Last night, I had an hour-long interview with a reporter of one of the strongest mainstream news organizations, whose leadership happens to be on the Right of most issues. We chatted at great length and found a lot of common ground.
This reporter didn't take long to identify herself entirely along our philosophical lines - with one predictable exception: She wanted to make very sure I understood she wanted to stay clear of "Nazis".
She really unloaded on me. She is a true-blue Libertarian. She thoroughly believes in Freedom of Speech and Self-Determination. She is all for looking into the liberal exploitation of race divisions as a political tool in our society, into abuses in bilingual education, into UN shenanigans, into black helicopters.
She is horrified at the phlegmatic nature of Americans who stand by, twiddling thumbs, while their birthright is stolen right out from under their own noses. For ages, she has told herself that there is something strange, extremely strange, about the Holocaust.
But heaven forbid she should ever come near the idea that there is something to the Third Reich she hasn't known before that will upset what she already knows!
I said as gently as I could: "Consider this. You admit you have been lied to. And lied to. And lied to. You have been lied to systematically about just about everything. Why not about this fellow, Adolf Hitler? He is dead. He will never come back. Why protect this blind spot in your brain?"
As we all know, she is characteristic of what I call the Fear of Smear Syndrome. It is a trigger mechanism that never ever fails.
We've got to neutralize that mechanism.
A frequently recurring complaint from people sympathetic to our struggle goes like this: "Why have that Nazi-looking logo on your website? You would be ever so much more acceptable without that provocation."
My answer is: Why not?
It has been the Zundel logo for more than 30 years. It is on cups, on lapel pins, on place mats and on other trinkets and on his newsletters that go to his supporters in 41 countries to identify what he is saying and has been saying all along: "You will not faint if you come face to face with what the Third Reich struggle was ***really*** all about."
I have bought into Ernst's belief that we can't free this planet of lies, deceptions, misinformation and brutal propaganda about the "Nazi Beast" as long as that Pavlovian reflex works.
It is ***the*** most powerful psychological weapon to keep the masses cowering and to prevent them from digging deeper into what's really going on. As long as we permit the fear of certain symbols and associations to be used against us as a means of psychological terror and control, we will never get to the bottom of what has been done to us in the past - and what might be in store for us in the not-too-distant future.
The Zundelsite has no designs in resurrecting the Third Reich. The Zundelsite wants grown-up people with minds that aren't paralyzed as yet by brutal propaganda to look at the Third Reich and study it objectively on its own merits and/or demerits.
With that as a preface, I am running a two-part essay called "Society's Demonization Practices" that David Thomas of CODOH website <www.codoh.com> wrote in response to a small newsgroup flurry. (Emphasis added):
Holocaust Fence Straddler:
"Can someone tell me why anti-German, anti-Nazi and anti-Arab sentiments, rhetoric, propaganda or otherwise inconvenient facts - or any critical and/or unflattering revelations about some similarly demonized group - are not ***also*** clear examples of hate speech?
Holocaust Reinforcer, horrified:
Speaking out against Nazis is "hate speech"?
David Thomas:
It certainly can be. The degree to which a target is deserving of criticism does not justify conduct outside the pale of acceptable social behavior on the part of the critics. To say otherwise is to sympathize with lynch-law mentality, just so long as the guilt is inarguable.
This introduces two social diseases into our midst - a lessening of civility and thereby of order, and the symbolic abandonment of limiting the right to inflict draconian punishments on a citizen. (...)
(A)ny criticisms delivered in a hateful manner should be deemed "hate speech" since that is exactly what is taking place. With the existing criteria, "hate speech" is defined by content, not delivery. Thus we are asked to ignore hate in its most visible form, the delivery and actions of the messenger, and instead to presume its presence in any and all adherents, proponents or observers who express neutral feelings when the content has been deemed hate-based ***by those who establish current interpretations of right and wrong***.
In other words, we are routinely ordered - not asked! - to display "good hatred" toward "bad hatred" and thereby fight hate with hate. This is nothing more than institutionalized bigotry, as it results in the condemnation of all members of a group without regard to individual variances and mitigating factors among them.
It sins even more through the arbitrary assignment of membership. It is very reminiscent of the jingoistic patriotism that afflicts nations in times of strife when an enemy has to be identified, focused on, and demonized. It is quite possible and effective and, I might add, civilized to speak out against philosophies which promote harmful actions without resorting to a campaign of righteous hatred.
It has become acceptable in this society, indeed obligatory in many cases, to focus the hatred of the bulk of the citizenry on marginalized views and people as commendable. Shades of the Coliseum and raucous cries for the thumbs-down signal from above, allowing the good folks in attendance to indulge themselves in what would otherwise be forbidden behavior.
This crosses the line which differentiates a democracy from a mob. The will of the people then becomes omniscient and it's a time for all who value civilization to be worried, very much so.
One measure of a civilization is the protection it offers to its least popular and least defensible members. Recall if you will that the aim of Nazi Germany was not to impose a grim police state on its citizens, but to instill some really outstanding positive - as defined by guess who? - social values on a citizenry purged of all who opposed them.
Trouble was, that involved a great deal of purging indeed, so much that a grim police state was necessary to see that it was carried out, as will always be the case with fractious humans and their silly ideas of the sanctity of individual freedom of thought, at least as it relates to them personally.
I find all programs of sanctioned demonization distasteful at best and dangerous on the average. The worst case, of course, is when they succeed, something that all those camp inmates can attest to. There are good reasons why the victims are not allowed to operate the mechanisms of justice, satisfying as the idea can sometimes be to us. That's what the blindfold on the lady with the scales is all about.
(This) represents a hallowed precept, that of allowing judgment to be passed only after an impartial and open hearing free of emotion allows reasoned conclusions to be reached. A demagogue on a podium with veins popping out on his neck as he thunders abomination on some group is an odious beast without regard to his target.
Since we in America decided at the beginning that we would tolerate such among us as a matter of effecting the highest degree of intellectual freedom ever seen in a modern nation-state, the standard defenses have been the innate moral compasses of other citizens and the rule of rational law which limits the havoc that any ad hoc movement might bring to pass. After all, a basic tenet of our Declaration of our own liberty was that any people at any time have the right to free themselves from what they deem to be tyrrany, and you can't have a revolution without the requisite loose cannons."
Tomorrow: Part II of "Society's Demonization Practices."
Thought for the Day:
"My all-time favourite was a human-rights commissioner in Ontario who tried (but failed, alas) to get it written in stone that an ***allegation of racism should be equated with a conviction for racism*** - and that signs of recalitrance on the part of the one so charged should automatically be construed as yet ***further proof*** of his or her racism. In other words, the very denial of any racist intent should be included as ***additional proof*** of racism."
(Letter to the Zundelsite)