Tag Archives: anti-semitism

October 16, 2015 · 07:00

Lebensraum & the Foundation of Genocide

hitler

Introduction

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

This is the second part of an article that deals with war crimes, genocide and how seemingly normal human beings can become complicit in such crimes. To understands this we must look at some of the intellectual and ideological foundations.

Peace

Padre Steve+

The German war against the Soviet Union was the first truly race-based ideological war in history with the campaign against Poland its precursor. Adolf Hitler’s racial theories and beliefs played a dominant role in Germany’s conduct of the war in the East in both the military campaign and occupation. This has become clearer in recent years as historians have had the opportunity to examine Hitler’s writings, those of senior Nazi officials and military officers and documents which had been unavailable until the end of the Cold War. Understanding the Nazi ideological basis and the underlying cultural prejudice against the Jews and eastern Europeans in general is foundational to understanding Hitler’s conduct of the war and why the destruction of the Jews figured so highly in his calculations. One must also understand the military and police cultures and doctrines that enabled them to cooperate so closely in the conduct of the war.

The German war in the east would differ from any previous war. Its underlying basis was ideological. Economic and geopolitical considerations were given importance in relationship to the understanding of the German “Master Race.” Race and Lebensraum was the goal of the State that “concentrates all of its strength on marking out a way of life for our people through the allocation of Lebensraum for the next one hundred years…the goal corresponds equally to the highest national and ethnic requirements.” 1

Hitler believed that Germany was “entitled to more land…because it was the “mother of life” not just some “little nigger nation or another.”” 2 The Germans planned to “clear” the vast majority of the Slavic population and the “settlement of millions of hectares of eastern Lebensraum with German colonists” complimented by a short term exploitation of the land to “secure the food balance of the German Grossraum.” 3 Joachim Fest notes that Hitler called it a “crime” to wage war only for the acquisition of raw materials. Only the issue of living space permitted resort to arms. 4

Following the Peace of Westphalia wars in Europe typically emphasized conquest of territory and natural resources either to expand empires or promote some kind of self-sufficiency. The Thirty Years War, which was ended by the Treaty of Westphalia had a heavy religious component which added to its brutality. However the root of much of this conflict was about increasing the power of emerging nation states led by men not necessarily loyal to their religious brethren. 5

The American and Russian Civil wars had some ideological basis and helped usher in the brutality of total war. Both had major effect in these nations’ development and both were bitterly contested with the winners imposing to various degrees political changes on their vanquished brothers they were civil wars. 6

Adam Tooze sees the Holocaust as the first step of the “last great land grab in the long and bloody history of European colonialism…” 7 This does have merit, Hitler’s desire for Lebensraum or living space was a type of colonialism. However, Tooze’s argument does not take away from the basic premise that Germany’s war in the east was at its heart motivated by ideological factors.

Lebensraum

Lebensraum

German Anti-Semitism and Adolf Hitler

The root of this war was in the mind of Adolf Hitler himself. Hitler was born in Linz Austria during a time when various Pan-German and Ant-Semitic groups, publications and propaganda were widespread. As a young man Hitler moved to Vienna hoping to become an artist, something that he found little commercial success. While struggling to make a living in Vienna he was exposed to a culture far different from the provincial city of his youth, a city that had much culture but was also a meeting ground for the various peoples that populated the Austro- Hungarian Empire, including Slavs and many Jews. While many of the Germanic or Austrian Jews were outwardly little different from their Christian neighbors the Jews from Eastern Europe repulsed Hitler.

This attitude was not unique to German but found its roots in the various anthropologies written by other Europeans as well as Germans regarding the lack of rights of “inferior cultures” as related to their colonial expansion as well as the westward expansion of Americans. Friedrich Ratzel a German anthropologist and a founder of the Pan-German League paired the Jews with “the stunted hunting people of the African interior” into “the class of scattered people with no

land.” 8 Ratzel’s work where he also studied the conquest of the Native American tribes by whites helped form the basis of Hitler’s Understanding of Lebensraum, a concept that he borrowed from Ratzel. Ratzel was originally a zoologist. In his concept of Lebensraum Ratzel “linked the biological theory of life with the geographical theory of space.” Ratzel believed that to “conquer and hold sufficient Lebensraum, others have to be displaced.” Ratzel noted how European settles had taken over land from the Native Americans to take it for themselves. He noted that “the result was an annihilating struggle, the prize for which was the land, the space.” 9

Another German academic and lecturer at the University of Glasgow Alexander Tille, wrote in 1893 that it is “the right of the stronger race to annihilate the lower…when that race does not maintain its ability to resist then it has no right to exist, for anyone who cannot maintain himself must be content to go under.” Tille’s “laws” were easily applied to both primitive peoples as well as to “the economically less successful peoples of Europe.” 10

Hitler’s lack of success, struggle with poverty and resentment of others led him to the writings of the Pan-Germanic and Anti-Semitic movements. His years in Vienna were foundational as he as he absorbed the ideas of these Pan-German, anti-Semitic groups through newspapers like the Deutsches Volksblatt. 11 In Vienna Hitler began to connect the Jews with Marxism.12 Joachim Fest notes that in Vienna Hitler became obsessed by the fear of the Slavs and Jews, hated the House of Hapsburg, the Social Democratic Party, and “envisioned the end of Germanism.” 13

Hitler’s racial views were amplified after the war in turbulent Weimar Germany where he became a member of the NDSAP, rising rapidly within it, eventually taking over party leadership, reorganizing it so that it “became the instrument of Hitler’s policies.” 14 Following the unsuccessful Beer Hall Putsch of 1923 Hitler wrote Mein Kampf while imprisoned in the Landsberg prison in which he enunciated his views about the Jews, Slavs and Lebensraum. Hitler believed that Imperial Germany had been “hopelessly negligent” in regard to the Jews 15 and that the Jews in conjunction with the Catholic Center Party and Socialists worked together for “maximum damage to Germany.” 16

Likewise he saw the Jews as heading the “main ideological scourges of the nineteenth and twentieth century’s.” 17 It was the ideology of Hitler’s “obsessive anti-Semitism” 18 that drove Nazi Germany’s policy in regard to the Jews and against Jewish-Bolshevism. By the 1920s Hitler had “combined his hatred of the Jews and of the supposedly Jewish dominated Soviet state with existing calls to conquer additional Lebensraum, or living space, in the east.” 19 Hitler wrote: “The fight against Jewish world Bolshevism requires a clear attitude toward Soviet Russia. You cannot drive out the Devil with Beelzebub.” 20 Richard Evans notes that Mein Kampf clearly enunciated that “Hitler considered racial conflict…the essence of history, and the Jews to be the sworn enemy of the German race ….” And that the “Jews were now linked indissolubly in Hitler’s mind with “Bolshevism” and “Marxism.” 21

When Hitler became the dictator of Germany “his ideology and strategy became the ends and means of German foreign policy.” 22 His aims were clear, Hitler remarked to Czech Foreign Minister Chvalkovsky on 21 January 1939: “We are going to destroy the Jews.” 23It was clear that Hitler understood his own role in this effort noting to General Heinrici that “he was the first man since Charlemagne to hold unlimited power in his own hand. He did not hold this power in vain, he said, but would know how to use it in the struggle for Germany…” 24

To be continued…

Notes

1 Weinberg, Gerhard L. Ed. Hitler’s Second Book: The Unpublished Sequel to Mein Kampf by Adolph Hitler.  Translated by Krista Smith, Enigma Books, New York, NY 2006. Originally published as Hitlers zweites Buch, Gerhard Weinberg editor, 1961 p. 159

2 Davidowicz, Lucy S. The War Against the Jews 1933-1945 Bantam Books, New York, NY 1986. p.91

3 Tooze, Adam. The Wages of Destruction Penguin Books, New York, NY, 2008. First Published by Allen Lane Books, Penguin Group, London UK, 2006. p.463

4 Fest, Joachim, Hitler. Translated by Richard and Clara Winston. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Publishers, San Diego,

New York, London, 1974. German Edition by Verlag Ullstein 1973 pp. 607-608

5 Note the actions of Cardinal Richelieu in France who worked to expand French power at the expense of other Catholic nations and the Vatican itself.

6 In the United States the Reconstruction policies produced great resentment in the south with decidedly negative

results for the newly freed slaves which lasted another 100 years, while in the Soviet Union great numbers of “opponents of Socialism” were killed, imprisoned or driven out of the county

7 Ibid. Tooze. The Wages of Destruction p.462

8 Lindqvist, Sven Exterminate All the Brutes: One Man’s Oddessy into the Heart of Darkness and the Origins of European Genocide Translated from the Swedish by Joan Tate, The New Press , New York and London 1992 p.145

9 Ibid. Lindqvist p.154 It is interesting to note that the current American “historian” of the American Religious right

David Barton made the same arguments recently about the American Indians. Barton said: “You have to deal, a lot of it, with how the enemy responds. It’s got to be based on what the enemy responds [to,] you cannot reason with certain types of terrorists; and see that’s why we could not get the Indians to the table to negotiate with us on treaties until after we had thoroughly whipped so many tribes …” “People complain about the fact that the American military and buffalo hunters went out and wiped out all the buffalo in the western plains. Doing that was what brought the Indians to their knees because the Indians lived on those wide western plains where there were very few towns; Indians didn’t go into town to buy supplies, they went to the buffalo herds, that’s where they got their meat, that’s where they got their coats, the hides provided coats, they provided covering for their teepees.

If you don’t have the buffalos, those Indians cannot live on the open western plains without those buffalo and so what happened was the military wiped out the supply line by wiping out the buffalo. That’s what brought those wars to an end, that’s what brought the Indians to their knees and ended all the western conflict.” Retrieved from Barton’s Wallbuilders Live broadcast http://www.wallbuilderslive.com/Historic.asp?cdate=77515 9 May 2014 and text   from   http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/david-barton-explains-just-war-theory-we-had-destroy-indian-  tribes-until-they-became-civiliz

10 Ibid. Lindqvist p.148

11 Ibid. Davidowicz, The War Against the Jews pp.8-9 12 Ibid. Davidowicz. The War Against the Jews p.12 13 Ibid. Fest Hitler. p.47

14 Bracher, Karl Dietrich. The German Dictatorship: The Origins, Structure, and Effects of National Socialism.

Translated by Jean Steinberg, Holt Rinehart and Winston, New York, NY 1979. Originally Published under the title Die Deutsche Diktatur: Entstehung, Struktur,Folgen des Nationalsocialismus. Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch. Koln and Berlin, 1969 p.93

15 Weinberg, Gerhard L. Germany Hitler and World War II . Cambridge University Press, New York, NY 1995 p.61

16 Ibid. Weinberg, Hitler’s Second Book p.60

17 Friedlander, Saul Nazi Germany and the Jews 1939-1945: The Years of Extermination. Harper Perennial, New York, NY 2007 p.xviii

18 Ibid. Friedlander, The Years of Extermination p.xvii Friedlander called this anti-Semitism “Redemptive anti- Semitism” in which “Hitler perceived his mission as a kind of crusade to redeem the world by eliminating the Jews.

19 Megargee, Geoffrey P. War of Annihilation: Combat and Genocide on the Eastern Front 1941.Bowman and

Littlefield Publishers Inc. Lanham, Boulder, New York. 2007 p.4

20 Hitler, Adolf Mein Kampf translated by Ralph Manheim. Mariner Books, Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, NY 1999. Houghton Mifflin Company 1943, copyright renewed 1971. Originally published in Germany by Verlag Frz.

Eher Nachf. GmbH 1925. p.662.

21 Evans, Richard J. The Coming of the Third Reich Penguin Books, New York 2004. First published by Allen Lane 2003 p.197

22 Ibid. Davidowicz The War Against the Jews pp. 88-89

23 Rhodes, Richard. Masters of Death: The SS Einsatzgruppen and the Invention of the Holocaust. Vintage Books a division of Random House, New York, NY 2002 p.37

24 Speer, Albert. Inside the Third Reich. Collier Books, a Division of MacMillan Publishers, Inc. New York, NY 1970 p.166

 

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February 13, 2015 · 10:55

A Time to Stand Against Hate

12CAROLINA2jp-master315

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out for me.

 Martin Niemöller

There comes a time in every nation where people of faith need to stand up for the rights of others who do not share their faith. There are times at all decent citizens no matter what their religion, or lack of religion need to stand up for those deemed less than full citizens, less than loyal, and in some cases less than human. This is one of those times.

On Wednesday three young America students at the University of North Carolina; Deah Barakat, his wife Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha and her sister Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, were gunned down, execution style, in their home.  They were each shot multiple times in  the head. They were Moslems, and from all account not only good law abiding people who hated intolerance of any kind, even to Jews and Israelis, who were active in helping the poor and homeless in their local community, and just basically good, idealistic, humanitarians.

Their assailant Craig Stephen Hicks, was a man who doesn’t fit a typical right wing, at least from the terms of the Religious Right, or Left Wing stereotype.

All that we really know about him was that neighbors described him as angry and confrontational, that some feared him, that he was anti-government, unemployed, and hated the major religions; especially Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. He was also evidently a pretty big fan of expanded gun rights, which for a man in his state of mind isn’t unusual. His current wife, who is in the process of divorcing him described him as supporting marriage equity, abortion rights and other socially progressive causes.

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It is quite fascinating to me that Craig Stephen Hicks, was a follower of Richard Dawkins and what is called “the New Atheism” which more appropriately should be called anti-theism. This makes his case somewhat unusual, because he would be one of first of this breed in the United States to kill others in such a manner. Of course this is not to say that such people haven’t committed such acts on a mind-numbingly large scale in the former Soviet Union, Red China and other repressive atheist regimes. Likewise there are nations where state religions working hand in hand with the state do that as well.

But most of the time, recently in this country and Western Europe, those who kill others because of those  peoples religious beliefs, are religious themselves and defending their idea of God and righteousness. That my friends is what makes the act of barbarous hatred committed by Hicks so interesting from a sociological and historical point of view.

It is also why I don’t believe the claims by the soon to be ex-wife of Hicks, the police or the prosecutor that this was an isolated incident dealing with a dispute of guest parking in the condominium complex where the victims and the killer lived. That’ why the story just doesn’t wash, and the fact that it doesn’t wash causes it to stink.

Really, let’s face it, if Hicks was a Moslem and the victims were atheists would anyone believe that story? The hell no. But there are people who will not only believe it but as usual say this is a “isolated incident” because after all, white people in America don’t kill others for their religion, but that Moslems do and so a Moslem is automatically guilty of crimes simply by being a Moslem.

Evidently the killer’s ex-wife described him Hicks as a man without empathy, who incessantly watched the movie Falling Down while laughing his way through it. If you don’t know the movie it is about an unemployed engineer, angry for many reason, who goes mad and ends up in a killing spree. It is a tragic film, and I wonder if Hicks if Hicks saw himself as similar to the lead character played by Michael Douglas.

I don’t know what the final tipping point was for Hicks. From what I read he seemed like a mountain of hatred and anger just waiting to erupt.

While I don’t know his entire motivations, I do know that somewhere in his perverted psyche, he was motivated by hate, and that is all too common. Eric Hoffer said: “Passionate hatreds can give meaning and purpose to an empty life. These people haunted by the purposelessness of their lives try to find a new content not only by dedicating themselves to a holy cause but also by nursing a fanatical grievance.”   

Hicks found some measure of purpose in his hatred of religion. It is said that he was quite angry at the Christians and Jews who  participated together with Moslems and others in the ecumenical memorial services after the attacks of September 11th 2001. Evidently, that anger toward religions and religious people grew until it reached the point of murder.

Sadly, there are many people like this man who are consumed by some kind of hatred. In this case it appears to me, and I could be wrong, that it was Hicks’s hatred of Moslems and other religious people. I cannot think of any other reason why the man would execute unarmed people for a parking space, unless they represented something more to him.

The hatred something that the actions of the Islamic State, Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Boko Haram and other terrorist groups that claim the mantle of Islam  have helped to inspire. That hatred is also fed by much of the media, as well as supposedly Christian political pundits and preachers who lump all Moslems into the same camp as the terrorists and ignores the Moslems who condemn such actions and who put their lives on the line to fight those groups. This “reporting” feeds the fear, it feeds the anger of some, and it leads to people, especially people who are already angry, disturbed and possibly even mentally ill, to commit crimes in name of their religion or their ideology. In Hicks case it appears to be his militant atheism.

But let’s step back from that right now, and sometimes it is good to look at things in with a broader lens.

It seems to me that among the worst of the types of people promoting such hatred of Moslems are supposedly conservative “Christian” preachers. So I feel that I need to speak up. I say this because such hatred against a religion, any religion is not new. Militant Hindus in India kill Moslems and Christians, of course we know of the crimes of the terrorists who kill in the name of Islam, but there are places in Africa where Christians do the killing, and sometimes not even for religious reasons. Does anyone remember the Rwanda Genocide? But that is not an isolated instance, in Central and South America there were the American funded dictators and terrorist groups who had death squads all over the place, many killing to defend their “conservative Christian regimes.”

This kind of thing happens all the time and sometimes it takes place under godless regimes who co-opt religious people to bolster their evil. Chief among the times this happened was in Nazi Germany. My examples from that era include Protestant pastors Martin Niemöller, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Herman Maas, and Catholic Biship Galen and Jesuit Priest Father Rupert Meyer of Munich. All were imprisoned or placed in Concentration Camps by the Nazis, and Bonhoeffer was be killed. Maas was the first non-Jewish German to be officially invited to the newly formed state of Israel in 1950. In July 1964 Yad Vashem recognized the Maas as one of the Righteous Among the Nations. Of course there were others who died for attempting to help the Jews, including some European Moslems.

When Hitler took power the Jews, along with Communists, Trade Unions, Socialists were enemies of the state.  They were banned from the military, civil service and other government employment, professional associations and forced to wear a gold Star of David on their clothing.  Their property was seized, they were abused by SA men acting as deputized auxiliary police, times their businesses, Synagogues and homes vandalized, burned or seized by the state. Eventually those who remained were condemned  and sent to concentration camps, where most with nearly 6 million other Jews they would be exterminated.

Today we face a similar situation in United States and Western Europe.  This time it is not the Jews, but Moslems who are the targets of xenophobic rage by many influential members of the “conservative” media.

The ideological inspiration for the killings at Chapel Hill seems to be from English Atheist Richard Dawkins. Dawkins wrote something that the killer repeated almost verbatim in his social media posts: “All three of the Abrahamic religions are deeply evil if they take their teachings seriously. Islam is the only one that does.” Of course Dawkins statement is overblown because there are some Christians and Jews who kill in the name of religion. In fact as far as Christianity goes we have a host of them who litter our history justifying killing in the name of the Lord. To his credit Dawkins condemned the killings soon after they happened, however, his hyperbole and lumping together all religion as evil has the same effect on some people as the teachings of the radical religious preachers of hate whose ranks seem to grow daily.

Others, especially in parts of the Christian Right who have great sway in conservative politics and the Republican party advocate policies similar to the Nazi Nurnberg Laws and the Aryan Paragraph.  Threats to deny loyal American Moslems the right to serve in the military, security organizations, government positions and academia are common today. More extreme are threats to put all-Moslems “behind razor wire” as we did to American Japanese citizens in World War II, or to deport them as the Nazis did to the Jews before the “Final Solution”  are even more chilling.

wade-michael-page-nazi-flag

Wade Page

Of course there was the mass killing by neo-Nazi Wade Page in Oak Park Illinois in October 2012, like Hicks he was filled with hate toward religion, and took his out on the members of the Sikh Temple.

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Scott Roeder

I wonder how Christians would react if an atheist or someone on the political left suggested that all conservative Christians or members of pro-Life groups be imprisoned for the actions of Christians or pro-Life movement members like Scott Roeder or Eric Rudolph who killed to stop abortion or the late Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church? Likewise I wonder what atheists would do if someone suggested putting everyone who followed Richard Dawkins, Bill Maher, or Sam Harris in camps or depriving them of citizenship for the actions of someone like Hicks?

Thankfully, there are a few on the  Religious Right who have taken a stand. Reverend Rob Schenck, President of the National Clergy Council, commented in regard to the Moslem prayer vigil in Washington D.C. in 2009:  “With over 1.5 billion Muslims in the world, it is important that Christians have an open dialogue with the Islamic community. The church must never be timid in reaching out to peoples and groups with differing beliefs and traditions. Too much is at stake for future generations not to begin this historic conversation. This is an opportunity that we cannot afford to miss.”

What the people who advocate punitive actions against American Moslems do is dangerous, not just for Moslems and other minorities but for them.  American and English law is based on legal precedence.  Once something has been determined to be legal, or constitutional it is considered by the law to be settled law.  The law is a two edged sword and those who want to use it to have the state enforce their religious, social, ideological or political beliefs on others need to remember what comes around goes around.

Niemöller would discover this the hard way prison telling one interviewer after the war:

“I find myself wondering about that too. I wonder about it as much as I regret it. Still, it is true that Hitler betrayed me. I had an audience with him, as a representative of the Protestant Church, shortly before he became Chancellor, in 1932. Hitler promised me on his word of honor, to protect the Church, and not to issue any anti-Church laws. He also agreed not to allow pogroms against the Jews, assuring me as follows: ‘There will be restrictions against the Jews, but there will be no ghettos, no pogroms, in Germany. I really believed given the widespread anti-Semitism in Germany, at that time—that Jews should avoid aspiring to Government positions or seats in the Reichstag. There were many Jews, especially among the Zionists, who took a similar stand. Hitler’s assurance satisfied me at the time. On the other hand, I hated the growing atheistic movement, which was fostered and promoted by the Social Democrats and the Communists. Their hostility toward the Church made me pin my hopes on Hitler for a while. I am paying for that mistake now; and not me alone, but thousands of other persons like me.”

It is easy for well meaning  to be bought with promises of support by politicians and media types who speak the words they want to hear in difficult times. We have entered a dangerous phase of American, and for that matter world history.

The killing of these three young American by this hate filled man should be a wake up call to all of us. It is time to start giving a damn and standing up to those who inspire and promote such hatred, no matter what their race, creed, or ideology. We have to stand up against hate. If we do not we are no better than all of those who throughout history turned their backs as others committed the most horrible crimes against humanity.

Peace,

Padres Steve+

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November 27, 2013 · 00:23

The Absence of Empathy

hqdefault-2Colm Feore as Rudolf Höss

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0hJqNuRH1A

“Holocaust? Ninety million Indians? Only four million left? They all have casinos — what’s to complain about?” ~Rush Limbaugh 25 September 2009

One thing that I find amazing in our world, particularly among many pundits who profess themselves to abide by supposed “Christian Principles” who like Rush Limbaugh make comments that defy any sense of Christian morality. If Limbaugh was a lone person making such comments we could blow him off. However there are many like him, professional pundits and politicians but even more concerning are the preachers who make similar statements.

Some of these men and women are quite influential. Their ideas penetrate to many parts of our society, and not just religious people. They include pastors of some of the most politically influential churches and ministries in the country. Whether the comments are directed against Native Americans as was this particular quote from Limbaugh or African Americans, Mexican Americans, Moslems, Gays and Lesbians, Jews (especially liberals) or political liberals they demonstrate a profound and troubling lack of empathy.

In comments about the genocidal extermination of Native Americans by whites David Barton said: “You have to deal, a lot of it, with how the enemy responds. It’s got to be based on what the enemy responds [to,] you cannot reason with certain types of terrorists; and see that’s why we could not get the Indians to the table to negotiate with us on treaties until after we had thoroughly whipped so many tribes …”

If that was not enough he justified those comments and continued his diatribe in much the same manner as the Nazis did the Jews.

“People complain about the fact that the American military and buffalo hunters went out and wiped out all the buffalo in the western plains.  Doing that was what brought the Indians to their knees because the Indians lived on those wide western plains where there were very few towns; Indians didn’t go into town to buy supplies, they went to the buffalo herds, that’s where they got their meat, that’s where they got their coats, the hides provided coats, they provided covering for their teepees.

If you don’t have the buffalos, those Indians cannot live on the open western plains without those buffalo and so what happened was the military wiped out the supply line by wiping out the buffalo.  That’s what brought those wars to an end, that’s what brought the Indians to their knees and ended all the western conflict.”

Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association who is one of the primary preachers of hate against a wide range of groups said about the Native Americans: “Many of the tribal reservations today remain mired in poverty and alcoholism because many native [sic] Americans continue to cling to the darkness of indigenous superstition instead of coming into the light of Christianity and assimilating into Christian culture.”

It is the defense that the end justifies the means, a defense that was excoriated at the various Nuremberg trials. Barton’s defense of the extermination of the Native Americans is akin to what some of the Nuremberg defendants said in their own defense.

But it is not just the extermination of Native Americans that is a concern. Preachers of hate claiming to be speaking for God often show no compassion, empathy or feeling for victims of natural disasters, disease or mass murder. The examples are too numerous to quote from all of them and in the interest of brevity I will just mention a few.

Bryan Fischer who seems to have something to say about everything said after the school shootings in Newtown Connecticut last year:

“The question is going to come up, where was God? I though God cared about the little children. God protects the little children. Where was God when all this went down. Here’s the bottom line, God is not going to go where he is not wanted.” 

Likewise he said about the Moslem extremists who carried out the attacks of 9-11-2001: “The jihadist on 9/11 were the agents of God’s wrath in order to get our attention as a people.” I could go through speech after speech, column after column, diatribe after diatribe of men like Limbaugh, Fischer and so many others demonstrate any sense of empathy for those that they condemn. Some of the worst are from ministers like Fischer.  John Hagee who pastors Cornerstone Church, a mega-church in San Antonio with over 20,000 active members said last week on the Trinity Broadcasting Network that the 9-11 attacks were “God’s judgment on America.” In fact any time a natural disaster hits, especially areas with high percentages of poor people and minorities such as New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina these preachers almost line up gleefully to ascribe them to God’s judgment. Franklin Graham said at the time: “This is one wicked city, OK?  It’s known for Mardi Gras, for Satan worship.  It’s known for sex perversion.  It’s known for every type of drugs and alcohol and the orgies and all of these things that go on down there in New Orleans…There’s been a black spiritual cloud over New Orleans for years….” Later on CNN when confronted about the comments by Larry King Graham backtracked saying:  “I would never say that this is God’s judgment on New Orleans or any other place.”

There is no empathy among these people, no real care or concern, and that is of itself evil.

The comments have become all too pervasive and poisonous. The sad thing is that those make these kind of comments really do have no compassion or empathy for people that they have labeled “enemies of God” or “enemies of America.” They honestly believe that they are doing right. Philosopher Eric Hoffer noted:

“The impression somehow prevails that the true believer, particularly the religious individual, is a humble person. The truth is the surrendering and humbling of the self breed pride and arrogance. The true believer is apt to see himself as one of the chosen, the salt of the earth, the light of the world, a prince disguised in meekness, who is destined to inherit the earth and the kingdom of heaven too. He who is not of his faith is evil; he who will not listen will perish.”

Captain Gustave Gilbert an Army Psychologist at Nuremberg wondered about how people could commit the atrocities of the Holocaust.

“In my work with the defendants (at the Nuremberg Trails 1945-1949) I was searching for the nature of evil and I now think I have come close to defining it. A lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants, a genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow men. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.” 

I think he is right the more that I read and listen to men like Limbaugh, Hagee, Fischer and their fellow travelers. That lack of empathy was demonstrated in the words of Rudolf Höss the Commandant of Auschwitz. In an interview with Army Psychiatrist Major Leon Goldensohn at Nuremberg Höss said in regard to his crimes and how he had no feeling or empathy for his victims:

“I thought I was doing the right thing,” said Höss. “I was obeying orders, and now, of course, I see that it was unnecessary and wrong. But I don’t know what you mean by being upset about these things because I didn’t personally murder anybody. I was just the director of the extermination program at Auschwitz. It was Hitler who ordered it through Himmler and it was Eichmann who gave me the orders regarding transports.”

The fact is that these pundits, preachers and politicians lay the groundwork by which people justify the persecution of others by demonizing and dehumanizing those that they detest. While the men doing the preaching today may never actually commit atrocities their words are laying the groundwork that others will use to justify their actions. The crimes committed by the Nazis had their genus in decades of fierce anti-Semitic campaigns conducted often by the same Unholy Trinity of Pundits, Preachers and Politicians.

In Nazi Germany one of the Chief media propagandists was Julius Streicher, publisher of the daily “Der Sturmer.” At Nuremberg the prosecution summed up its case against Streicher:

“The defendant Streicher is an accessory to the persecution of the Jews within Germany and in occupied territories which culminated in mass murder of an estimated six million men, women, and children. The propaganda in Der Stürmer and other Streicher publications, for which he had admitted responsibility, was of a character calculated to stir up fanatic fear and hatred of the Jewish people and to incite to murder…Through propaganda designed to incite hatred and fear, defendant Streicher devoted himself, over a period of twenty-five years, to creating the psychological basis essential to carrying through a program of mass murder. This alone would suffice to establish his guilt as an accessory to the criminal program of extermination.”

I have seen what the dehumanization of people does in Iraq. When I was there both Sunni and Shia military officers refused to have Imam’s in their units because they saw how Imams and Mullahs from both factions in the country fanned the flames of hatred against the other and led the country into civil war and threaten to again. The troubling thing is that I am seeing the same thing here from the religious propagandists of the American political right.

However this is not something that some of these “Christian Leaders” understand. Ideas do have consequences and the preachers of hate are responsible for the evil that they incite, they are accessories to any crimes committed by those who embrace their ideology.

One of the philosophical leaders of the Dominionist movement Gary North who is closely connected to the power structure of the Tea Party wrote: “The long-term goal of Christians in politics should be to gain exclusive control over the franchise. Those who refuse to submit publicly to the eternal sanctions of God by submitting to His Church’s public marks of the covenant–baptism and holy communion–must be denied citizenship, just as they were in ancient Israel.”

It is little different than the philosophy which drove the Nazi persecution of the Jews. It is interesting to compare North’s writings with the Nuremberg Laws: The Law on German Citizenship stated:  “A citizen of the Reich is that subject only who is of German or kindred blood and who, through his conduct, shows that he is both desirous and fit to serve the German people and Reich faithfully.” and that “A Jew cannot be a citizen of the Reich. He has no right to vote in political affairs and he cannot occupy public office.”

That poisonous message is something that allowed people like Höss do what they did and feel nothing for their victims. They were and are truly men without empathy.

Well, I am tired, so I will say goodnight.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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November 25, 2013 · 23:48

Anti Semite? You Have to Be Kidding

jPeOJ

I don’t like having to feel the need to respond to personal attacks on social media on this page.

However, yesterday I experienced a first. I was accused by an American gentile of being an “anti-Semite.” Over the years I have been called a “Jew lover” “Nigger lover” and other racist names by White Supremacists and Neo-Nazis, but I have never been called an anti-Semite. Actually that was kind of shocking to me. It took me aback. But then in today’s political climate maybe it shouldn’t have.

But the reason I was called this was because I dared to challenge this gentleman’s personal attacks on me on Twitter.  It was in an exchange where I was advocating giving diplomacy a chance in regard to the Iranian nuclear threat. It was something that was not at odds with the other people in the conversation, including nationally and internationally known diplomats.

However, the attacker, a financial and political adviser from New York to “conservatives” was a Twitter troll. He jumped me in the conversation which did not involve him. When I responded to his attacks he got personal. When I refuted his personal attacks on me he called me an “anti-Semite.”  I guess that is the new fall-back position  when when you have nothing else to say.

What really offended me about this man was that he was a total chicken-hawk. He has never served in the military, never been to war and never intends to. He then then dares to presume that he should be able to send other people and their children to fight wars that he is unwilling to fight, or for that matter fund because tax cuts for him matter more than actual national security. In comparison  I have served in the military for 32 years, done multiple combat tours and deployments and more advance military and national security education than this man ever will do, but somehow I am his enemy.

That astounded me, so I decided to do some internet searches. In the process I found out who he was, where he worked as well as some of his writings. In the man’s biography on his business website he referred to himself as a “brilliant debater” something that after sparring with him was a bit of an over estimate of his abilities. Good debaters actually use facts before they level an accusation so vile. But then the tendency to make such accusations is so common today, especially among those who live and die by conservative talk radio and Fox News it is scary.

My attacker was not a good debater. He is a rich and entitled bully, and I will not tolerate bullies. In fact if I was in a bar with this man and he said the things that he said about me I would have kicked his ass, no questions asked. I would them pick him up and buy him a beer.

Of course any reader of this website would know that such is not the case and I am not an anti-Semite. Simply take a look at my writings on the Holocaust, the Nazi persecution of the Jews in Europe and current Neo-Nazis and White Supremacists in the United States. Some of my harshest critics on this site have been White Supremacists and Neo-Nazis, some who have actually made threats on my life. So for me to be called an “anti-Semite” was a vile insult.

It seems to me that my critic wanted to use the term “anti-Semite” as a term to smear me because I did not agree with him and refused to role over to his personal attacks. Actually that is a great strategy. It really doesn’t matter what the facts are if you are losing call the person you disagree with an “anti-Semite” or something else, maybe a “racist,” or “socialist,” “anti-Christian” or whatever term. I may have had some bad experiences with dentists as a kid which could make me an “anti-dentite” (note Seinfeld reference) but I am not an anti-Semite.

When I read the man’s tweet I decided to do a web search and found out all I needed to know. The guy was a know it all who didn’t like being challenged especially when a military veteran of the Cold War, the Bosnia campaign and Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom called him on his bullshit.

The fact was that the man objected to someone having a different military and political view of the current situation regarding Iraq and had to cheapen the debate by calling me an “anti-Semite” despite not ever having read any of my writings or having any sort of relationship with me. In doing so he demeaned the Jews killed buy the Nazis and their other persecutors all to make a political point.

But then that has become a norm of some who oppose any kind of real negotiations with Iran or any other Islamic Country by some, mostly Evangelical Christians in the United States. The irony is that most of the Evangelicals that support Israel only do because in their millennial theology sacrifices almost all the living Jews to preserve a few when Jesus returns. Of course those surviving Jews all end up “accepting Jesus” after Armageddon. Personally I don’t see how that is not considered “anti-Semitic” but hey what do I know?

Since the man was a complete ass I simply decided to block him on Twitter. I could put his business website, Twitter and personal information up but I won’t. I don’t desire to ruin the man’s life.

That being said, it is funny to see how some people who troll about the internet thinking they are being anonymous by not identifying themselves leave enough information out there to track them down, read their writings, web-posts and find their business information. It is a mark of arrogance. That is why I am not anonymous on this site or any social media.

My personal feeling about men like this are that they are human slime. They make their money off of others, presume that they know all there is to foreign policy or national security issues and have never served a day in the Military or Foreign Service in harm’s way. They are hacks and warmongers willing to sacrifice thousands or even millions of lives to satisfy their lust for power and wealth. They are willing to slander people like me by calling us “anti-Semites” a term so loaded that the accusation alone is is enough to destroy careers and reputations.

However I won’t take that lying down. If He decides to push the issue, which because I presume that he will move along to a more easily intimidated target, I will sue him for defamation and win. A little bit of knowledge linked to a vast amount of ignorance is a dangerous thing. Likewise those that call others ‘anti-Semites’ simply because they disagree with their opinions on what foreign policy should be pursued in regards to Israel and the Middle East show just how shallow their thinking is. Personally I find that to be a greater tragedy. because people like this when entrusted with political power become despots.

Anyway. That is enough for tonight.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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