...born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad

Why it can’t happen here: Well, I finally finished Saul Friedlander’s Nazi Germany and the Jews 1939-1945: The Years of Extermination—by no means a quick read or an easy read (far from it, in fact, given the grim contents), but for those who want to gain a clearer understanding of the whos, hows and whys of the Holocaust, might I say, an essential read.

These lines from the final chapter are particularly pertinent for Canadians, as they explain the two primary factors that facilitated the Holocaust:

Propaganda and all the trappings of mass manipulation were an essential part of the emotional-psychological mobilization that took hold of the German population. However, without Hitler’s uncanny ability to grasp and magnify the basic urges of such a mass craving for order, authority, greatness, and salvation, the techniques of propaganda alone would not have sufficed. In that sense National Socialism could not have arisen and taken hold without Adolf Hitler on the one hand, and without the German response to Hitler on the other.

So the idea that “hate speech” gave rise to the Holocaust and that, left unchecked, Nazi "hate speech" could cause the same thing could happen here in Canada (the rationale behind playing “gotcha” with basement Nazis wearing their gotchies, and for depriving all Canadians of their right to free speech) is nothing more than a bunch of ahistoric hogwash. I wonder, though—how much if any of that crucial point will get out during this year’s Holocaust Education Week, which begins on Monday?

Posted by: scaramouche at 17:35 | link | comments

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