Elie Wiesel and anti-Semitism
Here’s an interesting discussion on current anti-Semitism. About two-thirds of the way through (I would have to listen to the whole thing again to find it), the man being interviewed mentions that, at some point not too long before Elie Wiesel died, Wiesel told him he was very discouraged by an ominous rise in anti-Semitism. Wiesel died in 2016, so that conversation must have occurred before that.
From Wiesel’s Wiki page, here is part of a speech he gave in 2005 at the opening of a new building at Vad Yashem (the Holocaust Remembrance Center) in Israel:
I know what people say – it is so easy. Those that were there won’t agree with that statement. The statement is: it was man’s inhumanity to man. NO! It was man’s inhumanity to Jews! Jews were not killed because they were human beings. In the eyes of the killers they were not human beings! They were Jews![
It seems to me that this is applicable to the carnage wrought on Israelis on October 7, 2023. Of course, murderous anti-Semitism is indeed also a subset of “man’s inhumanity to man,” because dehumanization is often part of it and perhaps a necessary one to attain that degree of vicious and violent hatred. But Jew-hatred is probably the most special, enduring, and protean example of it. It goes on and on and on, with a changing face: religious hatred, ethnic hatred, racial hatred, envy and hatred of the “other,” national hatred of Israel, and now neo-Marxist hatred of those labeled “colonizers” and by definition “oppressors.”
Also, the following is interesting in light of recent events [emphasis mine]:
Wiesel was active in trying to prevent Iran from making nuclear weapons, stating that, “The words and actions of the leadership of Iran leave no doubt as to their intentions”. He also condemned Hamas for the “use of children as human shields” during the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict by running an ad in several large newspapers. The Times refused to run the advertisement, saying, “The opinion being expressed is too strong, and too forcefully made, and will cause concern amongst a significant number of Times readers.”
The word “amongst” cued me that the Times being mentioned there was the British Times. It showed its true colors.
Another topic discussed in that video above is whether Holocaust education has helped, or even mattered, in stemming the tide of anti-Semitism. I think it sometimes has but also sometimes causes resentment and a backlash. Many times – particularly in the comments of blogs on the right, but I doubt it’s limited to that population – I’ve read the equivalent of: “why do we keep hearing about Jewish suffering? What complainers those whiny bastards are! And they’re all stupid leftists anyway so they deserve whatever they get.” The left, of course, has somewhat different concerns, the aforementioned “Jews are dirty rotten colonialists, settlers, oppressors, viciously committing genocide and apartheid.” As we have learned from history, many different groups have found it convenient to scapegoat Jews for whatever reasons come to mind and matter to them.
The rejection of both personal accountability for our actions and the negative consequences that may result, require a scapegoat and no better candidate for blame exists than a minority group that achieves notable success.
Why shamblings foolishness matters
https://palwatch.org/page/34947
Let’s take that sentiment, and remove it from any ethnic context.
Does it still seem unreasonable given that stipulation?
If it still seems objectionable once we stipulate that it refers only to some generic leftists, on what basis and in what regard is it supposed to be so?
Here’s the point: the historical myth of a common humanity rooted in some ostensibly objective fact rather than a vague emotional impulse to co-identify is almost dead: killed in large measure by the implications of leftist anthropology. That is, a human ideology based on Darwinian metamorphosizing materialism, Freudianism ( understood as making the rational mind and the conscious person himself into an epiphenomenon), and a Marxism rendering the moral “essence” of man as a byproduct of his mode of economic production.
Of course, the “western” view of one [moral] humanity has never been universal anyway, the Bible and The Merchant of Venice notwithstanding.
The Japanese and the Chinese never internalized it, nor did most of the rest of the taxonomically human race. Not the Amerindians, not the generality of Africans, and not even a plurality of Christian Europeans, despite Matthew 28: 16-20, Acts 8:27-40, and Pope Julius and the 5th Latern Council.
Aside then from the question as to whether any particular natural grouping of people truly do qualify as sowers of the seeds of their own destruction, the question remains as to whether letting noxious people reap what they sow, is in principle objectionable.
The only objection I have consistently come across is to the effect that they should be cut some slack because they never g’ddamn bothered to think through their positions in the first place. As if being a bad citizen, a smug herd animal, and complacent joiner was any kind of excuse for a man living in a regime dedicated to liberty, and purchased with so much blood and toil.
Christians may have a different view based on a generalization from their theory of redemption. But that is irrelevant here, since we are all atheists for the purpose of discussion anyway.
I hereby stipulate that Nazis were responsible for the deaths of perhaps 6,000,000 Jews. For that, I condemn them unequivocally. However, during the Second World War, around 11 million Slavs–almost double the generally accepted number of Jews–were systematically murdered by Nazi forces in a war of extermination in Eastern Europe. Part of Generalplan Ost, the extermination was aimed not just at forcing Slavs into slave labour, but at physically exterminating big parts of the Slavic people for “lebensraum”. These murders were planned by the Nazi leaders, who had no less contempt and hatred of Slavs than of Jews. Although the Second World War and its horrors are a big part of our contemporary society, the genocide on the Slavs has been kept remarkably silent. As a descendant of Slavic immigrants to America, I find this unacceptable, don’t you?
Steve (retired/recovering lawyer):
I’ve discussed the Generalplan Ost in two previous posts. See this as well as this. It was Hitler’s plan, but fortunately he didn’t get to fully carry it out.
The Nazis murdered a lot of Slavs, and there was a great deal of suffering in Slavic countries. But I don’t think your figure of 11 million murders is correct – at least, if you’re talking about murders rather than war casualties,
Here’s an article that discusses the issue, although it’s not all that long. An excerpt:
Thomas Sowell’ s “Minority Middlemen” seems pretty logical. But perhaps too… mechanical. It doesn’t account for what seems to be a special hate directed at Jews.
“Why The Jews” goes into a lot more depth. But still, you wonder, why should anybody care, especially enough to have a burning hate. Or even just a habitual, mild dislike.
I know…scape goats. But aren’t there other groups equally eligible?
@Steve (retired/recovering lawyer) @Neo
I’d take some issue with both posts. On your part, Steve:
This is debatable at best. They certainly had comparable contempt and hatred of MANY Slavs than they did for Jews – such as Poles, Belarusians, and so forth – but this was not all. They had a downright bizarre relationship with many Slavs such as Croatians and Sorbs (both of whom they argued were Goths rather than Slavs, just with a Slavic language), and the Bulgarians and Serbs (both of whom they didn’t have that excuse with). In contrast the Jews were the animating force behind the supposed conspiracy to destroy the Aryan Race and civilization as a whole.
As for Neo,
It’s hard to count but it probably is up there. The Nazis chalked up a death toll of about 5 million Soviet POWs by itself, and I do think in many cases the Nazi Death Total is ironically underestimated (if I see someone else claim Hitler killed “just” 10 million people…). I generally go with RJ Rummel’s estimates, though those are of course by no means undisputed, so I do think 11 million Slavs killed in democide is realistic. It’s also one reason why Wiesenthal’s “estimate” made me lose some respect for him.
That said,
I hate this canard because I can already smell where it came from, even if not consciously on your part. The desperate attempts to mesh modern Left Wing victim politics into the Holocaust. The truth is, the Nazis specifically targeted GERMAN Gay Men and to a lesser extent German lesbian women, and people who would fit into the last two letters of the Umbrella. And this is not something to scoff at, at least hundreds of thousands if not a million or so were murdered or chemically castrated over it.
These Articles I think give decent overviews.
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/gay-men-under-the-nazi-regime
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/lesbians-under-the-nazi-regime
But it was nothing like the pursuit of global extermination like they did for their truly hated groups like the Jews, Roma, and the “Wrong” kinds of Slavs. Indeed, the Nazis outright employed openly homosexual and bisexual henchmen.
https://www.wbur.org/onlyagame/2017/02/24/gestapo-hitler-book-anne-sebba
https://www.haaretz.com/life/books/2019-01-28/ty-article/.premium/sporting-champion-feminist-icon-nazi-spy-the-crazy-life-of-violette-morris/0000017f-f701-d887-a7ff-ffe5a4520000
https://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/424146.html
https://www.publishersweekly.com/9780226424149
Obviously Morris and Brasillach are somewhat unusual on multiple levels, being openly gay people as far back as the 1930s if not earlier, and on top of that being French (and thus accorded moderately better terms of views under the Nazi hierarchy), and on top of that being viciously avid collaborators. However, they are the examples that prove the rule and show that the Nazis did not target “LGBTQ” people as such (as if they would have even acknowledged or appreciated such a concept, being the modern day politically driven Frankenstein that it is). Maybe we can argue if Brasillach would’ve eventually gone to the camps when the Reich had no more use for him like what happened after Roehm proved himself inconvenient and a possible threat to his old comrade Adolf, but that’s conjecture. And as far as I can tell it is conjecture without evidence unlike in say the case of Rumkowski the most high visibility Jewish collaborator with the Nazis, who was quite literally in Auschwitz on the path to murder but who had some of Jewish laborers that heard of his crimes beat (if you’ll pardon the pun) the Nazis to it.
It is telling that in spite of now decades of research (admittedly mostly amateur though often drawing on professionals) I have never seen any document indicating the Nazis desired or planned a global or even continental extermination of homosexuals or gay or bisexual people (Transsexuals and Queers quite possibly, due to Nazi views on those, though they largely fit in as an item line).
And given the joys of Current Year I have no doubt that Academia would adore publishing and highlighting such a thing as they correctly have with the Nazi clampdowns on the first transsexual research institute and the more adroit have pointed to Roehm and the SA’s early persecution of “Femme” Gay Men in spite of Roehm and many others being Gay Men themselves (albeit more “Butch”/”Manly” or “Spartiate” (in Roehm’s terms) Gay Men).
Dear Trutler (love that handle!):
Thank you for your very thoughtful response to both Neo and me. Certainly, history is a LOT more complex than most people are capable of processing. I suppose it is only natural for Weisel and other Jews to emphasize what the Nazi regime did to their ancestors, but it would be better to tell the whole story. And don’t get me started on what the Japanese did to the Chinese, etc. while constructing their “Co-prosperity Sphere”, which seems to have been buried along with all the corpses. Then again, history is replete with examples of atrocities, so it all becomes too depressing to contemplate for very long, doesn’t it?
I meant “Turtler” Damn dyslexic fingers!
AntiSemitism, is certainly not a new phenomenon, if we understand it as anti-“Jew” ( and I mean something very specific by that)
Tacitus, Contra Apion the Hellenizers. All familiar stuff.
But my first impulse is to see its main thread roughly originating after the return from Babylon, and what could be argued or implied as the seeding of a kind of protoTalmudic “Jewish” identity post Nehemiah instead of the older Israelite identity. Under that theory, that process would not of course be matured until the coming age of the diaspora.
However, on the surface at least, one can see significant tensions between what we might call proto Talmudizers and more conservative Jews in the Gospels 400 years later. If of course you take that Gospel reported conflict as representing a near contemporaneous relation and not a later anti Jewish fabrication.
However, if you are looking to undercut the speculation of a novel Judaism emerging, there is the business of the “Oral Torah” to deal with, which despite my college studies I don’t recall ever having heard of till about the time I started visiting here. But some number of Jewish people do assert that the Talmudic content was always there from the beginning and the supposed innovations and construals of the “sages” which are reported in the Gospels, and later celebrated in the written Talmud itself, had always been there, transmitted orally.
I know that there is great sensitivity regarding the inspiration of the Talmud and its role in the formation of a post kingdom Jewish identity, and regarding the authority of the Rabbis to adjust the “Word of God” but I do not see how the matter can be avoided when dealing with the issue. Catholics are dealing with it right now caught as they are between the doctrine of papal infallibility and the guidance of the Holy Spirit in the election of a pope on the one hand, and the admitted St Gallen “mafia’ shenanigans preceeding Bergoglio’s election, and a resultant possibly heretical or even apostate pope, on the other.
But, and it’s a big but, then we’ve got Pharaoh to deal with too, don’t we. Geez.
The Nazis killed 3 million Polish gentiles, about 10% of the Slavic population. And they killed 3 million Polish Jews, about 90% of the Jewish population.