We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
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Comparing Hamas to the Nazis is wrong… People compare Hamas to Nazis.
That’s not fair. Nazis knew killing Jews was wrong. That’s why they did it in secret, mostly in Poland at isolated death camps (Auschwitz, Majdanek, Treblinka, Sobibor, Chelmno, Belzec). At war’s end covered over their crimes, burned documents, destroyed gas chambers & denied it after.
Hamas is bragging about murdering Jews, posting videos on social media & declaring “Allahu Akbar”
If you do not support Israel & the Jews, you are literally worse than the Nazis.
Congratulations.
After studying the Holocaust & its deniers for 30 years I didn’t think it possible anyone could top that. I was wrong.
– Michael Shermer
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I had been thinking the same these past couple of days.
Here in the wide brown land, a dozen dickheads in black skivvies go camping in the bush and are the greatest threat to democracy. According to the Intelligence Services!
A thousand ethnics screaming for the death of innocents; nothing to see here.
I despair.
Exactly my sentiments, Mr. Shermer!
Crowds of National Socialists did not publicly chant “Gas the Jews” and send film of themselves doing so around the world. The followers of Islam in Sydney Australia have done just that.
And, in the name of the beheaded babies, please (please) stop saying “Hamas” – Hamas is just a name. “We are fighting Hamas – the ordinary people are not our enemies”.
YES THEY ARE. Many, NOT all – but many, of the “ordinary people” of Gaza (and so on) are the enemies of the Jews and NOT just the Jews, for example the fighting in SWEDEN is nothing to do with Jews (there are very few Jews in Sweden) – please (please) people – wake up. There are “protests” and attacks in London and other British towns right now – and throwing every Jew in the United Kingdom to the wolves will NOT save you, no more than the Swedish people are safe from attack.
“Paul – Central Office will punish you for what you have just written” – if we are not to see mass slaughter of innocent people in many Western countries, some of us must risk punishment by speaking out, by giving peaceful warning. Muhammed was not the sort of person that the Western establishment say he was, and he did not teach the doctrines that the Western establishment say he taught – both his teachings and personal example were totally different from what the Western establishment claim.
The Western establishment lying about what Muhammed was like, and the Western establishment lying about what he taught, is leading to disaster.
And, no, it is not just about Jews.
When I have visited Israel I have travelled by Luton Airport – ditto many other people who have visited Israel.
There has been a massive car par fire at Luton Airport – which has put the airport out of action, hopefully it will reopen later today.
Perhaps these two things, that Luton Airport is used to travel to Israel and it being put out of action by a massive fire, are not connected.
I read that an unrepentant and easily identified group of Glasgow Celtic fans, the green brigade, have vowed to display their Palestinian flags and banners at the next game in Europe.
It’s hard to believe that the club couldn’t cancel their tickets (although for many years including last Saturday it has proved beyond their ability or willingness to confiscate flags and banners at the turnstiles) or that the reliably authoritarian SNP couldn’t find a way of preventing them from flying.
Actually it’s not hard at all when you think about it.
” the reliably authoritarian SNP couldn’t find a way of preventing them from flying”
Our esteemed First Minister’s parents-in-law are currently in Gaza. He’s said the right thing so far, but I can’t help wondering where his sympathies actually lie…
Paul,
I doubt there is a connection wrt Luton Airport. Lots of airports have flights to Israel. I know. It’s on my list and I’d be flying out of Manchester. It’s been knocked down my list. I don’t want to fly into an active war zone. I have never had any desire to visit Gaza which is total shit-hole because if I want to visit an Islamic sink estate I could just go to Oldham. I’ve lived in the greater Manchester area for 20+ years now. Never been to Oldham.
You are absolutely right that it is not just the Jews. How many kids “groomed” in Rochdale were Jewish? They were just not muslims and that is a very wide set of people. And, yes, Hamas are the “government” of Gaza and they are to blame but then so are the people who made this so, the people who voted from them. Having said that I still feel the Palestinians have been manipulated by their bosses and those in the rest of the Arab world who for their own devious reasons (including inter-alia covering their own failures by blaming an external cause). Islam is, of course, perfect so obviously the problems of the Islamic world (and there are many) axiomatically can’t be the fault of Islam. Having said that the fact the orks are being used doesn’t mean they ain’t orks… Even if Hamas exults in their dead children and the sympathy that brings.
I increasingly base my morality on Tolkien. And this really is good against evil as much as The Battle of The Hornburg was. “What can men do against such wreckless hate?”. Well, Argaorn knew and Theoden rapidly got it. Israel has to be backed on this. And if that means levelling Gaza then so be it. Anything other than a complete Israeli victory would be morally wrong. At best it would be a pause. Israel must be allowed by “The West” to unleash Hell.
I shall be cheering them from the sidelines. And I have the advantage of not having Tory Central Office to consider me a “deplorable”.
I understand the sentiment, but Shermer’s off base. The Nazis didn’t think killing Jews was wrong, they just knew it was unpopular. Among the general German population in the 1930s there was low-grade anti-semitism, yes, but nothing like support for extermination or even mass dispossession. The fact that Hamas does these things in the open doesn’t make them worse than the Nazis. What it does is raise the question of whether they’re accurate in their assessment of the public they’re appealing to. Hamas clearly thinks these things will be popular among Muslims today in a way that they weren’t among Europeans in the 1930s and 40s. Are they right? It isn’t a question of which of Hamas or the Nazis are worse, but of whether the “Muslim street” of today is worse than the “German street” of 1938.
I am not a fan of anti-semitism, and I’m not anti-semite, but you have to marvel at the depth of hatred and utter insanity that the Jews have managed to engender in their neighbors down the long centuries.
I mean, I grew up among Eastern European peasants that came to the US, and I kinda get the whole “Jews were used as cut-outs for the nobility” thing that gets those sorts going, but… Dear God, do you know what baffled me? Not a one of those guys who was so anti-Jewish had ever encountered one personally that they could point at and say “Yeah, that Jew? That one? There? He robbed me, he cheated me, he… Did something to me.” It was all just this systemic sort of “Yeah, those damn Jews…” crap that had zero justification or actual basis in real-life experiences. “The Evil Jew” was an archetype they all subscribed to, without any personal experience to base it on. It was like they were issued “Jew-hatred” as a part of their culture, and if you ever tried tracing it back with them, you’d just hit this wall of “irrational”, and your inquiries would have to stop, because they really could not justify a damn thing. Quite like talking to a really fervent convert to some religion…
It’s the same with Islam. Where, pray tell, Islam, did the bad Jew touch you? What the hell led to the antipathy, the hatred? It’s enshrined in the Koran, based on oral tradition and Muhammed’s supposed experience and actions during the early days, but… Where the hell is the actual set of crimes or recent justifications? And, just what did those Jews of ancient days do, to deserve their hatred and abuse? Refuse to convert? Keep their religion? It’s nonsensical, when you get down to it.
And, yet… Somehow, the Jews have managed to engender all this hatred and oppobrium, which I think says rather more about the people who hate them than anything about the Jews. It’s a bizarre aspect of our current human condition, almost as if the Jews were human versions of that one chicken in the flock you always have to have, who is at the bottom of the pecking order.
Whole thing is just entirely inexplicable, when you get down to brass tacks. About the greatest “bad thing” you can really say about the Jews is that they’ve consistently refused to blend in, keeping to themselves and keeping their faith. This appears to be intolerable to everyone else, which again, says rather more about “everyone else” than the Jews themselves.
When you come down to it, though… It’s all of a piece with the weak-minded sorts of twats that take up membership in things like the KKK. Those people feel inadequate, so they’ve got to have someone they can look down on, and the Jew is traditionally “that guy” in about every culture, due to their low numbers and eternal “outsider” status. And, again… This says more about the weak-minded twats than anything about the Jews.
The whole phenomenon is much like the UFO and alien abduction thing. The potential fact of “aliens travelling light years to randomly abduct and anally probe humans” is far outweighed by question of precisely why do people persistently come up with these flippin’ fantasies? I mean, a hundred-odd years ago across the American West, you had people describing European aeronauts descending from then-nonexistent balloon contraptions to have coffee with people around campfires… That whole thing is documented in a bunch of places. Before that, you had fairies and all sorts of other nutty things. So, much like aliens, the entire issue of Jewish persecution says a hell of a lot more about the general ruck of humanity than it does about the actual issues surrounding the putative causes, Jewishness and aliens.
I sometimes suspect that humanity may well be isolated and alone because we’re in a cosmic madhouse, kept well away from decent folk…
“I read that an unrepentant and easily identified group of Glasgow Celtic fans, the green brigade, have vowed to display their Palestinian flags and banners at the next game in Europe.”
My maternal side is all from Glasgow, and I was a longtime Celtic supporter. But thanks to the so-called Green Brigade, I have since abandoned the club in disgust.
First of all I had this thought too. If these guys had the resources and capacity to continue massacring the Jews throughout the whole of Israel does anyone doubt they would have done so? However, I do think @Joshua raises an interesting point. Nonetheless, to be a serious contender for “worse than the Nazis” in a literal way (as opposed to Trump is worse than Hitler hyperbole) is really surely quite an achievement in evildoing. “Nazi” is, or used to be, the very measure of worst of the worst.
I was also struck by the fact that the left regularly calls the right Nazis, and yet it is from a huge rally of lefties in Australia that you hear the chant of “gas the Jews”. But the left don’t mean “Nazi” in the sense of “gas the Jews”, they mean “Nazi” in the sense of “advocating policies we disagree with.”
@John
It’s hard to believe that the club couldn’t cancel their tickets (although for many years including last Saturday it has proved beyond their ability or willingness to confiscate flags and banners at the turnstiles) or that the reliably authoritarian SNP couldn’t find a way of preventing them from flying.
I suppose Celtic might be justified in canceling their tickets assuming there is some clause in the contract to allow them to do so, or confiscate banners since they bring disrepute on the team. But banning them from flying? I believe in freedom of speech, even when the speech is vile like this. If you give the government power to ban these people from flying then before you know it they will be banning Nigel Farange from flying, then they’ll be banning anyone who contributes to a “conservative” blog from flying, and before you know it Jews will be banned from flying. What is the saying? Giving money and power to the government is like giving whisky and car keys to a teenager.
Let people speak — that way you know what utter monsters they are. Let them speak and be revealed and humiliated by their own words. THe vast majority of Celtic fans are decent people, there to enjoy the football — why don’t they deal with this ugly element in their midst themselves? (With words, not violence, of course.)
NickM.
Quite correct Sir, and I must not get paranoid about Luton.
It is a pity that so many Westerners, such as my dear friends at “Central Office”, refuse to see what is in store for them – but there you are, if they want to punish people who warn them – there is not much I can do about that.
At this point, the term “Nazi” is pretty much null, meaningless in terms of ideology. They’ve called so many people “Nazi” that you can truly make a case for all of us being such, including “their own”.
The irony is, back when they were making common cause (Molotov-Ribbentrop, anyone…?), they weren’t calling everyone a Nazi. It’s highly educational to go back and look at the old periodicals and newspapers to see what the zeitgeist really was, and how the Communists were all about telling everyone the Nazis were attacking that the Nazis were good fellow Socialists, maybe not as good as the full-bore Communists, but people they could work with…
That, of course, turned on a dime came Barbarossa. Fascinating to observe, if you go back and look at the archives.
You can learn a lot, back in the stacks, with all those old books and periodicals. One that that becomes very clear is that the current “conventional wisdom” about those good old days is mostly delusional or badly distorted. It’s amazing what did and did not make it into the popular memory of things, and when you trace it further forward, you can often see the self-serving lies like “We were always, always anti-Fascist…”
We now know what “Hate Speech” means.
It does NOT mean a crowd of Muslims in Australia (or anywhere else) chanting “Gas The Jews” – but it DOES cover a person waving an Israeli flag, that is clearly “Hate Speech” and the police in Sydney arrested the person. Had the person been burning, rather than waving, the Israeli flag, the authorities would have been happy.
“Hate Speech” means speech the left do not like – and that is all that it means.
Nor is this recent.
Professor Pigou of Cambridge (who Keynes called a supporter of traditional free market economics in his book the “General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money” – Keynes may have been joking, but generations of students have mindlessly written about the “Orthodox Economist” Pigou, on the strength of Keynes saying that is what Pigou was) was rather open about these matters.
According to Professor Pigou, and this was three quarters of a century ago, people should be punished for arguing for LOWER TAXES.
In modern language – arguing for LOWER TAXES was “Hate Speech” – as it was against “scientific” statism.
So there we have it.
I would think that an electric car would be the most likely culprit, especially as the BBC has apparently being asserting that a diesel car was responsible.
The sad thing is, Paul… This crap has gone on for so long that nobody even questions the rationale. They just accept it, on both sides…
It’s how the left works, polluting the cultural commons. Which they do intentionally, while forgetting that once they’ve called everyone a Nazi, and convinced them of it, then nobody is a Nazi.
I keep coming around to this fact: The more they strive to do these things, take over these institutions, the less and less meaningful and significant are their takeovers. When you’ve discredited Harvard, what value is that Harvard degree…?
We’re in the interregnum period right there in between “credible and meaningful institutions” and “utterly without credibility or meaning”. The various “elite” parties on the left are not going to like what comes after. It ain’t just the internet that “routes around failure”; that’s a general principle in any society.
Fraser
From a libertarian perspective of course you are correct. From a “level playing field” I am sick and tired of turning the other cheek.
In the football context a single person amongst a crowd of thousands who makes a racist remark will be speedily identified and generally banned for life if not actually prosecuted.
On a wider context governments including our own have no problems with issuing travel bans or denying entry to individuals from the right whose views and statements are outside their comfort zone. I am pretty sure a number of “right-wing” football supporters have been prevented from travelling to recent tournaments.
(To be completely open I am Jewish with friends who live in Israel. Thankfully they are currently unharmed).
About the greatest “bad thing” you can really say about the Jews is that they’ve consistently refused to blend in,
That’s so opposite to reality it warps space. Where-ever Jews have migrated to they *have* blended in. Jewish migrants to Britain became British, Jewish migrants to America became American, Jews in German were indistinguishable from any other German – one of the things seized on to justify persecuting them.
No, if you want to point to a people who refuse to blend in, who refuse to adapt to the culture they have moved to, who actively LOATHE the countries they live in, it’s not Jewish people.
Speaking for myself, i believe that Leopold II and Pol Pot were morally worse than Hitler — but i am willing to listen to people who think that i am wrong.
If we go by body counts, of course, we get a different picture.
Luton Airport is (ultimately) owned by the local (Labour) council, through an operating company at some form of arms length. It looks as if a firework disguised as a Diesel car was driven into the car park and left there before igniting and somehow setting off electric cars and the conflagration demolishing the car park and pancaking or scorching around 1,200 cars, so I’ve seen claimed.
Funny how this sort of thing didn’t seem to happen that often.
Snorri – Leopold had very little idea what was going on in the Congo – Leopold was a lazy incompetent who did not even bother to visit the area he was supposed to be in charge of, and what was going on there (such as forced labour and the cutting off of hands) had been happening long before any people from Belgium arrived.
There has been a massive campaign of disinformation – including quoting out-of-context statements by officials. The overall impression is given that the people from Belgium introduced new practices – whereas the actual complaint was that they did not stop existing inter tribal attacks and Arab slave raiding, that they COPIED what the locals were already doing rather than stopping it.
This is why the Belgium government intervened in 1908 – not to end new practices, but to put a stop to long established atrocities which the employees of Leopold had done nothing to stop, indeed had copied.
The thinking of the managers was not “if we introduce new horrors we can make money”, but rather “if we wink at what is already going on – we can make money”.
Although the managers in the Congo should still have been hanged.
As for Leopold – a greedy, and lazy, fool. Who did not even bother to go and see what was going on.
Of course, to end the local culture of slavery, mass mutilation and mass murder would have been “Cultural Imperialism” – the sort of thing that British Imperialists of the period, such as Lugard, are accused of.
The employees of Leopold (from Belgium and elsewhere) choose not to end the local culture of slavery, mass mutilation and mass murder – indeed to play along with it. And all Leopold cared about was that the money kept coming.
Edmund Burke said of Warren Hastings – he copied local despots, rather than ruling as a civilised man.
Mr Ed – yes.
I find myself in the very unusual position of agreeing with the American Administration – a regime I despise. At least I agree with what I believe they are saying – I could be mistaken.
They seem to be saying that a route into Egypt should be opened up – NOT to get supplies into the Gaza Salient (no – a thousand times no), but so that the civilian population of the Salient can leave.
By the way – I am listening to the head of the Reform Party on GB News, he wants the Palestinian Authority to rule Gaza.
Richard Tice does not grasp that the PA also (contrary to what it pretends to gullible Westerners) wants to exterminate the Jews.
The Gaza Salient has to go – this is what what people do not seem to understand.
And if Israel does what needs to be done (sadly unlikely with this new government of “National Unity”) Israel will find that there are no friends among the big powers.
Not my experience at all. I have a couple friends in UK I’ve known for more than 20 years & only recently discovered they are Jewish due to an off-hand remark. Had a gf in USA many moons ago & only after almost a year, when I got invited to a dinner at her parent’s place, did I discover she too was Jewish. In both cases it was about as remarkable as discovering they were left handed.
Yes, I’ve known people who are very clearly & loudly JEWISH, but in my experience at least in USA & particularly in UK, Jews stand out about as much as Presbyterians or Catholics 😉
Perry et al
Hasidic Jews only represent a tiny fraction of the total UK Jewish population but are impossible not to identify. They largely fail to assimilate and choose to speak Yiddish rather than English while foolishly teaching the same primary language to their children at their Yeshivas. I freely admit they are hard-nosed businessmen and particularly landlords but they are hardly alone in this. However they are law-abiding and pose no threat to their neighbours although I metaphorically tear my hair out at their refusal to assimilate and utter foolishness at being unwilling to acknowledge the damage they are doing not only to themselves but to the overwhelming majority of Reform and Liberal Jews like myself.
I suspect most on here are probably unaware of the need for Jewish parents to organise rotas in order to safeguard their children coming and going to school or of the frisson of fear when a religious service is disrupted by vile shouts or on more than one occasion windows being broken or when leaving the place of worship to see freshly painted graffiti or that rubbish or worse has been left on the steps. I experienced much of this back in the 1960’s, well before mass immigration. The hatred has always been bubbling under but nowadays with demographic changes it is unashamed and close to if not already uncontrollable.
Paul: Thank you for the historical note.
I had previously found the claim that Leopold II did not know what was going on in the ‘Free State’ — but it was on a neo-monarchist site, so i was skeptical.
And in any case, accidental killing was treated just the same as premeditated murder in Viking-age Iceland 🙂
But if the managers of the Free State did nothing more than adapt to local practice (although probably making it more efficient), then i agree that they should have been hanged*; but it changes my opinion about Leopold being worse than Adolf.
Still the worst Belgian in history, though.
* actually, stringing them up would be too good for them.
@John
From a libertarian perspective of course you are correct. From a “level playing field” I am sick and tired of turning the other cheek.
TBH, I don’t understand in what way you are “turning the other cheek”. Letting horrible people say their horrible things is not a price you pay, it is a good thing — it means you know who they are. It doesn’t harm you or your cheek to have free speech. And for sure telling the government they have no right to rob people, even horrible people, of their most basic rights to travel isn’t some pure, theoretical libertarian stand. It is resisting the most vicious kind of totalitarianism.
In the football context a single person amongst a crowd of thousands who makes a racist remark will be speedily identified and generally banned for life if not actually prosecuted.
I don’t understand why someone making a racist remark should be banned for life. And prosecuted? OMG, people shouldn’t be prosecuted for what they say, no matter how terrible. Maybe at some point in the past you have said something dumb or hateful that you really regret now, (I know I have). Should you be banned for life for doing so. People have a right to speak freely. I understand that Celtic might not want to have a reputation of their fans having loathsome views, and so it isn’t unreasonable for them to refuse to allow offensive banners into their stadium. But I find your suggestion of one mistake and you are banned for life, right in line with what the cancel culture is attuned to.
Again, free speech, even if it is vile speech, is an extremely good thing.
(To be completely open I am Jewish with friends who live in Israel. Thankfully they are currently unharmed).
You and your friends have my deepest sympathies for this dreadful atrocity.
Thank you for your kind words at the end but we will have to agree to differ.
Let people tell you who they are by their words and they will surely tell you again by their actions.
Agree completely. It doesn’t mean I have to host those remarks but then I’m not the government, I strongly agree it’s not the state’s job to prevent communists, fascists, racists, anti-semites, pederasts etc. from telling the world who they are.
Free speech matters and so does free association which also requires the freedom to disassociate. A Women’s group in Victoria, Australia was recently in the news for banning “chicks with dicks”. See “Tickle v Giggle“. And, personally if someone came round my house and said, “All Geordies are cunts” I would tell them to piss off. So if a football club doesn’t want people shouting racist insults then fair play for them. Because that’s the house rules. I’m a web designer and there are people I wouldn’t work for and that isn’t just because I don’t want, “hitlerwasright.com” on my portfolio. But it’s because I have standards. I suspect Samizdata has house rules. Everywhere does. My nearest pub has a dress-code on Saturday nights.
@JGH,
Oh, really? Pray tell me, then, how it is that those Jews are still identifiably Jewish, two thousand years after the Romans threw them out of what was their country? Show me another diaspora where the subjects maintained their identity anywhere near the level that the Jews did, if you can. Hell, the damn Goths wandering through Europe are totally gone, these days, and there were a hell of a lot more of them. How many other ethnicities can even identify their original religion that they followed around the year One? Let alone have the continuity of it? Maybe the various tribes of Gypsies/Tinkers, but they’ve got no real written records the way the Jews have. It’s all oral tradition, for them.
No, I’m afraid you’re looking at just the surface sheen. The deeper cultural identity? The Jews retain it, even 2000 years into their diaspora. Which is a pretty incredible thing, when you think about it.
Sure, but then I have a warning. Stifle their words, and the action might surprise me.