It has come to the attention of some of us that Whoopi Goldberg was suspended for a couple of weeks by ABC following a “discussion” with her fellow “The View” colleagues concerning the issue of the Holocaust, Jews and race, a topic which I doubt few really have a complete “grip” on, including both Jewish and black people. The discussion was initiated after news broke rather late in the day that the McMinn County, Tennessee, Board of Education held an “emergency meeting” on January 10 for the sole purpose of discussing the graphic novel Maus, which had recently been put on the 8th grade reading list to inform the uninitiated about the Holocaust, but as was admitted had not actually been taught in any classroom up to that point. The minutes of the meeting were “amusing” to say the least:
I have one question, is there a substitute for this book that we have? No…This is a book for the eighth grade on a third grade reading level…
..I understand all that, but being in the schools, educators and stuff we don’t need to enable or somewhat promote this stuff. It shows people hanging, it shows them killing kids, why does the educational system promote this kind of stuff, it is not wise or healthy…
…Even for me Mr. Allman, you know I have an eighth grader and even if you did pull this book I would want him to read it because we have to teach our kids. Are these words ok? No, not at all that is not acceptable, but the problem is that we are 80 years removed from the Holocaust itself. I just think this is a grave starting point for our teachers. I am very passionate about history, and I would hate to rob our kids of this opportunity. Are we going to be teaching these words outside of this book as vocabulary words? No, you know me better than that…
… I know and I am not being argumentative, I am just trying to wrap my mind around because if a student sitting in the cafeteria decides to read this out loud and complete the sentences, what are you going to do?...
….We didn’t teach this last year, right? No, we did not. So what did we teach last year instead of this? We got it in late, Mike. We didn’t get to teach but two modules…
…So this one got left out?
This was the one they suggested leaving out, yes…
…We aren’t against teaching the Holocaust.
(Teacher from McMinn High School) Oh I know you’re not, unless they have adequate background of the concept that’s being discussed, they’re going to miss it, some of my freshman this year still had a hard time connecting the dots and being ethical, moral and all that other stuff.
The school board ended-up voting unanimously to ban the book because in a county that voted 80 percent for Trump in 2020, you kill a fly with a sledgehammer. No one was able to think of another book that was “juvenile” enough to expose 13-year-olds to a dark period of history.
That all being said, the use of the term of “racism” as the reason why Jews were targeted for death by the Nazis is what is at issue. Of course they were not “solely” targeted for “extermination”; so were the Roma (Gypsies), and the T4 program systematically murdered those with mental or physical disabilities (and where poison gas was first used). Poles and other Slavic groups were also considered “subhuman” and no one should be concerned about their eventual fates. Non-Jewish citizens and prisoners of war from the Soviet Union in fact accounted for half the 17 million people who died in Nazi camps, and Poles accounted for another 2 million. The Jewish victims stand out more because since the Nazis were unable to persuade countries outside of Europe to accept significant numbers of them to immigrate to (including most infamously the U.S.), they decided on the more heinous “option.”
Goldberg insisted that the Holocaust wasn’t about “race” but “man’s inhumanity to man” involving “two groups of white people.” Subsequently speaking to Stephen Colbert, she said “But I thought it was a salient discussion because, as a Black person, I think of race as being something that I can see. So I see you and I know what race you are, and the discussion was about how I felt about that. People were very angry, and they said, ‘No, no, we are a race,’ and I understand. I understand. I felt differently.”
Jonathan Greenblatt of the Anti-Defamation League immediately took issue, exclaiming “The Holocaust was about the Nazi’s systematic annihilation of the Jewish people—who they deemed to be an inferior race. They dehumanized them and used this racist propaganda to justify slaughtering 6 million Jews.” Goldberg’s views were “hurtful” to Jews, very few of whom who today were even born when World War II ended. He also claimed that there was a “rash” of anti-Semitic “violence” in the country, although this “violence” tends to be mainly “violence” against property in the form of graffiti.
Of course you almost never heard Greenblatt and the Jewish community in general apologize for the violence caused by Stephen Miller, one of most evil men ever to hold a position of influence in this country, who unapologetically used the language of the Nazis to describe any “ethnic” or racial group he deemed needed to be banned from the country to avoid what white nationalists like himself called further racial and cultural “contamination.”
In his first months in office Donald Trump claimed to have a “heart” and wanted a DACA deal; but in a meeting to finalize a bi-partisan agreement with Senators Dick Durbin and Lindsey Graham, Trump made a 180 degree turn in temperament, saying he didn’t want any more people from “shit-hole countries” immigrating to the country. We would learn, of course, that it was Miller who became completely discombobulated by the idea of such a deal, and put the “shit-hole” into Trump’s head. Miller—who was the racist Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ “mole” in the White House—was largely behind all of the policies that brought legal immigration down to a trickle. Miller was a white nationalist; he saw himself as all other Jews in the country see themselves and as they are: white. He saw other groups—particularly Hispanics—as an inferior people, more an “infestation” of “vermin.” Just like how the Nazis characterized Jews.
Now, back to Goldberg before we continue on about what exactly “race” meant in Nazi Germany and “racial theory” in general at the time. We live in a world of hypocrisy, as I’ve said plenty of times before. We just can’t get enough of it, or admit to it. We learn that the president of CNN, Jeff Zucker, was “persuaded” to resign after the “discovery” of a 20-year relationship he had with Allison Gollust, currently the executive vice president for marketing at CNN, but was previously employed at NBC; their long relationship only became an “issue” when she moved to CNN, a network full of gender hypocrites. No one “suggested” that Gollust should resign too now did they? He is out of a job, and she plans on working “every day” at CNN. The gender double-standards in this country are quite “profound.”
Of course in a country where blacks, Jews and white women seem to have a running “competition” about who is more “victimized” in this society, there has to be some “rationalization” about it. Goldberg says “race” is “what you see,” but like most advocates for the black victimization, she is unwilling to allow anyone else in the “club.” Why are Hispanics hated upon by many people—not just those who are white, but blacks as well? Most people can tell a “Hispanic” by “what they see,” and from that “sight” excites prejudice. Because of negative stereotypes based simply on what they “look like,” that brands them as “inferior” and “not wanted here.”
Sometimes this “they don’t count” attitude can be expressed in juvenile ways. Below is an image of wall graffiti along Seattle’s Sodo Busway, that has since been covered over; on the right side is the flag of Mexico, and the woman is brown-skinned and her outfit identifies her as one of the original indigenous Aztec peoples:
But one day I observed something that disturbed me: her features were less “distinct” because someone had painted her over to look “black.” For those who can’t see a “difference,” note the throat and chin on the darkened repainted version:
Who would be motivated to deny this woman her true racial heritage? Probably someone who thinks Hispanics don't "count."
Most Hispanics don’t look like they originated from a European country (Spain) because the original Spanish invaders were soldiers who didn’t bring their wives with them, so they worked off their natural impulses on the native indigenous women. They were quite unlike the English settlers, who saw the native peoples they encountered as too “inferior” to “intermingle” with (in fact that was the British attitude wherever they colonized), rather preferring to steal their land or kill them if they objected.
You often hear the claim that Hispanics are an “ethnicity” and the term “racism” doesn’t apply them. This hypocrisy starts with ignorance of racism in Latin America, where what I call “Euro-elites” control political, social and economic power, while indigenous people occupy the bottom of the structure. You can see this on Spanish-language television programing in which clearly Caucasian Hispanics (including some blonde-haired women) are virtually the only people you see. “Mestizos” and indigenous peoples are simply not part of their world of privilege and entitlement. Those people (such as they may be deigned to be referred to) are to be shunted aside; “civil rights” and economic justice is not something the Euro-elites in Latin America concern themselves with—even in Mexico where there were several populist “revolutions.”
It’s the same in this country; people who hate Hispanics hate the ones who have the "look” of nonwhiteness, meaning their level of indigenous peoples’ “genes,” and thus because of their race. They are just as much the victims of racism as blacks, Asians—and certainly more so than Jews in this country, if the racial attitude of Jews like Miller is any example. Jews especially seem to have this need to remind people about happened all those years ago, because in this country, most people think they are doing quite well, better than a lot of other people; I suspect that they would say it is because they are a superior “race”?
Ok, Goldberg may have a point, but there is also an element of hypocrisy in her perspective. So now let’s talk about Nazi “race theory” and Jews. It seems to have been both an element of “science” and personal prejudice. The problem is that being “Jewish” did not constitute a race according to the real science, since many great scientists and thinkers who were Jewish seemed to disprove this claim; non-Jewish colleagues who bought into the propaganda did so mainly out of professional jealousy. The foremost race “theorist” in Germany was Hans Gunther, to whom there were six gradations of the “white race”: Nordic (Germanic and Northern European), Phalic (sub-Nordic), Eastern (Italy, Greece) Western (France), Dinaric (the Balkan countries) and East Baltic (Lithuania).
Interestingly, Gunther did not initially classify Jews as a “race,” although his theories “evolved” to suit Nazi racial ideology. The truth is that simply being “Jewish” shouldn’t be considered a race; being “Jewish” means one’s religious heritage, and in the 2,000 years since the diaspora from Judea, almost all Jews had become largely indecipherable physically from the local populations they migrated too. “Racially,” most Jews originated from what Gunther had called the “Eastern” Caucasian group, although he would add “Asiatic” groups to the mix. Gunther first believed that terms like “Aryan” and “Semitic” were not racial but “linguistic” terms, and were unhelpful since (according to him) most Jews had so much “mixture” from other “peoples” that they calling them a “race” would only confuse the matter. In today’s “terminology,” such theories would define Jews as an “ethnicity.”
In fact Gunther was initially loath to classify anyone in a specific “race” unless there were clear “bodily” differences, such as between whites and “negroes.” Otherwise, “Germans,” “Slavs” and “Latins” were not a separate “race,” but simply a way to identify the different “cultures.” Gunther was also loath to identify “race” by country, since in Germany itself, there were many Germans who did not fit the blonde and blue-eyed stereotype of what a true “German” was. Although the Nazis viewed that stereotype as their eventual “goal,” this rhetoric would become less obvious in order not to alienate Germans who were dark-haired and brown-eyed.
Gunther, however, had no issues concerning the “linguistic” use of “race.” He probably either felt compelled to do so to stay in the good graces of the Nazis, or the Nazi regime allowed his “true” beliefs to come to the surface. However, the Nazis take on “race” was distinctly “unscientific,” because it cherry-picked whatever characteristics they found useful in a minority sample. Their caricatures of “Jewish” physical characteristics had little relation to reality, and those of other actual races (blacks) were meant to be as offensive as possible. In his initial writings, Gunther himself did not place any particular “order” to the “variations” amongst the white “race,” but Hitler used Gunther’s theories about differences and added his own “order” to them in Mein Kampf, which was a highly personalized view, not a scientific one as he claimed. Gunther would follow suit, since Hitler had been so appreciative of his work.
Jews, Gypsies and Slavs (say, Russians and Poles) were all considered “sub-human” by Hitler, which was defined this way in a 1942 Nazi pamphlet:
The subhuman is a biological creature, crafted by nature, which has hands, legs, eyes and mouth, even the semblance of a brain. Nevertheless, this terrible creature is only a partial human being. Although it has features similar to a human, the subhuman is lower on the spiritual and psychological scale than any animal. Inside of this creature lies wild and unrestrained passions: an incessant need to destroy, filled with the most primitive desires, chaos and coldhearted villainy.
This “definition” is utterly ridiculous, but in fact the term “subhuman” and its definition originated not with the Nazis, but with an American, Lothrop Stoddard, a Ku Klux Klan member and white supremacist who was describing black people in his book The Revolt Against Civilization: The Menace of the Under-man. So people actually believed this? The truth of the matter was that in order for Nazi racial ideology to work on the masses, there had to be some groups who were “inferior” so that Germans could feel “superior.” But this had to be in conjunction with the belief that “superior” people were being “victimized” by “inferior” people with “criminal” intent to undermine society. Sound familiar? That is how it is in the world—people tear other people down to build themselves “up.” Calling Jews a “race” was just an exercise in linguistics and scapegoating; it had no basis in reality.
Historian Peter Fritzsche in a 2014 interview regarding his book translating personal letters by Germans discussing the Nazis and their policies, observed that “The Nazis were not traditional German nationalists but radical revolutionaries in terms of foreign policy and morality.” Germans had become “highly politicized” after World War I (much as we see in this country today), and "victimized" Germans were open to extreme nationalism. Like in the Trumpian political climate here, Germans “constantly deliberated questions of race, authority and loyalty.”
Most Germans had a “vague” idea that the Holocaust was happening, and though they did not “endorse” mass murder, they were still “complicit in at least the persecution” they saw with their own eyes. They did this because they were obsessed with the idea that they were a "superior" people and culture that been undermined by a "rot" from within that was something other than their own failures, and not "real" Germans (like not "real" Americans) were to blame. Even if many Germans did not "personally" approve of what was happening, they were also not particularly unhappy about it.
Fritzsche noted that while there are “other issues today that we neglect but which our grandchildren will think more problematic—perhaps the fact that illegal immigrants test our empathy, that our prison population does not attract our attention.” While he asserts that these are “not issues that compare in any way to the persecution of the Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe,” Fritzsche nevertheless admits that these “are issues that may be examples of our blindness today” insofar as they show a basic inhumanity that exists in American society today, exacerbated by the white nationalism of Trumpism. What this refers to is the fact that the reason why the Holocaust should be remembered for is not simply because it happened to Jews, but something similar could—in the “right” time and place—happen to other groups, because the psychological framework is still there. We have in fact seen other examples of genocide or mass murder since then, but since it actually has a name, the Holocaust is the only one that people are made to “need” to remember.
So with all these people walking around self-consumed and not giving a tinker’s damn about other people, you think Stephen Miller has any empathy for people who are trying to escape the violence that is the U.S.’ most “significant” export to impoverished people? Go ahead, ask him. He’s Jewish, after all.
No comments:
Post a Comment