a free [freiheitliches] caliphate. Otherwise, I like him. He has a totally different perspective: also on the Holo-hoax(…)
Praetorianer1985
Yet again, typical. They hold a summit against racism. But as soon as someone attacks their holy cow Israel, they don’t want to hear anything.
Down with the Zionists!
Down with the NWO [New World Order]!
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John Rosenthal’s writings on European politics and transatlantic relations have appeared in English, French, and German in such leading publications as Policy Review, Les Temps Modernes, and Merkur. He holds a PhD in philosophy and he taught political philosophy and classical German philosophy before turning to journalism. More of his work can be found at Transatlantic Intelligencer.
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36 Comments
1. Don:My grandfather (one of the first members of the SPD, joined in 1918) an old and ardent socialist characterized people like these as “Lumpen” (know nothings, drifting through life, terminally dim witted).
May 7, 2009 - 4:31 am 2. e:Head over to digg or reddit and check the comments on most any article that relates to the Middle East and you will find English comments that aren’t much better.
May 7, 2009 - 6:23 am 3. Nisky:Ahmadinejad is the Hitler on the rise, His out and looking for trouble.
May 7, 2009 - 8:02 am 4. Delia:Well, that is depressing as hell. So much for learning from History. Good freakin’ grief!
May 7, 2009 - 9:06 am 5. Amy:There is no way of knowing how many of those comments were made by “ethnic” Germans and how many by persons of Turkish extraction or other Muslims. The fact that a supposed native German speaker would misspell “Kissinger” (a German name, after all) raises my suspicions that not all of these comments are what they appear to be.
May 7, 2009 - 10:12 am 6. John Rosenthal:For what it is worth, that a native German speaker would misspell “Kissinger” as “Kiesinger” is completely normal. Kiesinger is also a German name and indeed a former Chancellor of post-War West Germany was named Kiesinger (Kurt Georg Kiesinger — he also was a former Nazi, btw). Moreover, some of the commenters (”KraftTakt”, “Holoshoa”)emphasize their identity as “native” Germans or Europeans. No informed observer of the comments in the forum could doubt that most (probably indeed not all) of the comments come from “natives.”
May 7, 2009 - 11:06 am 7. Tom Mix - Germany:The American public has no inkling whatsoever of what is going on in Germany. This article is bringing out just only a minimal part of the iceberg’s peak.
May 7, 2009 - 11:51 am 8. Paul -Indiana:What’s new? The world is filled with useful idiots who will buy anything. Holocaust denial is Islam’s stock-in-trade.
May 7, 2009 - 1:48 pm 9. David Levavi:The rat-faced Iranian leader is playing on imagined German-Iranian commonality. Both peoples fancy themselves Arians.
Back in Roman times of old, Persians were Parthians against whom Rome made war and Germans were slaves the Romans put into uniform, armed, trained and pointed at their enemies.
No matter. Modern racist fantasts like Hitler and Ahmadinejad aren’t deterred by facts or history. In common cause against Jews they are indeed one breed.
Winston Churchill famously observed that a German is either at your throat or at your feet. The Romans understood this essential of the German national character only too well. In a politically correct contemporary world such national characteristics are pointedly ignored.
It is a amazing that a people so gifted and so capable as the Germans are so essentially rotten in character. How to explain the strange combination of physical courage and moral and intellectual cowardice?
The Germans who are merciless in victory are the worlds premiere whiners and sore losers in defeat. After starting and losing WWI they preposterously and superstitiously blamed their defeat on “Jewish arms merchants” who, Judaslike, “stabbed Germany in the back.” After being crushed in WWII they deny the holocaust and carp about American occupation.
Chaim Weitzman’s invention of acetate for making cordite was critical to the British war effort in WWI. But the invention by a British Jewish chemist of a cheap way to make explosives is a far cry from antiSemitic Christological mythology about Jewish arms merchants. Imagine the Japanese blaming their defeat in WWII on betrayal by Jewish industrialists or by Jewish communists based on the fact that Jewish scientists designed the atom bomb.
Germans have never been able to take responsibility for their failures and shortcomings. Blaming others for their own deficiencies is second nature.
Even if the Holocaust had never happened, Germany would have much to answer for. The two world wars it launched in the twentieth century bled Europe white and led to the collapse of all the European empires.
Europe’s weakness today, its dismal demographics and its vulnerability to Islamic aggression are all rooted in German arrogance, greed and barbarism during the last century.
May 7, 2009 - 4:06 pm 10. Winston:Europe is a nasty place. It’s a privilege for me to live in North America. I would never want to be in Europe.
May 7, 2009 - 4:58 pm 11. BPT (Australia):Yes, there are some nasty ass Europeans, but also many great people with pro-Zionist, pro-free trade leanings. It is all over the place politically too, much like the United States. The northern parts of Holland, for example, have some very conservative areas, and partial-birth abortions are outlawed in places like Ireland, I believe. What’s more the new EU President is a global warming skeptic. But best of all their major papers, in London, at least, are far more diverse than New York’s.
May 8, 2009 - 1:18 am 12. Melvin:Uh, “The Germans” are on it again.
I’m a “German Youtuber” myself and I certainly do not “heart Ahmadinejad”, on the contrary I support Israels existential fight for survival.
Of course you have Neonazis and all kinds of other riffraff on the internet but they are not a “German” phenomenon, you also have this kind of racist scum in the USA, Britain, France and all other countries were they are not representative. To equate them with ethnic categories as put forward in this ‘article’ is pure poison, because this distracts us from the fight that matters: the fight for Freedom, Justice, Pursuit of Happiness for all – the fight for civilisation. This is a fight about ‘Weltanschauung’ not between ethnicities.
So what was the point of this idiotic rant? You think one cannot be a German, a Patriot and be against Ahmadinejads Islamofascism? On the contrary, true German patriots are, because they understand that their Freedom is indivisible from Freedom in the rest of the world. Neonazis have hijacked German patriotism long enough, and all kinds of luny-leftists liked this because so they could disable the nation with their corrosive anti-national sheepish pacifism.
May 8, 2009 - 3:45 am 13. Brantinger:Neonazis have no right to be associated with the REAL Germany I’m talking about, I say it loud: I’m proud to be a citizen of the Free Republic of Germany.
I want to remind people, that the biggest political party in Germany is the most pro-american and pro-zionist party, that it was Chancelor Merkel who articulated that the Hamas is responsible for the Gaza-conflict without relativization and supported the danish Primeminister during the cartoon-conflict in the same manner and made in my eyes a far better figure than the british PM or the american President.
May 8, 2009 - 3:57 am 14. fnord:@Levavi: This is german-bashing on a really low level, no other country in the world did answer to its crimes in the clear and painful way Germany did, even though the crimes had been indeed of a unique size. But neither Holocaustdenial nor fancy oneself as aryan is a majority-position in these days Germany and to portrait the position of the heirs of the nazis, the NPD, which is lucky if it gets 2% in an election as characterizing for the political state of Germany is nothing but caricaturing.
T.P. Brantinger (Hamburg,Germany)
Dear Mr. Levavi,
the profundity of your characterization of Germans is quite astonishing. You got it all right! Take me, for instance. I woke up yesterday and the first I did was pouring myself a nice cup of self-pity. A spoon full of finger-pointing made it even more delicious. Later on, in the shower, I recited the “Protocols”, just to remember what makes the world turn, as we all know the “Protocols” aren’t a forgery. Then I jumped into my uniform, yes, the one the good ol’ Romans gave to my ancestors to slaughter the highly civilized rest of Europe. Dressed to pick a war I went to my office, sorry: garrison. There I met my superior, to whom I cringingly submit to. He barked a few orders and I, quite the servile German I am, went outside in order to randomly smash in the heads of some neighbors. As you perfectly made it clear: that’s what we do, we don’t need reasons, and of course there never have been some for our wars, they always came out of the blue. Hail to the monocausality!
Darn it, we’re so evil, even Churchill (”You must understand that this war is not against Hitler or National Socialism, but against the strength of the German people, which is to be smashed once and for all, regardless of whether it is in the hands of Hitler or a Jesuit priest.“ Emrys Hughes, Winston Churchill – His Career in War and Peace, p. 145) could have learned from us!
So the day passed, I made a short stop at the Hasselhoff-statue and bowed, went home to wash my hands of it and wept a bit about our totally inculpable lost wars – because that’s what we’re taught in school. I fell asleep and dreamt wet of either licking Churchill’s feet or strangling the world. Today is another fine day for living out my inferiority complex and act a bit violent-narcissistic. Wish me luck!
Best wishes to you, Mr. Levavi, I hope your small and narrow-minded, ignorant and self-righteous world is functional for you.
Greets,
fnord
p.s.: @Tom Mix – Germany: Sie sind offenbar ein gut durchideologisiertes Exemplar unseres Volkes, eben genau die Sorte Mensch, die, nichts hinterfragend, der jeweils gültigen Staatsdoktrin das Maul redet, ohne sich auch nur dreißig Sekunden mit einem hochkomplexen Thema zu beschäftigen, um zu eigenen Schlüssen zu kommen. Wenn Sie sonst nichts anderes haben, gibt es ja immer noch die immerwährende Alleinschuld am Untergang des Abendlandes, um sich selbst zu definieren, nicht wahr? Traurig, traurig.
May 8, 2009 - 5:24 am 15. Little Banana:BPT,all abortion, not just partial-birth, is illegal in Ireland, thank God.
May 8, 2009 - 7:08 am 16. Tom Mix - Germany:“I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.” (From “The Importance of Being Earnest” by Oscar Wilde)
fnord:
Ad-hominem attacks are often a dishonest cheap shot
May 8, 2009 - 7:19 am 17. Tom Mix - Germany:2007-2008 BBC World Service Poll reveal that a higher percentage of Germans surveyed viewed the United States (72%) and Israel (64%) as having a negative influence on the world than North Korea (62%), China (59%) and Russia (56%).
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/02_04_08_globalview.pdf
Page 6 & 8
May 8, 2009 - 7:45 am 18. Tom Mix - Germany:“The Importance of Being Ernest”, sorry.
May 8, 2009 - 7:51 am 19. The Editrix:You can go literally anywhere in the Internet where there is a comment section: as soon as it’s even remotely (and I MEAN remotely!) Jewish, the usual creeps will crawl out from under their stone. Whether it’s the unforgotten tenor Josef Schmidt (”Tiritomba”) on YouTube, whether it’s the column of Alan Posener, whose father is Jewish, it will be brought out and thematized. After all, we Germans have never repealed the Nuremberg race laws in our heads.
And if there REALLY isn’t even the faintest Jewish connection, it will be made up. I once had criticized in some comment section Eva Herman, a four-times married woman, as a total miscast as role model for any “conservative” family values. For that, I, a Catholic German woman with immaculate “Aryan” credendials, was attacked as a Jew smearing the name of a “blonde deutsche Maid”. If I remember correctly, that was the exact phrase the commenter used, and although I am a highly experienced cyber-proxy with more than 10 years of flame wars under my belt, I remember that THAT shocked even me. Well, a bit.
The comments here are cases in point as well, aren’t they? I wonder how “neocons” (a not-so-coy euphemism for “Jews”) come in here and my oh my, Nicholas Sarkozy! Apart from the fact that that man is neither, a neo nor a con, but an ageing attention whore, he isn’t Jewish. He is a Roman Catholic and would be, according to the Nuremberg race laws, be qualified a “half-” or “quarter-Jew”. Have I already mentioned that we Germans have mentally never repealed the Nuremberg laws? QED!
And now excuse me, after reading all the communication here, I have to go and take a bath.
May 8, 2009 - 8:35 am 20. The Editrix:“I’m a “German Youtuber” myself and I certainly do not “heart Ahmadinejad”, on the contrary I support Israels existential fight for survival.
Of course you have Neonazis and all kinds of other riffraff on the internet but they are not a “German” phenomenon, you also have this kind of racist scum in the USA, Britain, France and all other countries were they are not representative.”
No, Neonazis are indeed not representative anywhere in Europe, including Germany. But who tells you that those commenters are Neonazis? You hear exactly the same rhetoric from leftwingers of all hues as well, and they, believe me, ARE representative.
May 8, 2009 - 8:44 am 21. The Editrix:“There is no way of knowing how many of those comments were made by “ethnic” Germans and how many by persons of Turkish extraction or other Muslims. The fact that a supposed native German speaker would misspell “Kissinger” (a German name, after all) raises my suspicions that not all of these comments are what they appear to be.”
I am with John Rosenthal here. May I quote another one of my first-hand online experiences? At YouTube, that was. Our culture enrichers don’t usually write in such a (relatively) educated style. “ich fick dich du schlampe” (Sorry!) would be more like it.
May 8, 2009 - 9:15 am 22. representative of 36%:@Editrix. did you have an occasion to take your shower in the meantime? You seem to have gotten a bit distracted by your own boasting, but that’s a known online phenomenon. Now please, what I wanna know is: are they rightwing or leftwing? Look at the names carefully, please, esp. KingHaSSSan88. And then tell us please, with all your fashionable experience, if they are a group or single individuals. And afterwards try to find out who’s a bigger problem for Europe, rightwing screamers or leftwing cocksuckers (füßeküsser), the ones that levavy mentioned whose comments contain some true observations if we think of Germany being servatile to people like ali or mohammed larijani. This of course doesn’t go for all Germans, not for you I s’pose and not for me, but it goes for parts of our industry. And then get yourself distracted with these two and Mr. Rosenthal too. The first is gutter, the second is brillant, and the second is also from a German man: But this is where Levavy is right and you too: He’s notoriously called Jewish, because he’s so utterly religious. Have fun!
May 8, 2009 - 10:08 am 23. fnord:http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,623361,00.html
The answer is on achgut. I hope you translate it, Mr. Rosenthal, as the first one appeared in English as well.
Dear Mr. Mix,
which one do you mean? The one to Mr. Levavi? Nah, come on, his utterly stupid rant well-deserved that. Or do you feel offended? Sorry for that, it didn’t mean to be a personal attack, it was only a guess. And obviously it matched. What do you expect for yourself from nourishing silly anti-german resentments, which our ill-informed Über-spot-reporter Rosenthal frequently is venting? Being caressed? Being considered the only upright character in Germany because you see as much national socialists everywhere as he does? Your “tip of the iceberg” nonsense is exactly what we need to encounter the current threats to our western world. Not only that it is completely exaggerated (please take notice that “exaggerated” implies that there are neo-nazis around – I know and hate that) and damages our in any event bad reputation in the world, worse, you deliver ammo to backward supermoralists, who apparently don’t know nothing about our country and/or the history of the 19th and 20th century.
Mister Mix, I don’t want to argue with you, but it always amazes me how ardent a lot of my compatriots hate themselves – as if our history began in ‘33 and ended in ‘45, as if we were the scum of the earth, without anything notable and only living by the grace of the flawlessly good. This led to a strange phenomenon: On the one hand, the progressive self-loathing do-gooders became the PC-avantgarde, which is responsible for the rapid decline of our country since the late 70’s, and on the other, there are the plainly stupid and ignorant ones who just became what they always were told they are: dimwitted neo-nazis. And no, Mr. Levavi, this was not the long-expected whining, just some thought, nearly without any emotional connotation. By the way: The aforementioned mechanism is not genuine german, it can be observed throughout the whole northern hemisphere, just insert the dark stains of any country’s history, stir and let the psychological meltdown of a specific kind of people happen.
It’s 8th of May, a good time to thank you Americans out there for kicking the Nazi’s asses. I endorse that, and I mean it. Nevertheless I’m on the quest for identity and that includes genuine german values and virtues that were eminently respectable before 1933 and officially dead since. Remember: It was not the conservatives or right-wingers who developed the national-socialistic ideology. It was the progressives, the utopians who gave birth to that bastard of socialism, nationalism, fascism and crude biologism.
So much for that.
Greets,
fnord
May 8, 2009 - 10:32 am 24. The Editrix:“are they rightwing or leftwing?”
What does the difference matter?
May 8, 2009 - 10:53 am 25. Tom Mix - Germany:fnord:
Yes, we are talking about the same person: This working class peasant with a groveling love for this clerkish language and everything which is duplicitous, this common bungler, iconoclastic-wannabe with a very convenient self-made dislocated semantic, faking moral superiority everywhere, this feel-good anti-Semite, who secretly wish to dismantle Israel and who pretend to be his friend with “silly” slogans like “Never Again”.
And no, I am not your compatriot.
I never saw just only one “NEO-NAZI” whatsoever in Germany; furthermore I never saw a kippa-bearer walking 30 meters away from a police guarded synagogue.
And
I am always trying to teach my German students to avoid the self-licking of their wounds on public; it is very untactful, but very typical.
May 8, 2009 - 12:00 pm 26. Marie Claude:a discussion I had on a german think tank :
had like that the german fellows sort out what is real about the german “far-right” … being neo-nazi
the polemic is discussed here
http://rsmccain.blogspot.com/2009/04/pam-geller-poster-girl-for-eurofascists.html
“Next month, Geller will attend a conference in Cologne, Germany, on the Islamicization of Europe. One of the key figures in the German group sponsoring the Cologne conference is Manfred Rouhs. He has appeared at events with neo-Nazi activist Axel Reitz who, in turn, has appeared at events with neo-Nazi activist Christian Worch”.
and a Danish gives his ideas here :
http://europenews.dk/en/node/9663
Sarcastic_JK (Reply)
I agree with Marie Claude’s point.
It’s a coincidence that Der Spiegel was the one who drum up Nordic people’s uniqueness; who shaped Hitler as Deutschland Hero in 1930s. Now Der Spiegel warn us to pay attention to Nazi reviving.
The pessimistic perception in current Economic crisis is understandable and is by no means a threat to the world. From my point of view We should be more concerned about politicians like Joseph Goebbels, using twisted media like Der Spiegel to fool people around for another round. In other words we need keep an alerting eyes on Der Spiegel so that such media tycoons will not achieve his own selfish goal in the name of equity and justice. Der Spiegel is by no means a qualified observer and by no means an objective commentator. If the trouble of balancing Der Spiegel’s own business interests and its audiences’ expectation for objective and justified reporting had drove Der Spiegel’s former Chief editor becaming a disgraceful accessary of Nazi, I doubt Chief editor of Der Spiegel will behave better this time.
So, der Spiegel is stirring the sh**t ???
May 8, 2009 - 12:02 pm 27. Cybergeezer:So F’in what; They heart obama too! (not a typo).
May 8, 2009 - 3:16 pm 28. David Levavi:Fnord:
…”You must understand that this war is not against Hitler or National Socialism, but against the strength of the German people, which is to be smashed once and for all, regardless of whether it is in the hands of Hitler or a Jesuit priest.”…
FDR, as well as the American and British war staffs concurred with Churchill and intentionally firebombed German civilians by day and by night. Breaking the will of the German people was an honestly and openly announced Allied war aim. Among the plans for postwar Germany was one that called for dismembering Germany, leveling German industry, forever disarming the Germans and reducing them all to farmers. (Roughly the plan the predatory Germans had for Russia.)
Churchill’s name on your tongue is a profanation. Churchill was a colossus for the ages. There was never a German born in all history worthy of cleaning Churchill’s boots. His opinion of Germans like his opinions on most subjects was considered and accurate.
So spare us the heavy sarcasm, Fnord, have a look in the mirror and stop whining. I’m not utterly stupid, Rosenthal is not ill informed and Tom Mix isn’t spouting nonsense.
Your differentiation between the Germans between 1933-1945 and Germans at all other times in history is intellectually dishonest. The Romans who were talented slavers and knew one piece of human flesh from another assigned their Germans slaves a martial role for a reason. They recognized that there is a large element of hound in the German nature.
A Goth or a Carthaginian might be equally fierce but he wasn’t as reliably loyal. Loyal to his Roman masters, that is. If the Hermann and the German savages on the other side of the Rhine were making trouble, an Etruscan didn’t have to dirty his hands putting them down. Hermann’s brother could be gotten up in Roman gear at the head of others of his kind in Roman uniform and accomplish the task quite nicely. If you think FDR wasn’t cognizant of Eisenhower’s ethnicity, Funny Nordic, you need a reality check.
Two thousand years later, the Stasi exploited this lowly aspect of the German character to its fullest. Was there ever such betrayal in all human history? Husbands and wives ratting each other out to the state police. Children and grandchildren ratting out parents and grandparents and vice verse. One out of every twelve “citizens” a police spy. Was ever a people and a society more rotten?
Finally to your confused notions of “conservatives,” “right-wingers,” “progressives,”“utopians,” “socialism, nationalism, fascism and crude biologism.” These are all abstractions that mean little in practical application. Was Jesus a radical or a conservative? Is the Pope who claims to represent him a radical or a conservative?
My venom spent, Fnord, a personal note: Both my parents spoke and read German. Two of my children speak and read German and one of them, a Bible scholar who teaches Hebrew Bible to Christian ministers is qualified by her university in Old German as well. One of my children studies and teaches mathematics in a very respectable German university . My grandmother, an early university graduate, lectured on Schiller and Goethe in German nearly a century ago.
In the foyer of my apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan are old family photographs in black and white and sepia. My children call it the “hall of the ancestors. “ More than thirty of the people depicted were brutally murdered by Germans during what Germans call Das Hitler’s Krieg. Are there family pictures on your wall of relatives, robbed, starved, tortured and murdered by Jews?
The difference between us, FNord, is that I don’t believe it was Hitler’s war. Hitler was democratically elected and enjoyed the loyalty of all the German people.
All that said, you sound like a good and decent fellow and I mean you no anguish. But the reputation of Germany and the German people takes second place to historical truth.
May 8, 2009 - 3:28 pm 29. DonJoe:Let me remind everyone that Ahmadinejad only wants to be good little Muslim and advance Islam.
Let us not forget the advantages of Islam:
So let us just recap on what we have learned about being a good little muslim, from Mohammed:
* Jihad is the first duty, the best in goodness
* The whole world must be converted
* Terror will make you victorious
* Allah will punish you if you don’t fight
* You must fight all infidels around you and be ruthless with them
* You may use any means at your disposal to fight
* You must kill anyone who leaves Islam or is not following the true path
* And if you are killed fighting, Allah will take you into paradise.
Conclusion
So it only takes a few minutes reading out of your busy life to understand that Islam is all about Jihad, killing the infidel, and bringing Islam to the whole world.
Of course, once you understand that, you can start to consider living under Sharia Law and experiencing the delights of 7th century living. There is the genital mutilation of young girls, child marriage and polygamy, concubines and raping infidel women, beheadings, honour killings, stoning women to death for adultery, cutting of hands and feet for minor offences, and of course, slavery. And don’t forget that music is banned as is wine! So if you like 7th century living like this, then Islam is for you!
Then one day you might just have doubts and understand that Allah is NOT the loving, all merciful, creator God that you thought he was. Let us hope it is not too late!
May 8, 2009 - 3:51 pm 30. representative of 36%:@ editrix
May 9, 2009 - 6:13 am 31. Winston:The difference doesn’t matter for anti-Semitic Muslims. They associate with who’s there.
As for authochtonous Germans it does matter. There are relatively few extremist rightwingers who are supervised by statal security. On the other hand there are lots of hidden or open anti-Semites of the left who spread their BS everywhere including papers or TV. They are a strange combination of anti-Semite, anti-Capitalist, anti-American (so far), Islamoapologist and Islamicmanprotectionist. As to America, I said so far, because America seems to be tuning in, so it’s not so alone any more (”America alone”, Mark Steyn).
If somebody in the media is rebuked you can bet that somebody else says that this was the ZdJ (central council of Jews), although most of the time they seem to be sound asleep.
Hey Winston, great nickname! Good post!
May 9, 2009 - 4:32 pm 32. Judy, NYC:germany today is no different than anywhere else on the planet. every twist, skank, idiot, lemming, the braindead and psychotic is out of the woodwork and communicating. we should have guessed an “internet” would produce a world where the criminally insane find comfort (and each other).
May 9, 2009 - 8:01 pm 33. David Levavi:fact is, most people are not thoughtful, the lower brain rules and the frontal lobe is fairly vacant. it’s just an echo chamber of emotional, mostly nonsensical, rag tag snippets supported by nothing more than violent and aggressive impulses.
there are so many more of these human abominations than anyone else, all they need do is just keep babbling until we are simply overcome by their detestable bad breath.
well, see you in the dumpster, along with the serious novel, journalists, actual history and facts no one made up.
all that will walk the earth are the cockroaches and the jew haters. this should make both groups happy at last.
Brantinger:
…Levavi: This is german-bashing on a really low level, no other country in the world did answer to its crimes in the clear and painful way Germany did, even though the crimes had been indeed of a unique size. But neither Holocaustdenial nor fancy oneself as aryan is a majority-position in these days Germany and to portrait the position of the heirs of the nazis, the NPD, which is lucky if it gets 2% in an election as characterizing for the political state of Germany is nothing but caricaturing…
Absolutely true. I am German bashing. Shooting from the hip and crudely caricaturing. Germany has indeed, officially owned up, uniquely among nations, for its crimes . Unlike Austria and the German Churches, Catholic and Lutheran alike, who hypocritically claim victimhood by Hitler and weasel out of any responsibility. Hardly a minor detail and a testament to German honor.
I am a New York Jew who has never set foot in a Holocaust museum, here in the States or on visits to Israel. I haven’t read Elie Weisel’s “Night” and avoid holocaust literature. I find it emotionally upsetting and see no benefit in immersing myself in horror. I wonder at the enthusiasm of certain Jewish scholars for the subject. I remember my father, whose parents, siblings, uncles, aunts and cousins were murdered by Germans, alternating between ranting rage and sulking depression over Jews accepting compensation from the West German government.
The Holocaust was a uniquely monstrous historical event, but for reasons very different from those of holocaust deniers, I question the motives of those who obsess on it. The rabbis in their wisdom long ago limited Jewish national mourning for all the horrors visited on the Jews in history to one day a year on the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Ab. Holocaust Memorial Day is an innovation of secularist Jews without proper respect for rabbinical authority or Jewish tradition. I oppose the innovation and resent its installation in the Jewish calendar.
All that said, I reject the notion that Hitler entirely transformed the German people into something they were not before. I insist that Hitler was working fertile ground for his murderous program. Hitler sprang from the bosom of the German people as Jesus and Paul sprang from the bosom of the Jewish people.
My caricaturing of Germans is full of compliments compared to the ugly caricaturing of Jews in the German Passion Play. Jewish historians writing before Hitler was born remark on the special cruelty that distinguished German pogroms from pogroms elsewhere. Colonialism was a dismal enterprise but the British and even the French felt some higher mission and responsibility for the people they exploited. The British, especially, left those they colonized important gifts. The Germans left nothing and are remembered only for their brutality, worse even than that of King Leopold’s Belgians.
Here in New York and across America, the fall of the Berlin Wall was greeted with genuine and enthusiastic thanksgiving. But in the following weeks and months news reports dribbled in of West German resentment,mainly economic, toward their eastern brethren. It left Americans like me scratching our heads. If Germans aren’t charitable toward their own, who are they charitable to?
I don’t believe that Germans are inherently evil. But I do believe, pardon my descent to plain prejudice, that they are inclined to group thinking and pack behavior. That individual freedom, freedom of belief and expression are contrary to their natural inclination. That they bow reflexively to authority and are naturally more comfortable under authoritarian government. And yes, that they tend to be bullies and sore losers.
I’m painting with a broad brush, of course. I have had intimate friends and lovers who were Germans of unimpeachable character and good will. Were it that some Jews I know had such decency. In the general case, however, I believe my opinions are not entirely inaccurate.
And I would wager I’ve personally known more Germans in my life than those commenting here have known Jews.
May 10, 2009 - 8:02 pm 34. representative of 36%:Let’s make the number of comments 34 instead of 33.
LEVAVI: You live yesterday. I know enough Jews. They’re wonderful, most of them. And they like me. But I wouldn’t like to meet you as you hate me. I’ve done it, you know. As a ghost before birth. Focus on the present tense please, your country, what’s going on on campus, the rallies against Israel during the last war, Iran+Hamas+Hezbollah and their worldwide supporters and apologists. That would make more sense as your hate doesn’t wake up your dead relatives. It might turn you blind to the next six million possible dead.
May 11, 2009 - 1:24 am 35. representative of 36%:Dear LEVAVY,
May 11, 2009 - 2:19 am 36. representative of 36%:I’ll give you three names: Martin S. Bergmann, Milton E. Jucovy and Helen Epstein. The first two wrote the book : Generations of the Holocaust. The third wrote the book: The Children of the Holocaust.
They might be able to help you. You have a bitter trauma which doesn’t lead you anywhere.
Did you realize at all how Elie Wiesel was treated in Geneva recently. Leave the past and live today!
You only need those people, Levavy, if you really are this stereotype: upper West side East coast Jewish New Yorker with a “hall of fame” of murdered ancestors, therefore full of hate and resentment for good. I don’t know any Jew like you. I know anti-Semites who think in these loops of eternal resentment that Jews exist. But I’ve never met any Jew, German or French or American or Israeli who is so deeply involved in eternal resentment. It’s not Jewish. Jews are forgiving, open for new ways, new thinking, new chances.
May 11, 2009 - 2:41 amMaybe you’re only somebody who wants to get the rabbits out of their holes, who knows.
But you’re certainly an unusual person.