-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">
</A> -Cui Bono?-
>
>>
>> The Führer Furor
>>
>> by Joseph Sobran
>>
>> Governments, demonstrators, pundits, and even musicians are
>> protesting the inclusion of the Austrian
>> Freedom Party in the new Conservative government. The Freedom Party
>> is of course led by Jörg Haider,
>> February’s Hitler of the Month.
>>
>> "The rise of Jörg Haider in a country whose role in the Holocaust
>> still awaits clarification is more than
>> unsettling, it’s shameful and unforgivable," says the great Jewish
>> pianist Andras Schiff, canceling a scheduled
>> concert at the Austrian embassy in Washington. Several governments,
>> including the United States, have
>> already announced sanctions against Austria because of Haider’s
>> anti-immigrant politics and controversial
>> remarks about the Third Reich. He reminds people of Hitler.
>>
>> If only Haider were a Communist! Communists still participate,
>> without international indignation, in European
>> coalitions. Despite the rather sanguinary history of the "socialist
>> republics" from Russia to Cambodia, which
>> have resulted in a hundred million abbreviated life spans, nobody is
>> seriously disgraced by choosing to
>> associate himself with the name, symbols, and history of Communism.
>>
>> Liberal opinion has trivialized Communism by censuring
>> anti-Communism as "McCarthyism" and ridiculing
>> those who see "Commies under every bed." But hysterically
>> free-associating people with Hitler (d. 1945) is
>> still considered normal behavior. In spite of Stalin, you can still
>> name your kid Joseph (thank God!); but
>> don’t name him Adolf!
>>
>> Since the late 1960s Hitler and Nazism have become synonymous less
>> with World War II than with the
>> program of mass-murder now known as the Holocaust, though the term
>> Holocaust was never used either by
>> Hitler or his enemies — Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill,
>> Dwight Eisenhower, or even "Uncle Joe"
>> Stalin. Today the term is ubiquitous, and several countries have
>> actually made it a crime to doubt that the
>> Holocaust occurred.
>>
>> The Holocaust has become so many things: memory, cautionary lesson,
>> guilt trip, metaphor, explanation,
>> and — though unique in history — perpetually imminent danger. It can
>> happen again at any time, regardless
>> of circumstances, defying normal laws of causality, without such
>> preconditions as a Hitler, a world war, a
>> Versailles treaty, and economic catastrophe.
>>
>> Moreover, everyone is guilty, not just Hitler and the Nazis. The
>> stain of guilt for the Holocaust has spread to
>> all the German people, the Allies, Pope Pius XII, the Catholic
>> Church as a whole, the authors of the
>> Gospels who originated the anti-Semitism that would result, two
>> millennia later, in genocide; not to mention
>> such anti-Semitic authors and artists as Chaucer, Shakespeare,
>> Voltaire, Dickens, Dostoyevsky, Wagner,
>> G.K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc, T.S. Eliot, and Ezra Pound.
>>
>> The Holocaust has entered the realm of science fiction. In novels
>> and movies like The Boys from Brazil and
>> Marathon Man, new little Hitlers can be cloned, or a handful of
>> octogenarian Nazis hiding in South America
>> can launch the whole thing all over again. Talk about a Master Race!
>>
>> As a symbol with such limitless potential, the Holocaust can even be
>> turned against the Jews themselves.
>> Critics and enemies of Israel liken its racially discriminatory
>> policies — on immigration, residence,
>> citizenship, and even marriage — to Hitler’s. And in truth, Jörg
>> Haider has little to teach the Israelis about
>> abusing and excluding minorities.
>>
>> Which hasn’t prevented the Israeli government from recalling its
>> ambassador from Austria, with appropriate
>> moral bluster: "We are calling on the free world, all the
>> democracies, to isolate this neo-fascist government,"
>> says one Israeli official, unblushingly. Perhaps he has forgotten
>> such Israeli leaders as Menachem Begin,
>> Yitzhak Shamir, and Benjamin Netanyahu. All Israeli practices,
>> however brutal, are justified as necessary
>> exercises in Holocaust-prevention.
>>
>> Since the danger is eternally imminent, there is no limit to what
>> may be done in the name of avoiding another
>> Holocaust. Normal standards of decency, prudence, and rhetorical
>> restraint may be set aside when a
>> budding Hitler is spotted. A minor local politician sparks a
>> worldwide furor; a dissident historian of World
>> War II is denounced as "one of the most dangerous spokespersons for
>> Holocaust denial." Dangerous? Yes!
>> If you deny the first one, you see, you’re promoting the next one.
>> (Even "Holocaust denial" can cause a
>> Holocaust.)
>>
>> Thus an endless anti-Hitler frenzy becomes a form of moral witness.
>> It makes the McCarthy Era seem like a
>> moment of calm.
>>
>>
>> February 10, 2000
>
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