World War: 1939, 2009

Because the world seems to be going insane today in some ways rather as it did in 1939-41, I thought it was worthwhile to link to speeches of the designated bad guys.

1. [Institute for Historical Review] Germany’s Declaration of War Against the United States: Hitler’s Reichstag Speech of December 11, 1941 (Mark Weber's translation is better than most)
2. [Vineyard of the Saker] Speech of Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad at the United Nations

How did Hitler and Ahmadinejad become the arch-villains in 1939 and 2009 respectively in the prevailing wisdom even though their contemporary peers like Stalin and Netanyahu are so much more vial by any reasonable standard in 1939 and 2009.

The answer lies in the prominence of Jews in British and American news media in both time periods and also in the role that Zionism played in both time periods.

Zionism is the only genuine constant from WW2 through the Clash of Civilizations and the War on Terrorism.

While the power of Zionism in the USA and the UK today is quite obvious, this racist ideology, which is the exact Jewish counterpart of German Nazism, was no less influential in government circles during the 30s and 40s thanks to the influence of Zionists among the Cousinhood of the wealthiest British Jews and among the German American New York Jewish patricians known as "Our Crowd."

With Zionist permeation of Anglo-American society from high-brow culture or the most recondite university scholarship down to pop (even Cecil B. Demented has its Exodus moment), the quality of academic analysis has sunken dramatically as shown by the following two blog entries:

1. [Stephen Walt] Rapid reaction post
2. [Juan Cole's Informed Comment] Ahmadinejad Spews Raving Lunatic Anti-Semitism on 'Jerusalem Day'

Here are comments that skewer Walt and Cole quite effectively.

On Stephen Walt's Rapid reaction post.

The h-event is being used to strenghten the relationship

by Kenneth Sorensen on Mon, 09/21/2009 - 2:29pm

Quote:I thought about posting something about Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's most recent fit of Holocaust denial, but Juan Cole said everything

You Americans really ought to forget everything that has got to do with socalled holocaust.* Typically of you Americans you got to know the term from a television series. Churchill, Eisenhower and De Gaulle have between them written tens of thousands of pages about WW2 without ever mentioning the word. You Americans are smart, and Walt is one of your finest. Surely you have grasped why some people want you to pay disproportionate homage to this event, which affected only a small part of all those killed in WW2. [The reality is, of course, that it is always a perilous situation to be a minority in a dictatorship, and being disliked by that dictatorship. And there is very little outside forces can do about it] It is used to generate sympathy towards Israel, and to lend moral justifications to Israels actions, and to lessen the crimes that Israel has committed towards the indigenous population of Palestine. You Americans learned the term in the 70'ties, at the same time as your help [in the form of gifts, not loans (See Mearsheimer & Walt: The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy)] increased 6 times following the October War, and Israel from 1976 onwards became the biggest recipient of US foreign aid (ie. gifts). Actually Mearsheimer and Walt quotes a scholar, who says the relationsship from then on got the character of an alliance. And in this alliance this h-event has got a role of....a thing that can keep the two together and alligned. When the Cold war ended, Israel felt it needed a new glue for the relationsship, and it chose radical Islam - and by implication Iran - as the new enemy. But it has made sure that the h-event still features prominently by directing education programmes [Mind you, to a people that have zero guilt in the persecution of Jews in Europe], and building museums in the very Capital of the free world.

_____________________

Ad.* )

When the Iranian President speaks on the subject it should be seen as a Middle Eastern protest, that racism in Europe has led to a country that spurs racism on natives of the region. The Arbas and the Iranians have zero to do with the h-event, and it is written nowhere that they should show any particular respect to it. Why should they? To them other more recent events in their area looms far larger.

Should There Ever Have Been a Czechoslovakia?

by JaibriolQoxII on Wed, 09/23/2009 - 2:38pm

Part of the problem of historical discussions in the USA is the almost total lack of historical knowledge or understanding among Americans.

WWII came about to a large extent because of the vindictiveness of the victors in WW1.

Austria-Hungary served two purposes.

1. As a multinational empire, it created a modus vivendi for a very diverse population to live together in a supra-national state when the alternative of ethnonational states guaranteed decades of bloodshed.

[It is worth noting that even after the ethnic cleansing of the Bohemian German population, Czechoslovakia still did not make sense and split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.]

2. Austria-Hungary was a block on Pan-Germanist goals. Once Austria-Hungary was dismantled, pan-Germanism was revitalized especially after the German Empire had been stripped of territories on its Eastern and Western borders that most German citizens viewed as part of core German State.

In addition, the majority of the population of Danzig, the Danzig corridor, and the Sudetenland almost certainly wanted union with Germany.

Only with understanding of this context can one possibly have a rational discussion of Munich.

As I have pointed out elsewhere, not only is there much truth in Pat Buchanan's claim that WW2 was a useless conflagration ([wvns] Did Hitler Want War?), but in order to have a realistic or realist discussion of foreign policy today, we Americans have to have an open and painful discussion that

a) addresses why Munich is not debated honestly in the USA and

b) investigates Jewish Zionist mendacity on this topic in specific.

Continued US support for Israel is completely incompatible with a realist foreign policy (as the Israel Lobby understands completely -- hence the continued attacks on Walt&Mearsheimer), and the US maintains an alliance with the racist murderous genocidal Zionist state purely as a result of domestic political considerations that would vanish rapidly if Americans had a genuine understanding of historic Jewish political economy in Europe and N. America.

In other words,

1. patriotic Americans owe Jews nothing,
2. the Jewish-Zionist imperial system, whose public face is the Israel Lobby, has defrauded the USA of at least $6-8 trillion,
3. Jewish-Zionists will continue their ongoing criminal program of marginalizing US citizens of Arab and Muslim heritage in parallel with the ongoing Jewish-Zionist genociding of the native Palestinian population, and
4. the USA simply won't have a rational foreign policy with regard Iran, Israel, the Arab world, and the Muslim world,

until the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is demolished and contra-factual Jewish-Zionist mythography about the Holocaust is purged from American discourse.

If an American really wants to understand the current US foreign policy disaster, he should start with The Holocaust in American Life by Peter Novick and Selling the Holocaust by Tim Cole.

On Juan Cole's Ahmadinejad Spews Raving Lunatic Anti-Semitism on 'Jerusalem Day'.

Anonymous said...

So Ahmadinejad denied the Nazi genocide of the Jews. In this, he's following the Holocaust-denying President of Israel, Shimon Peres. According to Haaretz, Peres claimed that "[w]hat happened to the Armenians was a tragedy, not a genocide."

This is pure Holocaust-denial (the term "holocaust" was first used in the sense of a genocide to describe the Young Turk's genocide of the Armenians). As a purely moral matter, the President of Iran has as much right to deny the Nazi genocide of the Jews as the President of Israel has to deny the Armenian Holocaust.

But where was the outrage directed at Peres's Holocaust denial? Where were the world's leaders bemoaning his slap in the face of history? Where were the talks of sanctions? Both should suffer the same world outrage and sanctions.

If the President of Israel is to be excused of Holocaust denial because of political concerns, such as relations with Turkey, then the President of Iran must be excused for his political concerns, such as playing to his base.

Those like me whose ancestors died at the hands of the CUP, who see the Turks blithely denying history without penalty, who see the rest of the world, including the US and Israel, aiding and abetting this Holocaust denial, are waiting for an answer, an answer that is not "Israel is a special case."

Arnold Evans said...

If Ahmadinejad hates Jews, and means "Jews" when he says "Zionists", then why would he not say "Jews"?

The translation of "Zionists" to "Jews" is spontaneous on your part Dr. Cole. Not supported by anything Ahmadinejad said in this speech or ever. In fact, when asked, Ahmadinejad clearly draws a distinction between Zionists - expousers of a political philosophy that he considers evil - and Jews - a religion that he has never spoken negatively of.

If Mandela says he hates "Apartheidists" and deliberately declines to extend that to "Whites" you don't get to change what he says directly against his own statements. If Reagan hates "Communists" you don't get to convert that, contrary to what Reagan actually says, to "Russians and Chinese as ethnicities".

You claim Ahmadinejad might have been talking about "Zionists" when he said they have been colonizing the world for 500 years, or he might have meant colonialists in which case he would have been correct. From there you assume he may have meant "Zionists" and if he did mean "Zionists," then he really meant Jews because there were no Zionists 500 years ago. <- That is really an example of tortured logic to create a charge of anti-Semitism where none is present in his words. The only reasonable interpretation is that when talking about 500 years ago he was making the charge that is common knowledge, which is that Western Europeans began a project of colonial conquest. The idea that he may, must less must, have been talking about Jews is a little bit crazy. About Ahmadinejad being hated by most of Iran's population, as of September 2009, 8 in 10 Iranians consider him honest, and 8 in 10 consider him the legitimate President of Iran. Three months later, convincing evidence of fraud still has not emerged. It seems the Iranian consensus disagrees with your assertion that we don't need any evidence of fraud to be convinced that there was a massive fraud that more than reversed the true results of the election. http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/sep09/IranUS_Sep09_rpt.pdf

Navid said...

Dear Professor Cole,

I read the Persian transcript of Ahmadinejad's speech and I noticed several misinterpretations of it in your account. Some of them are context-related errors, but others are outright mistranslations.

1.Where he says "After the First World War, they abused..." he does not make a reference to the jews or even to Zionists.the word"they" doesn't actually exist in the farsi text, but instead a mini-pronoun in the form of a suffix to the verb is used which works as an unprecursed pronoun and is usually used to make passive sentences in persian. In persian it sounds more like: " the mandatory custody of palestine was given to Britain". So, based on his actual words, he is not suggesting that the Zionists where behind the mandatory takeover of Palestine by Britain. In fact there exists a popular old conspiracy theory in the middle east about the foundation of israel, which suggests the exact opposite of what you accuse ahmadinejad of saying. It suggests that the jewish people were "manipulated" by Britain rather than manipulated Britain, for the purpose of establishing a proxy state which would protect the interests of the colonial powers in the Suez canal and elsewhere in the middle east (which by the way, given the actual history that you mentioned, does indeed seem to have been a smart decision on the part of the Brits).Anyway, It's not at all like the anti-semitic conspiracy theories in the west.

2. He doesn't say "They institutionalized two slogans. One was the innocence of the Jews." He said "Mazloomiat e ghom e yahood". "Mazloomiat" is the state of being oppressed. The closest English translation I can think of is "Victimhood". to translate "mazloomiat" into "innocence" sounds to me like a very conscious twisting of the meaning. if you question someone's "innocence", you are suggesting that they are "guilty" , whereas if you question someone's victimhood, you are just questioning a narrative of "what others have done to them".

3. "dast-andar-kaar" does not mean perpetrators. it means "facilitators" or "masterminds", and "Hamiyan" doesn't mean "protectors" . it means "Supporters" which clearly refers to western powers.and these are the ones he associates with" 500 years of plundering". He doesn't add the "perpetrators" to the list of the corrupt until a few lines later , So your interpretation that he blames the Jews for the European colonial history seems to be inaccurate.

4. He clearly states that he distinguishes between the jewish people and the leaders of the zionist movement. But even then, most of his villifying references are directed at the european colonial powers, for example where he says:" They themselves perpetrate anti-semitism, and then pretentiously rally in support of the Jewish people!"

5. You wrote:
"In other words, he is saying, all of modern history (possibly from the Portuguese conquest of Goa) and certainly the British conquests during WW I, the Nazi persecution of Jews, and last year's American presidential race, has been the unfolding of a secret Jewish plot, wherein "Zionists" control everything that happens."

Even though he has clearly distinguished the Jewish people from Zionists, and has deplored the latter for betraying the principles of Judaism, you accuse him of hinting at the unfolding of "a Jewish plot" ?My understanding is that "classical anti-semitism" is the idea that there is a quintessential element in every real Jew, whereby they all aspire to collectively dominate the world. He says a renegade band of corrupt politicians who have betrayed the Jewish culture are responsible for some atrocities ( which doesn't include the Portuguese conquest of Goa and the British conquests during WW I even according to him) and you still call him a classical anti-semite?

6. A minor translation error: He doesn't say "Four or five years after WWII". he just says "after WWII" (According to the existing transcripts)

Finally, it is really frustrating for me as an Iranian to see people in the west see my country through the prism of their own history and culture. Until I moved to the US a few years ago, I wasn't quite aware of antisemitism as a prevailing modern social phenomenon. For me it was always a matter of distant European history .I learned about modern european and American antisemitism here from TV and the movies, and I was and still am shocked by how many Americans hate Jews " just because they exist.. because they breath..." Antisemitism simply never existed in any form in my life while I was in Iran. I'm all the more proud of this because this is despite the fact that criticism of Israel is a very important part of the public political debate there.

I'm glad you have observed that the majority of Iranians do not believe in any form of antisemitic conspiracy theory, but as a person who has lived with and spoken to all kinds of Iranian people including religious hardliners-the kind of people who would now be supporters of Ahmadinejad- I think I can add to that the observation that antisemitism of the form that has poisoned the west does not exist even among the majority of religious hardliners of Iran.

I totally agree that Ahmadinejad is a deplorable jackass who needs to be put out of power for the good of us all, but people often get the reasons wrong.

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