After we are writing our backside off for six or seven years now, starting long before this blog was created, about the disgusting hypocrisy in Germany when it comes to antisemitism and our "special relationship with Israel" (in fact, this entire blog is about it) the Jerusalem Post has twigged as well. Last Sunday that was.
We mentioned Prof. Dr. Wolgang Benz here before.
All the JP and we need now are some American readers able to understand the implications.
8 comments:
I'm American and I've read your blog religiously for the last two years, it seems, and even checked it during the few months you weren't blogging.
I suspected that there was more antisemitism over there than meets the eye, first because I know its worst manifestations are outlawed in Europe, driving it underground, and second, because I live among German-Americans, and they are still surprisingly antisemitic. They brought it from the Old Country.
Thank you, I feel honoured! To know something like that makes blogging worthwhile.
Antisemitism is deeply ingrained in the German mind, however, I somewhat naively (and wishfully) thought that German-Americans were able to shed that burden. What about second- or third generation German-Americans? Do you know?
Editrix, Funny you should ask because I was part of a blog discussion two months ago where someone brought the issue up in the comments. See here:
http://ichabodthegloryhasdeparted.blogspot.com/2008/12/herman-otten-accidental-editor-who.html
Yes, the recent generations of German Lutheran and Catholic immigrants have ruined their respective American churches with antisemitism, and even pro-Nazi sympathies. Their attitudes were not diluted by mixing with Anglos.
The recent immigrants were products of the superior (uber) German educational system with its latest liberal scholarship, and they knew Deutsch better than German-Americans who had been in the country a while. So in the age before IQ testing and standardized merit tests, they were, often undeservedly, deemed to be very smart and educated. So they and their children often got tenure rather easily, and went straight to the top of their church hierarchies, often going back to Germany to obtain their doctoral degrees first--at church expense, of course. (There weren't many church-related universities and seminaries that gave out doctrinal degrees in the United States before WWII.)
When you see the surveys of whose pro-Israel in America, the 9% who are pro-Palestinian and the 30% who are undecided are mostly Catholics and Lutherans, many of German extraction. It's the Evangelicals who are pro-Israel, and if you search on their names here, you'll find that the Dobsons, Moodys, Falwells, Darbys, etc., are nearly all from Scotland or England, not Germany:
http://www.nationaltrustnames.org.uk/default.aspx
The Evangelicals are more pro-Israel because since the 1700s or so, they've been saying that the Jews would be saved before the End, and they even were pro-Zionists before the Jews were. Also, the last hundred years they've dabbled in Pre-millennialism which, in some formulations, is pro-Jewish. Meanwhile, Lutherans, Catholics and the Continental Reformed have stuck with Amillennialism, which doesn't even mention the Jews.
If you look at the main English-speaking Holocaust Revisionist organization, IHR, outside of the infamous Englishman David Irving, chances are many such "scholars" are German-Americans whose families immigrated after WWI. See one list here:
Institute for Historical Review Bios
http://www.ihr.org/other/authorbios.html
Of course, most German-Americans are intermarried, with the father's side being, say, 6th generation G-As, and the mother's side being 4th, and sometimes one has Danish or English ancestry, too, so most people don't ask about ancestry in America, since it's too hard to keep track of anyway except for one's own ancestry. However, when it comes to antisemitism and Holocaust Minimization, that's an excellent question that more should be asking! We should ask: Was it your parents or grand parents that
came from Germany?
Let me highlight two German-Americans who would issue the standard denial about being antisemitic, of course, but nevertheless have nothing fond to say of Jews or of Israel's existence:
1) Michael Hoffmann just came out with a book on the Jews in 2008, and he's definitely German-American, but I don't know what generation:
A Study of the Anti-Biblical Religion of Racism, Self-Worship, Superstition and Deceit."
http://www.rense.com/general84/mhof.htm
2) Herman Otten is an Octagenarian Lutheran pastor who is a second-generation German-American, whose parents came over after WWI. He often prints up a 24 and 28-page broadsheet newspaper full of historical revisionism and sends it to a couple thousand Lutheran pastor subscribers. Here's his bio:
Growing Up in New York City During World War II
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v09/v09p321_Otten.html
Excerpt: The October, 1988 IHR Newsletter announcing this conference referred to me as a "German-American." My parents came to this country from Germany as teen-agers. However, ancestors on both my mother's and father's side came to Germany from Sweden. I mention this because some have said I am a neo-Nazi, out to defend Germany because of my background.
Bruce, I am speechless. I will put your comment up in its own entry later today, so that it won't disappear in the comment section bilges.
That sounded like an occasion to which I ought to rise, so I read the article you linked. It turned out that I already agreed with the entire article, but then, I'm a Jew who votes Republican, so it was pretty much a gimme. It seems that American Jews look for antisemitism in things like Ann Coulter's belief that we, like everyone, ought to convert to her faith; and ignore it in the explicitly antisemitic slurs of prominent Democratic politicians, or in antisemitic tirades thinly disguised as criticism of Israeli actions or policies, or in left-wing protesters displaying blatant antisemitism in their support for Palestine. We look for the imaginary neo-Nazis of sensational movies and ignore the real-life aspiring Hamans standing in clear sight.
Moshea, again I agree. I have expressed my opinion of Coulter, this conservative icon in a flimsy little black dress, here and here.
While I think she is a pain in the proverbial and that the "Jews need to be perfected" thing was not a gaffe but carefully staged, she didn't say anything that was not the official line of any Christian church.
It reminds me of the brouhaha about Pope Benedict and the Holocaust denying "bishop". All of Benedict's "misdeeds" are brought to light now to the gloating of the media and drooling moron public, including the Friday prayer for the Jews' conversion which is *gasp* antisemitic. Nobody seems to know that observant Jews are supposed to pray three times a day for the gentiles, so that they will learn to follow the Noachidic laws of the God of Abraham, Isaac und Jacob. But who cares for the truth when the lie is such a juicy, politically correct little morsel to drool over.
From the Spiegel news today it seems we Americans should be asking whether Swedish-American Holocaust Minimizers immigrated after WWI, too. Also, note that Herman Otten's parents were from Sweden and Germany:
Attack Reveals German-Swedish Neo-Nazi Alliance
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,druck-609308,00.html
One of the suspects in the brutal attack by neo-Nazis on left-wing demonstrators last weekend is Swedish. The investigation has revealed strong links between Scandinavian and German far-right groups.
Bruce, I have never delved all that deeply into the right wing extremist "scene", but I believe that those who have contacts with neo-Nazis in other "Aryan" nations are the real hard core.
I think, however, the real danger lies with the more "moderate" everyday apolgizers and relativists of the German historical guilt, the majority of them coming from the left.
The fact those on the left, who do NOT share such a view, label themselves "Antideutsche" (Anti-Germans) speaks for itself. The leftist mainstream was, is, and will always be national socialist.
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