Sunday, March 18, 2012

Tolerance, Auschwitz, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan

Erdogan and Merkel

The two articles below overlap in their discussion of the accolades bestowed by the German government on Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Many thanks to JLH for the translations.

The translator includes this introductory note:

Here are articles by or about two of the most prominent authors and journalists in the Jewish community in Germany. There are about 100,000 Jews in the Federal Republic, of which approximately 80,000 have come since 1989, when the Iron Curtain fell and migration from Russia and elsewhere east became more feasible.

Giordano is from a half-Jewish family persecuted by the Nazis, who eventually hid out until 1945 because the mother was in danger of deportation or worse. Broder is from a Polish Jewish family that survived the concentration camps and later came to Germany by way of Vienna.

They are both clear and uncompromising in their opinions and in their prose, although I would say that Giordano is a bit more of the elder statesman, while Broder is the in-your-face warrior. They are unsurprisingly in agreement about Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Gerhard Schröder, as about many other things.

First, an article about Henryk Broder from Die Presse:

Henryk M. Broder: “Auschwitz is a Carnival”
March 16, 2012

The German author criticizes a “hypocrisy on behalf of the government” in Germany at the Leipzig Book Fair. He advises “bombing Auschwitz out of existence, because the former concentration camp has degenerated into the “worthless” destination of excursions.

Journalist Henryk M. Broder calls his lifelong confrontation with the subject of anti-Semitism “a kind of obsession.” The basis for his newest book with the title “Forget Auschwitz” is “state-sponsored hypocrisy” in Germany, the author said onThursday at the Leipzig Book Fair.

As an example he named the bestowing of the Steiger Award for Tolerance on the Turkish president Erdogan on the following Saturday. “100 journalists are sitting in prison in Turkey,” said Broder. “Who is giving the tribute? Gerhard Schröder, Gazprom Schröder. If I had not already stopped voting SPD, that would be my motivation.”

Degenerated to Carnival Status

Referring to the provocative title of his book, Broder, who comes from a Jewish family, said, “Although the Allies neglected to bomb Auschwitz, it could be done now.” Because: “Auschwitz is a carnival. In my mother’s day, it was a one-way ticket. Now you can get there and back after breakfast,” Broder complained. “It is worthless, terrible.”

The author sees a “falseness” in today’s society: “Genocide must be more than six million. Anything less is a traffic violation. I get really nauseous when I hear what is being said to the Syrians.” And with that, he attacks Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle for the argument that intervention would make the situation worse: “It is already a conflagration, a massacre. It was the same at the time of the Holocaust.” No one wanted to intervene.

Anti-Semitism is transformed into anti-Zionism

Anti-Semitism , said Broder, was discredited by the Holocaust. So it is looking for a side door and that is anti-Zionism, simultaneously with the confession rituals regarding Auschwitz. “I am very much for criticism,” said Broder, “but this has very little to do with Israel. Instead the intent is to minimize the guilt of the Germans by comparison with Israel’s guilt vis-a-vis the Palestinians.” This variant of anti-Semitism goes “right though all milieus” in Germany.

In this connection, he ferociously criticizes SPD chief Sigmar Gabriel, who has branded Israel an apartheid state. “I do not believe Gabriel is an anti-Senite, but he is an idiot,” said Broder. “If he visits Israel, then Fatso and Dopey [Laurel and Hardy] will be walking around together in the Middle East — in the same skin.”

The author blames the political correctness drummed into Germans for discussions like the one about whether the German Democratic Republic was an illegitimate and unjust state or “only” a dictatorship: “That gives me the creeps. You can differentiate a bloodbath down until there is nothing left.”

The second article, an open letter to former chancellor Gerhard Schröder by Ralph Giordano, is from the blog Die Achse des Guten [The Axis of Good]:
What Will be Left of Schröder

(A letter to the former SPD Chancellor, later defeated by Merkel)


by Ralph Giordano
March 15, 2012


Dear Former Chancellor,

“I am your president!” “Learn German, but stay who you are!” “Form a state in the state, but do not call it that.”

These declarations of war on integration from February, 2008 in Cologne and March, 2011 in Düsseldorf were fired off before an inflamed crowd of 18,000 people by the man who will receive the “Steiger Award for the Tolerance, Humaneness and Growing Together of Europe” — Recep Tayyip Erdogan, president of Turkey.

This is the same Erdogan who is till denying the genocide of the Armenians after almost one hundred years, and who personifies like no one else this Turkish grand delusion.

That very genocide, Mr. Former Chancellor, recognized under your chancellorship for the first time in almost 100 years by the German Bundestag. On February 22, 2005, to non-partisan applause, without a nay vote or abstention — an almost unfathomable miracle in the history of the German parliament.

Now you are speaking in praise of a firebug: “There are 100,000 Armenians living in my country who are not its citizens. And if necessary, I can say to them: Go, back to the land you came from.” Direct quote from Erdogan — the speech of a thug.

“Tolerance and Humaneness”? I protest giving the Steiger Award to Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who can be just as hypocritical as the speech in his praise.

You, Former Chancellor,once called Putin “a flawless democrat.” That will stay in your memory.

But praise and honor of a politician who denies an overwhelmingly attested genocide, that is even heavier.

Ralph Giordano

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

So Herr Broder wants the Americans to bleed and drain their treasury in Syria. Because that's who will be doing the fighting and dying.

All to protect a bunch of Al-Qeada and Sunni goons who already ethnically cleansed Homs of Christians and who want to impose a theocracy on Syria.

Remove Assad and we get rid of the last remaining secular Arab states and one that Christians were safe in. Look what happened when Mubarak was toppled, Coptic Christians were butchered and persecuted. Same in post-Saddam's Iraq. Broder is a hypocrite. This guy should go hide under a rock.

America doesn't need another war. If the Israelis want Syria gone, let them do it. Their military dwarfs Syria and Egypt and could crush both without much effort.

John Galt said...

We very well know how the world reacts when Israel defends its citizens from the rocket attacks of Hamas.

So, we can very well predict how the world (especially Europe) is going to react if Israel attacks Egypt and overthrows its government.

And Broder is hardly a hypocrite. He is not asking US to invade Syria or any country. He is talking about the hypocrisy of the European media, intellectuals and politicians.

Israel is accused by ,on almost everyday basis, of ethnic cleansing. genocide, war crimes etc. But when there's real genocide going on in Syria, the whole world is silent.

Anonymous said...

Perhaps the time has come to stop calling non religious "ethnic" Jews Jews. Its a religion not a race as the article below points out. Decent Jews shouldnt be held accountable for the libtard/socialist Jews who are determined to destroy the West
http://www.resonoelusono.com/ApostasyOfJewry.htm

laine said...

Jews are being improperly castigated for what is all Palestinian aggression all the time (at the behest of Arab puppeteers) but on the other hand they escaped a proper accounting for their large part in marxism and bolshevism and the resulting mayhem that seems to have no end as cultural communism slowly strangles the West. For 60 years after the Holocaust, Jews were given a get out of all criticism card that has now been revoked in many quarters but for the wrong reasons. It would be good if some "fiery" Jewish intellectual spent as much time pointing out the collective guilt of Jews as sniffing out the kind of antisemitism that is like Islamophobia, i.e imaginary. (Any non-Jew who presumed to criticize the Jewish communist and socialist record would get smeared as an anti-semite in nothing flat). Funny, there are left wing Jews aplenty who castigate their own people for heinous imaginary sins against Palestinians like apartheid, even using the term nazism, but none who will own up to the distasteful record of Jews in Russia and in spreading a deadly socialism throughout the West. For example, Jewish donors made up to 60% of Democrat Party funding in the last election bringing Obama the Red to power. If Germans must be collectively guilty unto many generations, then the same should go for Jews. Soros alone has much to answer for.

Qualis Rex said...

@ 1st Anonymous - you are absolutely correct. While I applaud Broder for expanding his preocupation of genocide to encompass non-Jewish people (usually, it's all about them) he is picking the wrong fight with regard to Syria. The Baathist party of Assad in Syria is identical to Hussein in Iraq; when it falls, the Christians will bear the brunt at the hands of Mohammedan thugs and terrorists. As far as I'm concerned, as long as it continues to be Mohammedan against Mohammedan in Syria, let the good times roll.

Regarding Turkey, that really is one odd beast: they helped/admitted thousands of Jews during WW II fleeing genocide in Germany, while very effectively wiping out their own Armenian population through genocide less than 15 years before. Typically Jews love Turks, so...politics sure makes strange bedfellows.

Westward Ho said...

Laine,

Much of the lefty ideological currents you rightly decry can be considered "ethical over-correction" in order to "reverse" from 3-4 centuries of Western Europe ruling the rest of the world quite against its will. Currents which started in the 19th century (with earlier seeds), and found concrete realizations in the 20th+.
People were well aware of the colonized's experience, and the easy justifications never convinced the soul, which knows how to apply the golden rule. The colonized didn't appreciate the hegemony one bit, as neither would you or I.

So, the Jews are responsible for the ham-handed ethical over-correction from this?

Did the West apply brutal dehumanizing force to millions of "others" for 4 centuries because the Jews caused them to do that too?

I think people rarely can make a deep change without over-correcting, at least initially. And it may apply to societies too.

The soul of a public, after abiding that increasingly uncomfortably, finally rejected it, knowing deep within how much better a way it is to engage via mutual cooperation than such force. Is that yearning itself the West's enemy? Whether manifesting as abolition, the powers' voluntary freeing the empires after ww2, or the lefties in the colleges blindly embracing self-limiting, almost Buddhism-like anti-territoriality, this is a large current, and blaming its bumbling misapplications on the Jews fails to satisfy my mind. Your argument appears to be blind to this.

Anonymous said...

Laine, I agree with your comment!

If humanity going to attribute never ending collective guilt to human groups (notice my use of the word groups - rather than races), then humanity needs to blame Muslims for genocidal Islam and to blame Jews for genocidal Marxism (socialism, fascism, communism).

It seems that the popular meme is that Jews BLAME Christians for the Holocaust - when true Christians were killed in spades in foreign wars fought to save foreigners - including foreign Jews. In the Holy Land, it is complained that some Jews spit on Christians in modern times - even though true Christians secured the state of Israel for the Jews!

ADL: Spitting at Christians a 'repulsive act'

Another popular meme is that Jews persecute Muslims - when it seems that the opposite has been true from the beginning of Islam. Even the Holocaust appears to have been the brainchild of the Muslim Grand Mufti whispering in Hitler's ear. So, Jews should blame Muslims for the Holocaust - and Jews should thank true Christians for saving them. Meanwhile, Christians should recognize the animus shown by oil-rich Islam to all infidels - including Jews and Christians.

Egghead