German general dismissed for praising anti-Semitism

Hey that's really clever! How come y'all didn't do this before? You have finally figured out a way to get the German people off the hook for giving rise to Nazism and supporting the Nazis war efforts of conquest and genocide.

Your logic says the Jews, though a tiny minority in Russia, killed as many via Bolshevist revolution
as did
The Germans, who were the overwhelming majority in Germany and Austria, did to make Nazism with it's mass murder campaigns and wars

I still don't see anything egregious on his speech, but my German "sucks," to use teenager slang.

His speech touches many controversial subjects, such as criminal Turks getting away with a slap in their wrists, German welfare cheats living the life of Riley in Miami, people using the German "Medicaid" to buy Viagra, and other abuses of the generous German socialist programs.

The whole speech is about asking Germans to be proud and productive, not parasitic and despondent.

Are the Germans supposed to grovel every time the 12 years of Nazi government is discussed?

Are the Bolsheviks held to the same standard when their 70+ years of totalitarianism and butchery are discussed?

At any rate, the speech was not a defense of the Nazi past, but a call to avoid the excuse of "German guilt" and look for fresh solutions to the current German economic and social troubles.

One of these days I'm going to learn German and be able to make up my mind about these issues. Until then, I will have to defer to other commentators, such as yourself.

He concluded that the point was not to blame the Germans for Nazi crimes or Jews for those of the Bolsheviks,

Untrue. His objective here is to get Germans off the hook for supporting Hitler and Nazism. How does he do this? By saying Jewish crimes are as bad or worse. He says, just look how many were killed by the Jews in the Bolshevik revolution in Russia.

He gets to kill two birds with one stone. The European left can step up it's campaign of calling Israel a Nazi nation, because if Jews were able to kill so many in Russia they surely must be killing Palestinians the same way

The charge "anti-semitic" has been leveled with such abandon in the last decades that unfortunately it has lost its currency. Undoubtedly there are Germans who are sick and tired of being the only people against whom racial condemnation seems intellectually acceptable. Still idiots like Hohmann should learn to shut their pie holes, his argument is not only offensive, but worse it is sophomoric.

His speech touches many controversial subjects, such as criminal Turks getting away with a slap in their wrists, German welfare cheats living the life of Riley in Miami, people using the German "Medicaid" to buy Viagra, and other abuses of the generous German socialist programs.

That isn't what is controversial about his speech, at least not as far as I'm concerned... leftists will of course disagree. (Though I maintain that the worst parasites are not the welfare cheats but the entrenched class of civil servants who are "managing" poverty and constantly expanding their turf; they are like an albatross hanging around the neck of taxpayers.)

The whole speech is about asking Germans to be proud and productive, not parasitic and despondent.

That isn't the impression I got.

Are the Germans supposed to grovel every time the 12 years of Nazi government is discussed?

Emphatically no. But who is bringing up the Nazi era? As a commenter on HZB's weblog remarked (a non-Jewish American living in Germany), the leaders of Germany's Jewish council, from Galinski to Bubis and now Spiegel, have been progressively milder, while anti-Jewish resentment in Germany has grown steadily worse.

Are the Bolsheviks held to the same standard when their 70+ years of totalitarianism and butchery are discussed?

Well see, you correctly identified the Bolsheviks as the comparison object to the Nazis. But to hold the world's Jews responsible for the actions of Jewish Bolsheviks in Russia and then equate the Jewish people as a whole with the German people during the Nazi regime is wrong on so many levels, it boggles the mind. That is what Hohmann did. Not to mention his references to Henry Ford as an authority, his recent call for reparations payments to the dwindling band of Holocaust survivors to be cut, and other offensive comments.

At any rate, the speech was not a defense of the Nazi past, but a call to avoid the excuse of "German guilt" and look for fresh solutions to the current German economic and social troubles.

I wish it were so, but then why did he have to drag in the Jews?

Hohmann is simply a head case. He is a German nationalist who cannot bear the stain of the Holocaust in his nation's history. The fact that there are many German patriots who acknowledge Germany's history, yet are not crippled by feelings of inferiority or "collective guilt", does not register with him.

No one else is "keeping Germany down", least of all "the Jews". A thriving German economy driven by optimistic, confident Germans is best for the Jews (remember the economic malaise before Hitler took power), and best for Israel.

The man obviously has a need to identify scapegoats. You can legitimately criticize an issue such as homosexual adoption, but to blame the plummeting German birthrate on the homosexuals? Please!

One of the forms in which prejudice manifests itself is subjecting the object of prejudice to a different standard than the rest of the world. That is what Hohmann has done in the part concerning the Jews and thereby demonstrated prejudice.

``With a certain justification, one could ask in the light of the millions killed in the first phase of the revolution about the 'guilt' of the Jews,'' Hohmann said, according to a copy of the speech obtained by The Associated Press.

Not at all: one could definitely ask, and answer in the affirmative, the question of guilt of individual Bolsheviks of Jewish descent (just like their ex-Christian counterparts, they have denounced all religion and declared it their enemy). The reference to Germans and Jews does not even belong in the same sentence. When one refers to the guilt of "Germans," one does not even mean ethnicity: nobody thinks in this context of the Germans that emigrated to the U.S. and elsewhere before the war; nor does one think of those of German ethnicity that at the time lived elsewhere on the planet --- in the New World, for instance. If one imputes any collective guilt to the "Germans" at all, one refers to the German subjects If the Holocaust were perpetrated only on the Roma (Gypsies) and excluded the Jews, the German Jews would've been included in that category. The ethnic Germans were an overwhelming majority in Germany, and they have chosen and supported the Nazi government.

The Jews of the Russian Empire, in contrast, not only were not a majority -- not even a sizable minority, in fact --- but they were expressly proscribed from participating in political life. What political life can one even consider when the Jews were prohibited from residing in the Russian hinterland, outside of the Pale of Settlement? They have never affected the political life in the tsarist Russia to any extent.

There is no parallel between Russia and Germany: whereas the Nazi government has been elected by the German people, the very essence of Russian state has collapsed in the revolution. In its wake some Jews have come to prominence in the Bolshevik government --- that is absolutely true. The Russian revolution was not effected by the tiny Jewish minority, however, and it survived the subsequent civil war not due to the few Jews among the Reds. That revolution would've have occurred and succeeded even if there were no Jews in Russia at all.

(The argument about the disproportionate presence of ex-Jews among the Bolsheviks is a fallacious. When not suppressed, the Jews are over-represented in all spheres of life, from science and medicine to politics and, recently, art. It is true that many Jews have demonstrated their gratitude for the equality granted to them by the communists by participating actively in the revolution. The prejudiced people fail to see that Jews also emigrated disproportionately during that period of type --- to the U.S. mostly.)

To blame a tiny minority for the Revolution is both factually incorrect and an act of bias.

Further, if one views Jews not as an ethnic entity but followers of Judaism, the statement of Hohmann still does not make any sense: he should be comparing the participation of Jews, Orthodox Christians, Catholics, and Protestants in the respective actions in Russia and Germany. Here things are even more clear and better known: the Nazis were not Protestants or Catholics --- they were fromProtestant and Catholic families but no longer Christian themselves. Similarly, Bolsheviks were from Orthodox, Jewish, and Muslim families but no longer Christian, Jewish, or Muslim, respectively.

The following statement is amazing not only in terms of the bias of the speaker but more so in terms of his stupidity:

Hohmann, a member of parliament since 1998, responded Friday with a terse statement. ``It was and is not my intention to hurt feelings,'' he said. ``I am calling neither Jews nor Germans a people of perpetrators.'' Does the speaker not know that, until the formation of Israel, the Jews were not a "people" in any sense of a political or territorial entity?

One could equally say, ``I am calling neither postmasters nor Germans a people of perpetrators.''

I do agree with Hohmann in another respect, however: the standards applies to the Germans as a nation may and must be applied to other nations of the world. If one imputes collective guilt to the Germans as a nation--- for populating, electing, and supporting the Nazi government and its atrocities --- then one must be able to apply the same standard to the French, Vietnamese, Russians, etc., taken as nationalities and not ethnic groups. Here one could hold the Russians responsible --- just like the Germans, for populating, electing, and supporting the Bolshevik government and its atrocities. This would include people of Orthodox, Jewish, Muslim, or whatever other background. Similarly, one could apply the same to the atrocities of the French Revolution and those of Pol Pot. It is very true that the non-nationalist Left --- that of Russia, Cuba, China, and Eastern Europe --- has not been held responsible to the extent the Nazis were. (This is inexcusable but understandable: in contrast to the Nazis, the above-mentioned regimes were killing only their own.)

Note however, that in the nation-to-nation comparison, one would not even be thinking about the Jews (they would be automatically included into their respective nations together with all other minorities or groups). That Hohmann did think of the Russian Jews --- and incidentally did not even mention the non-Jewish Russians and Ukrainians, the real masters of that land --- demonstrates his prejudice. Given the object of the prejudicial view, this bias is justifiably called anti-Semitism.

,i.He concluded that the point was not to blame the Germans for Nazi crimes or Jews for those of the Bolsheviks, but rather "the godless with their godless ideologies."

No wonder the current German government was offended by that! He cited them.

Excellent response, you saved my the bother.

Please rethink what you state as fact, because it destroys the credibility of your post. How and when was the Nazi party popularly in a free elaction given governance of Germany? The situation of Russia and Germany were really not so different. Governance was seized, opposition crushed.Hitler learned from Russia.

You put it all together.

How and when was the Nazi party popularly in a free elaction given governance of Germany?

Capsule information on Nazi party election results

The situation of Russia and Germany were really not so different. Governance was seized, opposition crushed.

Yes and no. In 1932 the Nazi party won a plurality of the vote by a large margin, in an entirely free and legal election. They needed some shady shenanigans for their last push "over the top"; but the German people had made them the strongest party.

By contrast, the October Revolution in which Russia's Bolsheviks seized power was a much more brutal affair.

I didn't want to respond to you emotionally but rather logically. I get angry at anti-Semitism, particularly from Germany.

Maybe it's the fact that both my parents survived the Holocaust but much of my family did not. Maybe it was the time my mother went to where her family lived for five centuries in Germany. She was in the cemetary when an old woman came up to her and asked her who she was looking for. When she gave the family name she was told "Der Juden. We have no Juden here." It was all so matter-of-fact.

I think Top Quark did a fantastic job of explaining why the Hohman speech was incredibly anti-Semitic to so many of us. I will not try to improve on his post.

It also isn't about groveling. There are Nazis living still, and there are survivors living still. I think your post was a touch insensitive. (No, I am not accusing you of anti-Semitism in the least, just a lack of understanding.)

Was there material in Hohman's speech that was on the mark? Perhaps, but the anti-Semitism overshadows it and destroys any value the speech may have had. Look at Mahathir Mohamed's "Jews rule the world" speech. Most of it, telling the Islamic world to eschew violence and use their brains, was on the mark. It was totally poisoned by the anti-Semitism in most of the western world's eyes. Hohman's speech, while not quite as in-your-face, is equally poisoned.

The charge "anti-semitic" has been leveled with such abandon in the last decades that unfortunately it has lost its currency.

You are so far off base it isn't funny here. The charge of anti-Semitism is made so often because of the incredible amount of anti-Semitism that still exists in this world. You may not see it or feel it in northern Kentucky. Indeed, there is very little anti-Semitism in America and it is not socially acceptable in the U.S. Generally most of the people who utter anti-Semitic comments publicly are from the lunatic fringe of the far left or far right. We see it at "peace" rallies where impressionable leftist young people have taken the Palestinian narrative and the Islamic agenda to heart with no knowledge of history or of what is truth and what is lies.

In the U.S. the fact that a major presidential candidate is Jewish is no big deal. Joseph Leiberman certainly didn't cost Al Gore votes in 2000. If anything his perceived integrity help offset Gore's incessant lies and half truths. It's easy to look arount the U.S. and your community and to have a hard time seeing a whole lot of anti-Semitism.

Much of Europe is very different. Large Muslim populations coupled with centuries of visceral anti-Semitism have lead to an explosive mix. Oh, it isn't all of Europe. Ireland has never persecuted it's Jewish population at all and has had Jewish mayors of Dublin and, I think, at least one Prime Minister. However, watching the re-emergence of popular anti-Semitism in Germany, Austria, France, Belgium, and to a somewhat lesser extent the U.K., is very frightening to those of us who are Jewish and still have family in Europe.

The charge of anti-Semitism should and does have a lot of currency still. It should with you as well, and any such charge, if justified, should bother you as much as any other form of bigotry. I also think being offensive is worse than being sophomoric.

I think you need to study your European history. Top Quark's post was factual. Germany and Russia were very different indeed.

bttt

I didn't want to respond to you emotionally but rather logically. I get angry at anti-Semitism, particularly from Germany.

Thank you for your rational responses.

I appreciate your taking the time to compose well-thought-out responses to further elucidate the reason for the reaction to Mr. Hohmann's comments.

In the last free Wiemar election (if you consider running a gauntlet of communist and nazi thugs to reach the polls a free election) the national socialists recieved about 30% of the vote. I must assume your history books have George Mcgovern beating incumbent President George Wallace in 1972. Ugh.

You really are thick. Weimar Germany was a multi-party system, not a two party system. To compare, the Likud in Israel today holds one third of the seats in the Knesset. That makes them the largest party with more than twice the votes of the next largest party (Labour). Likud has an unbreakable hold on power until the next election in 2007.

The National Socialists were in a similar position in Germany after 1932. By 1936 the Nazis had brutally suppressed all opposition. They didn't need to. They would have won an overwhelming majority in a free election. Indeed, Hitler had many supporters and admirers in the U.S. He took a bankrupt nation and turned it into a world power both economically and militarily in a few short years.

I have studied history. You seem to ignore it if it doesn't meet with your interpretation of the facts.

Tell me: is your purpose to defend Herr Hohman and his speech?

The Weiwar republic had a genuine executive head of state, President Hindenburg. In desperation due to a state collapsing in political/criminal turmoil he chose to ask Hitlers party to form a government, (he could as legally have chosen the Bolsheviks, would that in your mind have made the German situation a tad more like Russias? Which is I believe the point here.) thinking that within the government he might somehow be tamed. Instead from that position and thanks to Hindenbergs dementia and death constitutional government was brutally overturned making Hitler cheif of state. The Nazis were never given an electoral mandate to govern, and sadly by demanding that it be seen in that way , you award Hitler a status he does not deserve. But have it your way, and be sure to catch Showtime to learn all about Ronald Reagan.

Both of you should read my #31 above.