Springtime for Hitler (and Conservatives)

Springtime for Hitler (and Conservatives)

Springtime for Hitler (and Conservatives)

On Ben Shapiro, Bryan Fischer and the mail. 

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My new Think Again column is called "Springtime for Hitler" and it’s here.

My new Nation column," Israel Agonistes" is here.

Also read Kai’s Bird’s new book.

I left a few examples out of the Think Again column because I’m not sure the folks matter so much, but for those who remain interested, here are a couple of outtakes:

Meanwhile, I never heard of Ben Shapiro, but if I may be so bold as to hazard a guess based on his name and general hystericism, I should imagine that he is a Jewish right-wing columnist. Whatever he is, he is no historian. In his "Open Letter to American Jews," he insists that President Obama is "openly anti-Semitic" and who consistently sides with Palestinian and Iranian mass murder-supporters and goes on to compare Rahm Emanuel to a "kapo"–the infamous concentration camp Jews who rounded up other Jews for the Nazis in exchange for special treatment.

And I’m guessing that the American Family Association’s (AFA) Director of Issue Analysis for Government and Public Policy, Bryan Fischer is probably not Jewish, and again, is pretty much definitely not a historian. Fischer explains apropos of what I cannot tell you, that "Hitler discovered that he could not get straight soldiers to be savage and brutal and vicious enough to carry out his orders, but that homosexual solders basically had no limits and the savagery and brutality they were willing to inflict on whomever Hitler sent them after. So he surrounded himself, virtually all of the Storm troopers, the Brownshirts, were male homosexuals."

I may need to return later, should the above columns cause any controversy that leads people to say things that require responses, but in the mean time, here’s …

The mail:

Name: Mark Paul
Hometown: Highland Park, Illinois

Thanks to Pierce for providing the link to the article in Foreign Policy about Mikey Weinstein’s campaign against evangelical proselytizing at the military academies.

When Weinstein first started his group I traded e-mails with him to ask if he was receiving aid or even encouragement from any of the mainline Jewish organizations. Not a bit of help, he said, not even from Abe Foxman at the ADL.

The evangelical right has been a key ally for the mainline organizations’ support for the Israeli right-wing. Who could forget AIPAC inviting the nut case Pastor Hagee — who fervently prays for the destruction of Israel as a sign post toward the Rapture — as one of the keynote speakers at its annual DC conference a few years ago?

So, following the thesis Beinart presented in his NY Review piece, add this data point: not only are the mainline American Jewish organizations bad for Israel because they encourage the Israelis to pursue an ultimately destructive policy, these organizations can’t even muster the energy to protect Jews from religious harassment within a unit of the federal government.

Oy.

Name: Tim Hunter
Hometown: South Philly

Here’s a corporate governance proposal for companies with the ability to cause catastrophic harm to the environment or fatalities to humans. I’m pretty sure it would have assured sufficient safeguards and redundant fail safes at BP’s gulf drilling rigs:

Upon the occurance of such catastrophic harm arising from the company’s negligence, all senior officers shall immediatedly tender their resignations and any rights to severance packages of any type. They will also ask the board of directors and the relevant regulators for permission to commit ritual suicide.

We cannot back down

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Onwards,

Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editorial Director and Publisher, The Nation

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