Bloodthirsty Liberal

We interrupt this broadcast to bring you this public service announcement( via IMRA):

Between 1939 and 1945, shortwave radio transmitters near Berlin broadcast Nazi propaganda in many languages around the world, including Arabic throughout the Middle East and North Africa, and Persian programs in Iran. English-language transcripts of the Arabic broadcasts shed light on a particularly dark chapter in the globalization of pernicious ideas. The transcripts’ significance, however, is not purely historical. Since September 11, 2001, scholars have debated the lineages, similarities, and differences between Nazi anti-Semitism and the anti-Semitism of Islamic extremists. These radio broadcasts suggest that Nazi Arabic-language propaganda helped introduce radical anti-Semitism into the Middle East, where it found common ground with anti-Jewish currents in Islam.

In a 2007 book, Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11 (Telos Press), the German political scientist Matthias Kuentzel details how Nazi ideology influenced Islamist ideologues like Hassan al-Banna and Sayyid Qutb of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, as well as the Palestinian leader Haj Amin al-Husseini. More recent examples abound. The founding charter of Hamas, the militant Palestinian group, recapitulates conspiracy theories about Jews that were popular in Europe in the 20th century. Al Qaeda’s war against “the Zionist-Crusader Alliance” and the anti-Zionist rants of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran also display a blend of anti-Semitic themes rooted in Nazi and fascist, as well as Islamist, traditions. To be sure, each of these movements and ideologies have non-European, local, and regional causes and inspirations. But the formulation of Nazi propaganda during World War II and its dissemination stand as a decisive episode in the development of radical Islamism.

There used to be some queasiness about using the word Islamofascism to describe Al Qaeda, Hamass and the like, but I don’t see why. Once you get used to it, it flows quite freely. Islamofascism, Islamofascism, Islamofascism.

It’s a long article, and very interesting, but if you’re like me, you want a sample of what the Nazis said. The Jews get all the best parking spots. Jewish men wear a specially designed cologne irresistible to Arab women. Stuff like that.

That and more:

At 8:15 p.m. on July 7, 1942, the Voice of Free Arabism played a remarkable program titled, “Kill the Jews Before They Kill You.” The broadcast began with a lie: “A large number of Jews residing in Egypt and a number of Poles, Greeks, Armenians, and Free French have been issued with revolvers and ammunition” to fight “against the Egyptians at the last moment, when Britain is forced to evacuate Egypt.” The broadcast continued:

“In the face of this barbaric procedure by the British we think it best, if the life of the Egyptian nation is to be saved, that the Egyptians rise as one man to kill the Jews before they have a chance of betraying the Egyptian people. It is the duty of the Egyptians to annihilate the Jews and to destroy their property. … You must kill the Jews, before they open fire on you. Kill the Jews, who have appropriated your wealth and who are plotting against your security. Arabs of Syria, Iraq, and Palestine, what are you waiting for? The Jews are planning to violate your women, to kill your children and to destroy you. According to the Muslim religion, the defense of your life is a duty which can only be fulfilled by annihilating the Jews. This is your best opportunity to get rid of this dirty race, which has usurped your rights and brought misfortune and destruction on your countries. Kill the Jews, burn their property, destroy their stores, annihilate these base supporters of British imperialism. Your sole hope of salvation lies in annihilating the Jews before they annihilate you.”

Where’d they get this notion? Who told the Nazis what Islam preached?

Haj Amin al-Husseini, a Palestinian leader in exile in Berlin, helped Hitler broadcast Nazi ideas in passionate, fluent Arabic.

BTW, it just shows how strong-willed the Nazis were to collaborate with the very un-Aryan Arabs. Who said Adolf didn’t play well with others?

Jimmy Carter says that as a southerner he knows racism. I guess it’s kind of like lust: something he’s felt in his heart.

But much as the White House wants to put a parsec between itself and the peanut farmer-in-chief, he’s not backing down:

“The president does not believe that criticism comes based on the color of his skin,” Gibbs said in his Wednesday briefing at the White House. “We understand that people have disagreements with some of the decisions that we’ve made and some of the extraordinary actions that had to be taken by both this administration and the previous administration.”

…

“I think it’s unprecedented to attack a president, wishing he were dead, and equating him with animals and Adolf Hitler,” Carter said. “That was the point that I made.”

Never mind that he said it. How can the media let him get away with it?

That took about two minutes on Google Images.

Jimmy Carter is a liar. An anti-Semite and a liar. And the media puts him on a platform higher than Hitler’s at Nuremberg.

This certainly qualifies as interesting, and curiously familiar:

A new book disputes widely held assumptions that President Franklin D. Roosevelt was insensitive to the plight of European Jews under the Nazis, and instead concludes that he tried to arrange resettlement for thousands of refugees in the late 1930s, only to be thwarted by his own State Department.

The book, “Refugees and Rescue,” claims FDR developed plans in 1938 for the United States to fill its immigration quota with 27,000 Jews from Germany and Austria and to send others to British-held Palestine and friendly nations in Africa and Latin America.

“Most of the initiatives to resettle refugees in underdeveloped areas proved impossible, met substantial resistance abroad, or developed very slowly partly because of resistance by the Department of State,” the Center for Jewish History said in a statement about the book.

…

The book is based primarily on diaries of James G. McDonald, the League of Nations’ top official concerned with refugees from Nazi Germany in the mid-1930s.

“In tracking him, we stumbled on other new evidence about FDR’s role,” Richard Breitman, one of the book’s three editors, told a news conference on Friday.

In 1935, McDonald quit the League of Nations post to protest lack of support on the issue and later headed a committee advising Roosevelt, while also pressing for changes in US immigration laws. In 1948, he became the first US ambassador to the new state of Israel.

…

The State Department raised bureaucratic obstacles to immigration, through denial of visas and in alloting quotas for refugees, and along with Congress, resisted funding conferences or other initiatives on refugee resettlement. The State Department also stifled public release of reports about genocide. In 1942 it received but declined to release a report detailing Nazi plans to wipe out Europe’s Jews, according to the Holocaust museum.

I’m surprised McDonald’s story isn’t better known, but these diaries remained in his family’s hands until only recently. Scholars of the Holocaust disagree on the importance of his perspective, one putting it:

Roosevelt may have talked about mass resettlement of Jewish refugees but actions speak louder than words.”

Fair enough. But a situation where a president’s State Department undermines his own policies does sound eerily similar to much of the Bush Administration. It is very much believable to me.

In thinking about how history works—individual will and action pulling against the strong tide of inevitability—I stopped and pondered this passage:

The book says McDonald met Hitler in early 1933 and was immediately convinced that the then-new German chancellor was determined to destroy the Jews. At their March 31, 1933 meeting, a McDonald’s diary entry says, Hitler told him: “Even if Germany must draw its belt very much tighter, that will be a small price to pay for ridding itself of the menace of the Jews. The world will yet thank us for teaching it how to deal with the Jews.”

So many people after the war claimed “we didn’t know” about the Holocaust. Even our own complicit State Department didn’t get around to stifling its report on genocide until 1942, long after the genociding had begun. But McDonald got the grim picture right away, as did anyone who actually met, read, or listened to Hitler. Mein Kampf was published in 1925.

I’m too ignorant of history to know who was Secretary of State at the time, but there’s this cool site called Wikipedia that knows, like, everything (have you heard of it?).

Turns out, the Hillary Clinton of his time was some dude named Cordell Hull, who served in the post for virtually every day of the Roosevelt administration. One might presume from that detail that he wielded a fair amount of power.

Here’s what Wikipedia reports about Hull’s culpability for this period of history:

In 1939, Hull advised President Roosevelt to reject the SS St. Louis carrying 936 Jews seeking asylum. Hull’s decision sent these people back to Europe on the heels of the Nazi Holocaust. There is some controversy over Hull’s role in the affair. These Jews fled Europe to escape from the Nazis and after being denied entry into Cuba and the U.S. were granted refuge in England and in continental European nations. Many of the latter group became victims of the Holocaust after the Nazis invaded Western Europe in the following years.

To wit, there were two conversations on the subject between (Secretary of the Treasury) Morgenthau and Secretary of State Cordell Hull. In the first, 3:17 PM on 5 June 1939, Hull made it clear to Morgenthau that the passengers could not legally be issued U.S. tourist visas as they had no return addresses. Furthermore, Hull made it clear to Morgenthau that the issue at hand was between the Cuban government and the passengers. The U.S., in effect, had no role. …

In September 1940, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt maneuvered with another State Department official to bypass Hull’s refusal to allow Jewish refugees aboard a Portuguese ship, the Quanza, to receive visas to enter the U.S. Through Mrs. Roosevelt’s efforts, the Jewish refugees disembarked on September 11, 1940, in Virginia.

From this one could reasonably presume that State’s indifference to the plight of the Jews was well known in the White House, and that if one wanted to help them—even the First Lady—one had to do an end run around Hull.

Here’s another interesting note:

When the Free French Forces of Charles de Gaulle liberated the islands of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon south of Newfoundland in December 1941, Hull lodged a very strong protest and even went as far as referring to the Gaullist naval forces as “the so called Free French.” His request to have the Vichy governor reinstated was met with strong criticism in the American press. The islands remained under the Free French movement until the end of World War II.

At the very least, it would seem that a modern, well-researched biography of Cordell Hull is in order (I didn’t see one in my brief skim of Amazon).

And regular readers will detect my cynical delight in this almost-too-perfect addendum:

The Norwegian Nobel Committee honored Hull with the Nobel Peace Prize in 1945 in recognition of his efforts for peace and understanding in the Western Hemisphere, his trade agreements, and his work to establish the United Nations.

Yasser Arafat and Jimmy Carter, meet your granddaddy. And doesn’t the UN still bear his features?

I don’t think it’s fair to compare Jimmy Carter to Adolf Hitler. For starters, his salute is way too pansy to be the least bit threatening:

Then again, Der Führer’s salute wasn’t always so butch either. I mean, can you tell the difference between this Nazi hail…

… and this beauty queen wave?

But to get back on topic, Carter is no Hitler, and you won’t hear us saying so.

Got it? Jimmy Carter and Adolf Hitler—not the same. Just so we’re clear:

With The Case Against Israel’s Enemies Prof. Alan Dershowitz, who holds the Felix Frankfurter chair at Harvard Law School, has added yet again to his writings in defense and support of the Jewish state. This book changes from the format of his previous The Case for Israel (2004) and The Case for Peace (2005) and presents a potent defense of specific individuals’ criticism.

…

The importance of Dershowitz’s book however is not in fighting the battles of the past. Operation Cast Lead proves once again just how necessary it is for the supporters of Israel, and those sitting on the fence, to be presented with concrete and factual arguments in support of the country and its policies. The Gaza war sowed a renewed round of delegitimization and anti-Israel extremism. From the “End Gaza Holocaust” signs churned out at violent London demonstrations, riots in Malmo, Sweden over the appearance of tennis star Andy Ram, to the comments by Richard Falk and others about “war crimes,” Durban II, the almost-appointment of critic Chas Freeman to a top spot in the Obama administration and the latest success of Israel Apartheid Week on campuses throughout the West, a passionate defense is needed.

…

In 2006 Jimmy Carter published Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. Carter’s latest, We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land, was published in January and Mike Evans’ Jimmy Carter: The Liberal Left and World Chaos: A Carter/Obama Plan That Will Not Work came out the same month. This endless stream of books and polemics, some of which directly challenge Dershowitz and vice versa are becoming a world unto themselves with smaller debates, petty intrigues, even “affairs,” lawsuits and tenure disputes between the authors.

…

He breaks them down into different themes beginning with Carter (while the title places Jimmy Carter at the center of this volume, only 48 pages are devoted to refuting his accusations) and moving on to Mearsheimer and Walt, academic boycotts, the “Hard Left and Hard Right,” terrorism and Iran. There is no doubt that this book does an excellent job refuting the attacks encompassed in these various voices. In fact an extensive appendix is included examining each of the points on which Carter is mistaken.

See? Carter, Hitler—different men entirely. One was a vile, Jew-hating, despicable bigot. The other was the leader of Nazi Germany

Michelle Malkin is in “trouble” for posing for a photograph with someone holding a—oh, why bother to describe it?

Take a look:

Oooh. How evil.

How have we come to this dark place from the innocence of recent days when these images lightened our hearts?

Michelle herself runs down the long laundry list of Bush/Hitler comparisons.

But we’re barking up the wrong linden tree. Obama is not Hitler, not least because he has no balls, compared to Hitler’s one.

No, the hero worship and cult of personality leads us inexorably to another, perhaps even worse, mass-murderer:

You know, this might be just the thing to sour people on Adolf Hitler:

A document discovered in Britain more than 60 years after it had been produced claims that Adolf Hitler, the late fuehrer of Nazi Germany, had horrible table manners and chronic intestinal gas.

The UK’s Daily Telegraph reported Tuesday that the document, currently up for auction in Britain, says the Nazi dictator would bite his nails and twist his moustache incessantly during mealtimes, but that he truly believed that he was the “greatest military genius of all time,” as Josef Goebbels had written of him.

…

The final days of Hitler’s life are recorded in vast detail in the interview and his reported homosexual inclinations are mentioned, as well as his overt fondness for Rudolph Hess. He is also said to have fraternized with women in a manner characterized by “passive masochism”.

The Nazi official interviewed said he believes Hitler was crazy [no!], basing his opinion on at least 30 dinners the two shared.

…

He adds that Hitler “abstractedly bites his fingernails, he runs his index finger back and forth under his nose, and his table manners are little short of shocking.”

The document also states that Hitler “ate prodigious amounts of cake,” responsible for his digestive disorder.

I’m a pie man myself, and don’t really trust cake people. I think this justifies my suspicions.

But was Adolf gay? Only his hairdresser knows for sure. I doubt my gay friends, who are always eager to claim undercover queers as their own, will pass on adopting the Fairy Führer as on of their own.

“The rumors about his homosexuality and other abnormal obsessions were rumors and nothing more. If there was any such streak in him, it was a touch of passive masochism in his relationship with women.”

And “passive masochism”? What’s that? How does it differ from Brand X masochism? More to the point, how do you do it?

Are you familiar with the term splitting?

I mean in the psychological sense, not in the “splitting hairs” sense. This is the definition from the DSM IV, the most recent descriptive manual used by psychiatrists, psychologists and other mental health professionals.

Splitting (DSM-IV, pg. 757). The individual deals with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by compartmentalizing opposite affect states and failing to integrate the positive and negative qualities of the self or others into cohesive images. Because ambivalent affects cannot be experienced simultaneously, more balanced views and expectations of self or others are excluded from emotional awareness. Self and object images tend to alternate between polar opposites: exclusively loving, powerful, worthy, nurturant, and kind–or exclusively bad, hateful, angry, destructive, rejecting, or worthless.

Huh? What it means is seeing the world in black and white with no shades of gray. The person is either all bad or all good. Like this:

And this:

A lot has been written about how Obama is the second coming of Christ. He himself explained that he will heal the world and the sea levels will recede. Jesus only knew how to walk on water, so I think that Obama might be better than Christ.

It seems we are witnessing some sort of mass splitting, not only in the US, but across much of the world. I suppose someday reality will help us all to notice that both men are mere mortals, and that they both have good parts and bad. That would truly be a huge step towards “national healing”. I am not holding my breath.

- Aggie

The ridiculousness has moved from the Left to the Right

That didn’t take long:

Republican Paul Broun is sorry for calling President-elect Barack Obama a ‘Marxist’ and comparing him to Adolph Hitler, the Georgia Congressman said Tuesday.

“I regret putting it that way,” he told WGAC radio in Augusta, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution. “I apologize to anyone who has taken offense at that.”

In an interview with the Associated Press earlier this week, Broun admitted to calling the future commander-in-chief a ‘Marxist’ at a recent Rotary club meeting, and said Obama has expressed support for policies similar to those of Hitler.

“It may sound a bit crazy and off base, but the thing is, he’s the one who proposed this national security force,” Broun told the AP. “I’m just trying to bring attention to the fact that we may– may not, I hope not — but we may have a problem with that type of philosophy of radical socialism or Marxism.”

Broun was specifically referring to a July speech by Obama, where the then-Democratic presidential nominee said he supports a civilian force helping the military when it comes to national security: “We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded [as the military],” Obama said in the speech that was largely a call to national service.

Responding to those comments, Broun told the AP Monday: “That’s exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it’s exactly what the Soviet Union did. When he’s proposing to have a national security force that’s answering to him, that is as strong as the U.S. military, he’s showing me signs of being Marxist.”

I actually think that the national security force sounds fascistic, but maybe it is Marxist. Hard to say. I suppose that all the Bush-Hitler stuff will simply morph into Obama-Hitler-Messiah.

Should be fun.

- Aggie