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This is Part II of "Society's Demonization Practices," interrupted yesterday when I announced an important Zundel press conference on the steps of the Peace Tower in Ottawa. Several of you wrote in, complaining that the national news had not brought even a whiff of that historic development - about which shall be said more in due time.
For now, let's just continue as though nothing has happened while our opposition is busy rearranging the chairs on the Titanic. Is there any doubt at all we are in this century's most extraordinary war - a war of almost exclusively spiritual dimensions?
Here is a little private conversation string from our own trench "landser" that drifted back and forth across the cyber ocean these past few days. As I read this, I imagined soldiers in the depth of night tying little rocks to messages and throwing them from trench to trench, to wit:
* "The truth cannot be a defense when the attackers are liars."
* "Elegant."
* "And true. One corollary would be: 'New lies are constantly needed in order to preserve old lies'."
* "Those of us who think the holocausters will gracefully bow down to the truth and get out of its way if only we let them by not pushing too hard, are sorely mistaken, in my own humble opinion. I wish I was wrong on this, but I don't think I am."
* "No, of course they won't back down. Remember, they are driven by *chutzpah* and a conviction they were born to rule. By the way, it seems to me not a racial characteristic but a cultural characteristic. That's not saying much, I know, but next time I am accused of anti-semitism I will lay that one on 'em and see what happens."
* "There's more to it than that. They are in the unenviable position of having caught a tiger by the tail. You might think hanging on to the lie is dangerous, but there is no measure of what might happen if they let go.
"It takes courage to admit even a small lie. This one is so large, there will be no admitting. Not after the trials, the books, movies, plays, children's' stories, television, plugs, interviews, hangings, trials, weeping and wailing, billions in hush money, billions more in squeeze money, dead palestinians, prison sentences . . .
"Like MacBeth, they wade now so deep in blood, it is worse to go back than to go onward."
That has been my feeling for some time - certainly examplified by the most extraordinary interview by Abe Foxman of the ADL that ran in the Jewish Forward of September 4, 1998 where he actually admits to the Swiss extortion:
"I don't want it to be anybody's ticket. I say this with a lot of trepidation because, in a way, it started with the World Jewish Congress, and if the American government was not willing to go forward as it did, by instructing and empowering Stu Eizenstat to do the research, to do the work, if the politicians like D'Amato didn't take up the cudgels, we wouldn't have 1.25 billion, there's no question in my mind. We were asking the Swiss to do something that's very difficult. Here we, the Jewish people, say that we do not visit the sins of the parents on their children. And yet, we were pointing a finger at those children and saying, these were not your sins, but we will judge you by how you deal with the sins of your parents. You know what it is to ask people to look back at their parents, their grandparents and their aunts and uncles and wake up in the morning and find out that they were greedy, that they weren't the heroes that stood up for freedom and liberty and neutrality. It's a very difficult thing to do. And I don't think we did it with the greatest finess. We bludgeoned them and bludgeoned them and bludgeoned them. It brought about results, but I still ask the question, at what price?"
Here now continues David Thomas's insight - from the body of Part II of "Society's Demonization Practices":
If you take an honest look at our history, we have failed in our aim to guarantee unfettered freedom of expression many times, often miserably. But in all that time we continued to maintain the undiminished ideals as the pristine goal that we would move ever closer to. That has changed in the past thirty years and the effect of the dimming of those ideals is evidenced in our increasing inurement to violence, if not a developing lust for same, and a diminishment in civility and ethical behavior across the board. We are becoming a nation of self-serving cynics who enjoy a good night at the new blood-games we've begun to embrace.
A reflection on the descriptions of the "decadent" period in Berlin which preceded the advent of fascism would definitely be in order. We're being admonished to Never Forget! a result of a major descent into totalitarianism - when we ought to be concerned with how a civilized nation came to that pass.
By shifting focus on one tragic example of what the beast can do we lose all ability to recognize it in its early phases (you cannot understand the demonized because you dare not entertain its history in a normal manner), and may well suffer the tragic irony of guaranteeing its return, this time among ourselves.
You often hear it said that what took place in Germany was so aberrant, so horrible, that it defies understanding, its roots lie outside the rational. What hogwash! The real problem here is not allowing anyone to do empathetic studies of what took place - so that some amount of true understanding can be derived from the records.
This situation has come to pass as a result of relentless and vocal victims and victim advocate groups being allowed to dictate the academic and social agendas relating to this issue. Because their main agendas are, quite understandably, hatred and revenge, the rest of society shares the blindness of their tunnel vision.
And so we go about expounding our hatred of things we know little about, demonizing shadows and vicious, deformed caricatures of ideas that somehow held millions in thrall and enabled them to hold the rest of the world at armed bay for an incredible six or so years. While pursuing this debasing and ultimately dangerous folly, we put forth the astounding irrationalization that they were empowered by a monolithic combination of stupidity, hatred and mental aberrance.
It is time that we climbed down from our phony moral high-horse and considered the German experience at eye level, as people to people. Those who wish to continue their self-defeating orgy of eternal vengeance are welcome to it, they have that right, and I will oppose any who say otherwise. It ought not be the agenda for the rest of us, however.
There is no rational way to justify adopting a platform of eternal hatred as a suitable base for any society which aspires to advance itself, to live on. If you accept that increasing levels of compassion are the hallmark of an evolving people - and I do - then it is of utmost importance that we break away from the dark emotional web which currently dictates that we approach life and an understanding of it from the negative side.
Thought for the Day:
"Regarding the) Embassy bombings, not one American in 1000 realizes that we are in a war against a billion Muslims on behalf of Israel."
(Letters to the Editor, Instauration, Oktober 1998, p. 2)