BS: Krystallnacht plus 80 - Here We Are

Subject: BS: Krystallnacht plus 80 - Here We Are
From: robomatic
Date: 05 Nov 18 - 06:43 AM

Coming up on the 80th Anniversary of Krysatallnacht. LA Times has an interesting article on some of its reverberations on the U.S. West Coast not long after the vibrant events across Germany in late 1938.

As to the week-old event at the Tree Of Life in Pittsburg, I think the response across America and the world, including here in Anchorage, has shown that our society is not their society (and according to the LA Times, it never was).

And hopefully, over great time and tremendous losses in blood and treasure, the world has learned a few things, hopefully, enough things.

Subject: RE: BS: Krystallnacht plus 80 - Here We Are
From: Donuel
Date: 05 Nov 18 - 08:53 AM

There are dozens of hard hitting hitler policy and strategy parallels to Trump but an ordered broken window night and arson is not one of them at this time.

Of course there are plenty of people who will always say "It can't Happen Here"

Subject: RE: BS: Krystallnacht plus 80 - Here We Are
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 05 Nov 18 - 09:22 AM

Sinclair Lewis, among them.

Subject: RE: BS: Krystallnacht plus 80 - Here We Are
From: Donuel
Date: 05 Nov 18 - 09:55 AM

indeed

Subject: RE: BS: Krystallnacht plus 80 - Here We Are
From: Mossback
Date: 05 Nov 18 - 10:46 AM

an ordered broken window night and arson is not one of them at this time.

The operative phrase being "at this time".

Wait for it.

Subject: RE: BS: Krystallnacht plus 80 - Here We Are
From: Donuel
Date: 05 Nov 18 - 01:07 PM

god I hope not

Subject: RE: BS: Krystallnacht plus 80 - Here We Are
From: Mossback
Date: 05 Nov 18 - 01:55 PM

Old Yiddish proverb:

"He who lives on hope dies of starvation".

Subject: RE: BS: Krystallnacht plus 80 - Here We Are
From: robomatic
Date: 05 Nov 18 - 03:29 PM

I think those are seriously overwrought responses. What happened in 1938 was State-sponsored and we are nowhere close to that in this country. We were not even close to it then.
BUT. What we seem to be close to is responding overmuch to political exhortation based on fear. That I find disturbing because it is operating on the right and the left. And the fear is driving us apart from each other and preventing us from simply communicating. In an age where the technology of communication has never been more fluid and accessible. A few short years ago we were predicting that the use of the internet would get diversity of politics into China, would free North Africa from religious dogma, and see the Russians into real Democracy for the first time since a few months in 1917 and again in the 1990s.

Krystallnacht was a product of long-held prejudices 'weaponized' by a violent party which came to power with no intensions of adhering to existing rules of law. They became the willing slaves of a single person and followed a logic which brought themselves and the surrounding world to grief. As I wrote above, I think we've learned a few things since then, I hope we've learned ENOUGH things and retained them through the generations since who have lived without that extreme level of fear and violence. There is plenty of evidence out there that maybe we haven't.

Which is why Krystallnacht is worth remembering.

Subject: RE: BS: Krystallnacht plus 80 - Here We Are
From: meself
Date: 05 Nov 18 - 03:38 PM

I don't know - I never imagined I'd see a day when vast numbers of Americans would accept their government snatching babies and toddlers from mothers at their border. If they can accept that, I think they can accept just about any kind of atrocity - eventually.

Subject: RE: BS: Krystallnacht plus 80 - Here We Are
From: Mossback
Date: 05 Nov 18 - 05:08 PM

Krystallnacht was a product of long-held prejudices 'weaponized' by a violent party which came to power with no intensions of adhering to existing rules of law.

Rule of Law? Rather like the current Trumpist National Front (once the Republican Party) trying to ignore/overturn the 14th Amendment, block persons (mostly untermenschen)from voting, & attempting to shut down the free press, no?

< the willing slaves of a single person and followed a logic which brought themselves and the surrounding world to grief

The Trump Cult, exactly. You been watching Trump's hillbilly Nuremberg rallies, have you? Grief aplenty -Pittsburgh, MAGAbomber & etc & more to come.

God Help AmeriKKKa.

Subject: RE: BS: Krystallnacht plus 80 - Here We Are
From: Donuel
Date: 05 Nov 18 - 05:10 PM

Happy Halloween OK
Happy Kristallnacht naw

Except for adrenalized vandals no one welcomed that night, not the shamed Germans not even Hitler who was upset by the collateral damage to the city. Who was going to pay for it? Easy answer - the Jews.


Yes robo never forget.

Subject: RE: BS: Krystallnacht plus 80 - Here We Are
From: leeneia
Date: 05 Nov 18 - 10:03 PM

It's time to stop using the term Kristallnacht. Calling it that was a propaganda move. The events had nothing to do with crystals and everything to do with bigotry and crime.

Don't let the bad guys tell us how to talk.

Subject: RE: BS: Krystallnacht plus 80 - Here We Are
From: robomatic
Date: 05 Nov 18 - 10:07 PM

I remember in college looking for a place to study and going to a law library and finding stacks of Austrian law books that got produced after the Anshluss. They had codified the anti-semitic laws like good little Teutons. That meant that major segments of state/legal apparatus spent many man-years writing them up, proofing them, publishing and disseminating them. I met a Dutchman who was interned during the German occupation of Holland. He kept escaping. The Germans kept catching him and bringing him back to camp. It was a nice camp. Because while he wasn't German he was an Aryan. The Germans were never going to hurt him, just make sure he didn't make trouble for them.
It was a total state apparatus down to the railroad timetables which shipped Jews, Gypsies, Russian prisoners, Communists, and objectionable Catholics and Protestants to the death camps. The ones in charge were total Bellievers.

The people in charge here don't have that kind of power. And they don't have that kind of belief.


Even the jerkwads marching in Charlottesville have no real conception of what real Nazis were and could do.


It is self-defeating to turn everythhing into Krystallnacht just because it's stupid or objectionable. That again is an important lesson from Krystallnacht.

Subject: RE: BS: Krystallnacht plus 80 - Here We Are
From: Mossback
Date: 06 Nov 18 - 12:27 PM

The people in charge here don't have that kind of power.

Not yet. All we are saying, is give Trump a chance.

And they don't have that kind of belief.

Ah, but they do, as time will demonstrate.

Subject: RE: BS: Krystallnacht plus 80 - Here We Are
From: Thompson
Date: 06 Nov 18 - 01:38 PM

Old Yiddish proverb: "He who lives on hope dies of starvation".

Oh my God, that's fantastic. I'm adopting that.

Thing about ethnic cleansing and genocide is that they always come out of an existing prejudice, yes - for example the Serb/Croat hate, the Tutsi/Hutu hate. But it then needs to be fomented.

The one I always come back to (nervously, because I ride a bicycle, and there's currently a baying herd of shock jocks arousing hatred of cyclists among right-wingers) is Radio Télévision Libres des Milles Collines in Rwanda, a Rwandan radio station which broadcast from July 8, 1993 to July 31, 1994. That's just one year.

Many of the Tutsis who were slashed to death (a million people, in just 100 days; that's three months) were last seen running away from their homes, with transistor radios pressed to their ears, listening to the station's shock jocks telling people that it was time to kill the "cockroaches" (dog whistle for "Tutsis").

Subject: RE: BS: Krystallnacht plus 80 - Here We Are
From: Donuel
Date: 06 Nov 18 - 07:54 PM

I can't wax poetic about the fragility of our institutions be they the free press or bureaucracies within the government. A simple presidential waiver can do more damage by doing an end un around justice. There is a book 'The war before the War' that is about the strident escalation of language in the lead up to the civil war. We know who is respondsible for reintroducing nationalism and its language.
Normalize hate and evil always follows. Give credit to robo for being optimistic and by doing so tries to heal the feedback loop of hate. Listen to Mossback for honesty. Joe will support the legend over the truth. Stilly River Sage may have the answer. Right now I know I don't.

Subject: RE: BS: Krystallnacht plus 80 - Here We Are
From: robomatic
Date: 06 Nov 18 - 07:59 PM

Don'l: Listen to NPR much? Just been listening to Fresh Air where the topic was the book: "The War Before The War" (U.S. Civil War). Good stuff. Terry Gross is a national treasure.

I've done my part for the day (voted).

Do Yours. That's An Order.

Subject: RE: BS: Krystallnacht plus 80 - Here We Are
From: keberoxu
Date: 06 Nov 18 - 10:54 PM

What seems more likely to me is that the States that today we call United,
Mossback, will dis-Unite at some point.
Some areas may go the way of Nazionalsozialismus.
Some areas will resist doing so, and resist mightily.
The resulting tension could pull the nation apart.

So your predictions could honestly be valid for certain regions,
and in other regions, not so likely.
I live in Massachusetts, where tens of thousands of people
poured into Boston to participate in the counter-demonstration
for what was supposed to be a rally for the righties at Boston Common.
And this is an area where they remember a flag
with a coiled rattlesnake and the capital-letter words
DON'T TREAD ON ME.
Of course this particular region has its dark underbelly, I know that.

But jackboots and goose-stepping in public? On Boston Common?
That remains to be seen.

Subject: RE: BS: Krystallnacht plus 80 - Here We Are
From: Mossback
Date: 07 Nov 18 - 09:09 AM

The flag in question,you will recall, was adopted by the Tea Party Republicans- the right-wing lunatics who have morphed the party into the National Front- and is still proudly displayed by them and other nationalist racist bights.

Subject: RE: BS: Krystallnacht plus 80 - Here We Are
From: Donuel
Date: 07 Nov 18 - 09:32 AM

I voted at 7:59, the exact time of your post robo.
NPR is never turned off despite their backsliding. Audible learning is imperative with my condition. There are also spans of TED talks and cosmology lectures.


There was goose stepping in Madison Sq. Garden on more than one occasion.

I am glad to see diversity make a pendulum turning comeback

Subject: RE: BS: Krystallnacht plus 80 - Here We Are
From: keberoxu
Date: 07 Nov 18 - 03:04 PM

This is just too close for comfort -- what Macron says in France.

Macron praises collaborator Marshal Pétain

Subject: RE: BS: Krystallnacht plus 80 - Here We Are
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 07 Nov 18 - 05:01 PM

"It's time to stop using the term Kristallnacht."

I couldn't disagree more. That one word summons up all the horrors of that time. There's no better word and there's no word that better relives those horrors for us.

Subject: RE: BS: Krystallnacht plus 80 - Here We Are
From: Mossback
Date: 07 Nov 18 - 06:39 PM

And those horrors will soon be visited upon the world once again if the Trumpists have their way.

Stay tuned.

Subject: RE: BS: Krystallnacht plus 80 - Here We Are
From: Thompson
Date: 07 Nov 18 - 10:48 PM

Macron - poor old Manu - seems to be cracking. His popularity - wrong word - is plummeting; he's now at the same level as the latest Le Pen. Like Margaret Thatcher, he sleeps only four hours a night, always seen as an admirable sign of a hard worker, but a good way to destroy yourself. He's being asked by pensioners why he's trying to destroy French lives… a far cry from the glamorous young driven man smiling on his bicycle with a stylish French scarf draped like a ruff…

Subject: RE: BS: Krystallnacht plus 80 - Here We Are
From: bobad
Date: 09 Nov 18 - 10:34 AM

Men shouting in Arabic about killing Jews end London Kristallnacht vigil

November 9, 2018

(JTA) – A vigil held by pro-Israel activists in London for Jews murdered in Arab countries was dispersed violently by men shouting about killing Jews in Arabic.

The event Wednesday by the Israel Advocacy Movement was held on Speaker’s Corner in London’s Hyde Park, which is known for its culture of free speech and passionate street preachers championing various causes.

A few dozen people holding Israeli flags and candles gathered there ahead of Kristallnacht, the name of Nazi pogrom perpetrated in 1938, to highlight the suffering and slaying around the same time of many hundreds of Jews who were killed and wounded in pogroms across the Arab world.

Joseph Cohen, an Israel Advocacy Movement activist, filmed the event as about 20 men drowned his talk, shouting: “Jews, remember Khaybar, the army of Muhammad is returning.”

The cry relates to an event in the seventh century when Muslims massacred and expelled Jews from the town of Khaybar, located in modern-day Saudi Arabia. Some of the men shouted about “Palestine,” surrounding the pro-Jewish activists and shoving them.

“As if on cue, before we’d even begun an extremist began screaming a death chant of Jews,” Cohen said. “The vigil went from bad to worse, they shouted us down, they would not allow us to remember our dead until we had to call off the vigil,” he added. The occurrence “goes to the heart of the matter we’d gathered to commemorate in the first place,” he also said.

A German woman who witnessed the event said: “A Christian was preaching and the atmosphere was friendly, a Muslim was preaching, and there were shouts but the atmosphere was still friendly but as soon as Jews wanted to honour their dead a whole of crowd appeared out of nowhere, as soon as the flags appeared, the cursing began against people who only wanted to honor their dead.”

She added: “I think what we just saw was anti-Semitism.”

JTA

Subject: RE: BS: Krystallnacht plus 80 - Here We Are
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 09 Nov 18 - 01:52 PM

So you've found a report about a small gang of bloody idiots. Have you any other, wider, point to make?

Subject: RE: BS: Krystallnacht plus 80 - Here We Are
From: Mossback
Date: 09 Nov 18 - 03:26 PM

Bobad raising a valid point? Surely you jest.

If he's indeed worried about anti-semitism, let him take on Trump and his "very fine Nazis".

Subject: RE: BS: Krystallnacht plus 80 - Here We Are
From: bobad
Date: 09 Nov 18 - 04:36 PM

Lol Greg.

Subject: RE: BS: Krystallnacht plus 80 - Here We Are
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 09 Nov 18 - 04:55 PM

He's called Bill, actually.