Wonders DO never cease!

In my recent entry Will wonders ever cease? I wrote:

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.

The comments I received from Bruce Church in reply to that entry merit their own one, so here they are:

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.

And:

...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's information is of terrific importance to me. I have been called a self-hating German and worse by Americans who fail to see that it is impossible for a decent and honest German to muster up the same ordinary, positive, wholehearted, jolly-hockeysticks sort of patriotism Americans can enjoy. I care for my country or I wouldn't be such a relentless critic and I am ONE OF THEM. Do people think it is EASY to be German? The fact that decent, well-meaning Americans throw a free "He was a patriot" after every dead German Nazi towards hell drives me up the wall because it's such an abomination in the face of the truth. However, different from what some may think, I never wished to be anything else but German and I guess that makes me a Nazi now in the eyes of others. Fine!

There is more to come because my discussion with Bruce is still going on.

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This entry is topical as well!