A Grim Article

I wasn't the first to say it, but seldom has there been a more perfect marriage of two words slapped together than in the phrase "Distrust Altruism"...

A Grim Article


Re: The New German Nazism by William E Grim

(The article, reprinted here, was published in FrontPage Magazine, and elsewhere.)

Regardless of where the blame goes, whether to those who defeated the Huns during the first World War or (as Hitler used relentlessly in his ascent to power) those that capitulated first by losing the war and/or second by agreeing to treaties that guaranteed economic ruin, or somewhere in between, I suspect that this is more the "racism of convenience" to which the author refers when he comes upon giggling school children...even if he doesn't see it as such. It's something that we all possess to some extent, and that which Mr. Grim ends up displaying himself most judiciously long before the end of the article. Understandably, any trace of anti-Semitism is hyped up with the best intentions, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily helpful. At the risk of making an uninformed assessment myself, perhaps it is because Mr. Grim (who needs to requisition a new surname, by the way) isn't Jewish that he doesn't acknowledge the great swaths of suffering inflicted upon the Jews due to prejudice and bigotry over past millennia (besides the Holocaust). It's something every Jewish person learns pretty early on, regardless of how comfy his or her present surroundings might be: the world is intolerant, and blindly so toward Jews. For some of us there is consolation and fortitude derived from the knowledge that we are, after all, The Chosen...though for what I have no idea...

Too light an assessment? Perhaps; I dare say it pales in comparison with some of the other trends currently circling the globe - and I'll try not to ramble too much with this - such as how we, over here, might leave any moral high ground far in the distance in favor of a campaign of liquidating anything Muslim were the current tables turned and the stage was set so that an intellectually bereft tyrant successfully used his military muscle to kill hundreds of thousands in the continental U.S., primarily civilian. Or how the Japanese will never acknowledge the full extent of what they did in China, Korea, etc., during World War II; in fact, on the whole a revisionist history is actively encouraged by these supposedly progressive PacRimsters. In what has to be one of the craziest of ironies, there is a shrine in Nanking to a Nazi official stationed there during its "Rape of" because he refused to allow the Japanese military access to the Chinese civilians he was harboring on the compound. This party official is hero to some over there, just like Schindler is a disgrace to others over here.

While group-think is inherently malleable, and served the Nazis well in their quest between wars eighty years ago, it requires circumstance and persuasion. The author is quite right in his "fat, sassy" assessment of present-day Germany while missing something seemingly obvious: there are no "November Criminals" to blame or fervent nationalism to promote, because that would require the backs of countless millions of impoverished and malnourished citizenry with which to carry that ideology with success. It's important to note that, Judenfrei or otherwise, Germany had its ass handed to it at the end of World War II - Berlin, Hamburg, Dresden, etc., and were it not for the United States (motives aside) plopping down one million troops, rebuilding infrastructure along with the occasional "surge" (Berlin Airlift), that group of over-privileged Germans grouped together by the author as helplessly racist would have actually had something to bitch about for a few decades (right before being sent to Siberia).

But claims of predisposition in the handling of racial affairs already present at the moment of birth are ridiculous - those little jihadists in training would be just as happy playing Playstation, with Jewish children, if it was an option afforded them by the world at large and their brain-damaged parents in particular. A couple zingers stemming from this type of mindset really stand out in one sentence toward the end of the piece: "Germans are instinctively anti-Semitic in the same way that Americans are instinctively freedom loving. Anti-Semitism has been and unfortunately remains the default ideology of the German people." He needs to be careful with this, as Mein Kamph draws upon similar themes ("...the Jew possesses no culture-creating force of any sort, since the idealism, without which there is no true higher development of man, is not present in him and never was present"). Also - and if I'm allowed one opinion thanks to that Pima County, AZ birth certificate in my possession, it's this - Americans are not an instinctively freedom loving people, though they play one on TV.

The article does veer into extreme naïveté with this paragraph: "The result of all this is that Germans today are able to reap the benefits of Hitler's anti-Semitic policies while paying lip service to the 'need to remember.' Young Fritz doesn't have to be overtly anti-Semitic today because his grandfather's generation did such a bang-up job of the Holocaust. There just aren't that many Jews left to hate any more, and besides, the Germans have their old buddies, the Arabs, to do their hating for them."

There are a few problems with this, and the paragraphs that follow. For one, six decades ago the Jews had neither a country, a nuclear weapon, the most successful intelligence agencies in use, a litany of victorious military campaigns, etc., as well as direct access to the decision making process by the United States, the "decider" of the majority of world affairs. For two, the author, while correct in describing collusion between the Nazis and the Arabs way back when (and acquiescence and mutual support to this day), does not go far enough: the money that travels through the networks of support include tributaries of which Mr. Grim is either woefully ignorant or consciously avoiding. Third, the skinheads who occasionally gang up and terrorize Muslims in Germany (because they can) are not on record as first doing background checks to see if attacker and attackee may have any similar Heinrich Himmler / Grand Mufti trading cards from the old days; any gemeinschaft-themed mutual hatred of you know who. This is just silly.

Finally (almost), some of those that follow Islam may vary well be Barbarians at the Strudel, but I suspect the vast majority of Muslim mothers, their children and the hard-working stiffs providing daily sustenance that just want a better life, will require, by and large, a fair amount of influence to see any logic in manifesting a Third World terrorism mindset after having overcome innumerable obstacles to get to the First World. It's infinitely more complicated, of course - the transmutation of dozens of cultures along migratory routes, current political climate and the power of propaganda in the ethnic neighborhoods of western cities, the enormous power of religion while having to slip off those $200 Air Jordans five times a day...and so forth...but for every college student shouting "Death to Israel" in between classes outside the Munich Starbucks there's at least a hundred (or ten thousand) others reflecting on how such independent thought "back home" would instantly affect one's neckline. Not all, obviously, but I think almost all. Sort of like how not all dagos became mobsters, or, on rare occasions, Jews have been spotted paying retail...

Frankly, I don't see any seemingly altruistic-themed "look, look, anti-Semitism exists" as particularly helpful, though it is easy to see why so many do. Scapegoating worked against the Jews for so long; personally I find it a bit insulting that I should need help in the hyper-vigilant department. I guess I just prefer the IDF/Mossad approach to those that have done, or would do, us harm, the occasional and regrettable Omelette Theory "collaterals" notwithstanding...

And forgive me if I don't seem like a "team player" (and what team might that be? Zoroastrians for Thai Food?), but it's paramount to look at other Barbarian mindsets walking among us - then and now, our team and theirs - and perhaps enlighten those such as Mr. Grim with a short history lesson if they are unfamiliar with the term "blowback."

All Germans, or all 1.2 billion Muslims for that matter, are every bit as susceptible to lemming-like behavior as the rest of us. Granted, we here in the U.S. are a more diverse pot of pozole than most, but pandering to such blanket assumptions that can become internalized racism all too easily only seems as logical as assuming that we "Americans" (technically from up around the ANWR Preserve to down past the Falkland Islands, but let's just say from Coronado to Compton to Coeur d'Alene) are all as easily pigeonholed in our view of the world at large. Wholly inaccurate...though, to be fair, the current administration has made remarkable strides in this regard...just that it's the Muslims who are the scapegoats du jour of our time, not Jews.

In fact...EVERYBODY in this country has an opinion about the Jews. And, generally, they will share it with you if they think you're not Jewish. Or, if they're honest, even after they find out. Every now and then you may even come across someone who remained in school long enough to understand that "Jewish" and "Israel" are two different words altogether in the English language. Often, though, it's exactly congruent with the, "oh, he's all right...for a spade..." mentality.

Or, as Malcolm X once said, eloquently: What do white folks call a black doctor?

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Postscript: I found a couple paragraphs that are outtakes from the original article by Mr. Grim I found published a few years back - there is a paragraph on political structure that is important, and a comparison of German and non-German writers and composers before it beyond asinine...and stating, “...making good-quality cars is not on the same level as sending men to the moon...” only seems to demonstrate that Herr Grim has neither heard of Wernher von Braun nor the Operation Paperclip that brought the German wunderkind to our shores...talk about anti-Semitism! And Grim is from Ohio, home of Wright Patterson AFB, where many of those Nazi scientists ended up...go figure...

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