Behind the Façades in France: What expats and the mainstream media (French and American alike) fail to notice (or fail to tell you) about French attitudes, principles, values, and official positions…
1. “But we already need vaccine passports to travel to some countries.”
It is true that to visit some countries, you are required to present
proof that you are immunised against diseases like smallpox, yellow
fever or cholera.
But visiting the far-flung jungles of Africa or South America is
worlds apart from visiting your local cafe, museum, church, workplace,
or a nearby Australian state or territory. This is what the current
vaccine passport debate is about.
These are apples-and-oranges comparisons. One is about the right of
sovereign nations to determine who enters their borders and under what
circumstances. The other is about freedoms that every Australian was
born with, such as freedom of movement, association and assembly.
Advocates of vaccine passports are yet to explain why Australians
should have these inalienable birthrights held hostage until they give
up their medical autonomy.
2. “But flu vaccination is already mandated for entry into nursing homes.”
In some parts of Australia, people wanting to visit a loved one in a
nursing home must show proof of an influenza vaccination before entry.
Given that the primary purpose of a nursing home is to house and care
for the elderly—who are on average much more vulnerable to influenza—there are obvious merits to such policies.
The same is true for ‘no jab, no play’ rules in childcare facilities.
You don’t have to agree with these policies (I don’t) to see that the
logic is to protect young children who are particularly susceptible to
childhood diseases.
But to use this as the rationale for Covid-19 vaccine passports at
all venues in the nation—which provide goods and services to people of
all ages—is an extraordinary stretch. As such, an extraordinary amount
of evidence must be provided by those arguing for it.
We know that while Covid-19 is a deadly disease for some, it is
nowhere near as fatal to the general population as influenza is to the
elderly. In fact, for the vast majority of people, both the original virus and its variants are no more (or less) dangerous than the flu.
Moreover, we know that while the Covid-19 vaccines reduce hospitalisations and deaths, they do not prevent transmission of the virus.
These facts do not constitute extraordinary evidence for forcing people to take a Covid-19 vaccine.
3. “But privately-owned venues are already allowed to ban smokers.”
Yes, privately-owned venues are allowed to ban smokers, but the
minute a smoker removes the cigarette from their mouth, they can enter
the venue. A patron visiting a particular establishment without shoes, a
collared shirt or ID can likewise tidy themselves and freely enter.
Taking a vaccine is different. Vaccination is a medical treatment
that, like all other medical treatments in Australia, is governed by the
principle of informed consent.
Even if we entertain the comparison between taking a vaccine and
disposing of a cigarette, privately-owned venues are still regulated by
the government. A pub or restaurant cannot, for example, decide to
exclude people who have HIV/AIDS. In NSW, ‘infectious diseases
discrimination’ is against the law: this includes treating someone unequally on the assumption that they have or may acquire an infectious disease.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has so far indicated that the Federal
Government won’t force venues to require proof of Covid-19 vaccination
for entry: a welcome announcement. What is in question is whether the
government should allow this kind of discrimination at all.
A strong case can be made that they should not. Renowned legal scholar Professor Augusto Zimmermann argues
that vaccine passports “unconstitutionally impinge on the democratic
principle of equality before the law and the free movement of Australian
citizens within their own country.”
Whether we turn to Australia’s Constitution and subsequent case law,
our nation’s anti-discrimination legislation, or even the ‘tolerance’
and ‘inclusion’ rhetoric that has dominated our airwaves for the last
five years—Australian governments should be acting to prevent this kind
of medical discrimination.
4. “But the government already mandates other safety measures.”
It has also been argued that since the government has the right to
make us wear seatbelts or stop at traffic lights, they should also have
the right to make us get a vaccine.
Once again, these situations are chalk and cheese. One of them
involves obeying momentary directives; the other requires handing over
one’s medical autonomy to the State without any assurance that the State
will hand it back again.
Other nations such as Israel are already mandating a third booster shot and planning a fourth. These passports come with no sunset clause. It takes immense—one might argue naive—trust in government to assume that this infrastructure won’t be broadened by present and future governments.
5. “But other countries are already using vaccine passports.”
Other nations are indeed already using vaccine passports. But this has been met with
considerable unrest, with mass protests breaking out in cities across
Europe—even if corporate media outlets are being deliberately silent
about these historical events.
Representative democracy was established so that a nation’s laws
would reflect the will of its people. But when political leaders make
unilateral decisions under emergency health orders, they effectively
bypass the people’s will. Mass protests are an indication that a
leader’s decisions may not accurately reflect the will of those who
elected them.
The use of vaccine passports elsewhere does not mean Australia will
inevitably follow suit. By speaking up on this issue, Australians can
and should seek to influence the decision-making of their leaders.
It is also a flawed argument to suggest that Australia should mandate
vaccines because other countries are doing so. Other nations allow
grown men to marry child brides. Should we do the same? A nation’s laws
should not be shaped by global groupthink but by the will of its
citizens—ideally guided by God’s moral law.
6. “But vaccine passports will bring us greater freedom.”
The idea that vaccine passports will somehow grant us ‘greater freedom’ is a semantic trick that some political leaders have used and that many have believed and repeated.
It is a semantic trick because what is meant is not greater freedom but greater safety. Driven by exaggerated panic, people hope that vaccine mandates will deliver them freedom from fear or freedom fromdeath. But to be clear, these are functional synonyms for safety.
The civic freedoms endangered by vaccine passports—such as freedom of movement and the right to bodily integrity—have precise definitions.
More safety is always possible when we give up civil liberties. After
all, one of the safest places in the world is solitary confinement; but
that doesn’t make solitary confinement an optimal life choice.
In every case, we must ask whether the freedoms we give up—freedoms
that our ancestors bled and died on foreign soil to protect—are worth
the safety promised to us in that exchange. And we can hardly have a
rational debate about such weighty matters when words are used to
conceal rather than reveal someone’s true intent.
7. “But vaccine passports are just temporary.”
I have been asked why I assume vaccine passports will be permanent.
But I believe this is the wrong question. A better question would be, why do you assume vaccine passports will be temporary?
At the beginning of 2020, if I had told you that the Australian
government would force people to stay inside their homes for months at a
time and only be allowed to exercise for an hour a day, would you have
believed me?
What if I told you there would be mass unrest with police firing
rubber bullets at unarmed protesters? What about state borders being
shut at the drop of a hat? Military patrolling the city streets?
Governments requiring you to tell them your every move, including—if you
are single—which other individual you were liaising with?
Of course, every one of these measures has been justified as being
“for the greater good”. But that’s precisely the point. In the name of
public health and safety, the government’s role in our lives has only
become more intrusive and onerous since the beginning of the pandemic.
It is not ‘acting out of fear’ to warn that the vaccine passports
being rolled out now may end up becoming a permanent fixture of daily
life. On the contrary, this is an entirely sober and realistic
prediction—though one I would be delighted to be wrong about.
For context, in August, the World Health Organisation released an 80-page document providing
‘implementation guidance’ for vaccine passports. They aimed to equip
all WHO member states to develop passports that are ‘interoperable’—that
is, passports that can be used within and between all of the world’s
nations.
Indeed, long before the Covid-19 pandemic began, the European Commission had laid out a roadmap to implement a standard vaccination passport for EU citizens.
There is a global mood for these passports. Governments are spending billions of dollars on them. Again, what would lead us to assume they are temporary?
8. “But no one is suggesting churches should ban the unvaccinated.”
Once again, in response to the question “Who is seriously considering
barring unvaccinated people from church?” one could reply, “Who was
seriously considering locking Australians inside their homes before 2020
began?”
But in answer to the question, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, and Israel have all variously barred unvaccinated people from worship services.
Moreover, a recent Christianity Today article
suggested that although limiting gatherings to only vaccinated
congregants would be resisted by many churches, “the idea isn’t new
[and] the use of health passes could become commonplace in the coming
months.”
In an Australian context, the vocal and widespread opposition to The Ezekiel Declarationsuggests
that many Australian Christians are willing to exclude unvaccinated
people from church services in the name of health and safety.
Before I could finish writing this article, the New South Wales government announced a soon-to-be-confirmed rule that places of worship must use vaccine passports to exclude the unvaccinated.
This eleventh-hour development is further evidence—if we needed
it—that those still instinctively hoping for government leniency are
letting themselves be led up the garden path.
9. “But the vaccines are safe.”
The vaccines have proven safe for the majority of those who have
taken them. But this does not mean they should be mandated. Many things
are healthy for us—whether vitamins, exercise or vegetables—that
governments have no business forcing upon us.
It is important to note, however, that the vaccines have not been
safe for everyone. The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) reports
that nine Australians have lost their lives as a direct result of taking a Covid-19 vaccine—one from Pfizer and eight from AstraZeneca.
(The TGA has received 490 further reports of death following a
Covid-19 vaccination, but in these cases, a causal link to the vaccine
was not explicitly confirmed).
Some 55,000 adverse events have been reported to the TGA in
connection with the Covid-19 vaccines. Most of these were minor and
short-lived, but some have been serious. Channel 7 reporter Denham Hitchcock, for example, has suffered debilitating complications since taking the jab.
In the United States, almost 14,000 deaths have
been reported following a Covid-19 vaccination through the Vaccine
Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). This number represents 60 per
cent of all vaccine deaths that have ever been reported to VAERS since
it was set up in 1990.
Not all VAERS data is bias-free or accurate since reports are made to
it voluntarily. But it is also true that reporting a death is a
time-consuming task that comes with no personal benefit—and possible
scrutiny—for any medical professional who submits it. So 14,000 is
likely to be a floor rather than a ceiling for Covid-19 vaccine deaths
in America.
In addition to this, some 650,000 adverse events have
been reported to VAERS following a Covid-19 vaccination. Most of these
are minor, but thousands of miscarriages, heart attacks, and permanent
disabilities are included in this number.
Given that lockdowns, travel bans, and mask mandates were so often
justified on the basis that they might save “even one life”, it is
ironic if people now justify these deaths and injuries as mere
collateral damage in the vaccine rollout.
It is also callous to suggest that any talk of vaccine deaths or
injuries will harm the vaccine rollout. These are real people who have
died or suffered in life-altering ways. Their lives matter as much as
those we are seeking to protect from Covid-19.
10. “But the risk of Covid-19 outweighs the risk of the vaccine.”
It is true that, on balance, the risk posed by the virus outweighs
the risk of taking the vaccine. But this fact comes as cold comfort for
the person who dies from a vaccine and for the loved ones they leave
behind.
This point was well-argued in a recent Caldron Pool article.
Caldron Pool likewise pointed out that human beings are not
robots: we approach risk in different ways. Some people are so
risk-averse that they never travel by aeroplane; others live for the
thrill of BASE jumping or motocross despite the significant dangers of
these sports. We all agree that these are decisions people should be
free to make themselves, not have imposed on them by others.
Additionally, if given a choice between being killed ‘artificially’
at the hands of another person or by an event of nature that may happen
sometime in the vague, unknowable future, most people would choose the
latter. This explains why many young, healthy people with robust immune
systems prefer to take their chance with the virus rather than the
vaccine. This choice should be left to them, not forced on them.
Covid-19 is a highly discriminatory disease that poses particular
dangers to the elderly, the immunocompromised, and those with
co-morbidities. For such people, taking the vaccine is a no-brainer. But
this is an argument for vaccines, not compulsory vaccines.
Let the healthy 18-year-old man who has just a 0.003 per cent chance of dying from Covid-19—but who could die of a vaccine complication—assess his risks each way, free of coercive mandates.
11. “But the unvaccinated could end up killing people.”
The Covid-19 vaccines have been shown to reduce hospitalisations and
deaths significantly. But nations with high vaccination rates still see high rates of transmission and infection.
In other words, the benefit of the vaccine is almost entirely
personal. It protects the person who takes it and may help slow
transmission of the virus, but it cannot prevent them from passing it on
to others.
Recent studies show that unlike immunity gained through natural infection, the vaccines do not give mucosal immunity; and that unvaccinated and fully vaccinated people carry similar viral loads.
So people should be encouraged to take the vaccine for their
protection. But the idea that being vaccinated will render significant
benefits to others is yet to be established. This is a wish; it is not a
fact. Therefore, barring unvaccinated people from society is not only
unethical; it is also ineffectual.
12. “But the healthcare system will be overwhelmed if you don’t get vaccinated.”
Now that most at-risk people have been vaccinated, the pressure on
Australia’s healthcare system is significantly reduced, though modellers
and governments remain vigilant.
For someone likely to need hospitalisation if they fall sick with
Covid-19, it is a selfless act for them to be vaccinated. But this
doesn’t mean it should be made mandatory for all people regardless of
their risk profile.
13. “But Christians should give up their rights.”
Through his life and teachings, Jesus made it clear that we are to give up our rights for the benefit of others. Theoretically, this could be
applied to freely deciding to get vaccinated. But it certainly doesn’t
work for vaccine mandates: Jesus didn’t teach us to demand that others
give up their rights for us—which is precisely what proponents of
vaccine passports are arguing.
In fact, this teaching of Jesus would only apply to being vaccinated
if, by taking the vaccine, I could prevent deaths in others. We are yet
to see clear evidence of this in the case of the Covid-19 vaccines.
Furthermore, Jesus taught us to die to ourselves, but this command
has limits. It is not ‘Christlike’ for someone to endure abuse, violence
or sexual predation at the hands of their spouse. A similar example is
Communism, where your rights and property are fully surrendered to the
State—but this philosophy led to 150 million deaths. There must be a
limiting principle to giving up our rights.
If someone has a very low risk of dying from Covid-19, and if the
vaccine will not prevent them from spreading the virus to others, it may
not make sense for them to take it. It certainly doesn’t make sense for
us to force them to, nor would it be Christlike for us to demand this.
In fact, given that natural immunity has been found to be up to 13 times better than
vaccine immunity, it could be argued that the most selfless thing for a
young and healthy person to do is to contract the virus naturally and
recover.
I often hear the criticism that Christians who disagree with vaccine
mandates are selfish for demanding their rights. Actually, I have
encountered very few Christians making this point.
Instead, I see Christians seeking to protect the rights and freedoms
of those who, for a whole swathe of reasons, may not want or be able to
take the vaccine. In making this stand, they are weathering a lot of
opposition for the benefit of others; they are applying the teaching of
Jesus to die to self.
Unfortunately, there are many today who are not conversant with
history. We have had it so good for so long that we don’t understand the
importance of civil liberties.
Freedoms are a safeguard, not a luxury. Human liberties protect the
weak by restraining the powerful. It is the defence of freedom that has
long prevented tyrants from terrorising ordinary people. The worst
abuses of history were only made possible when fundamental freedoms were
cast aside.
If you shrug off freedoms in the name of ‘loving your neighbour’,
know that the neighbours you have chosen to love are the world’s
powerful. And it is the powerless who will eventually pay the price.
Instead, be like Jesus and sacrifice your popularity to defend the
freedoms of others.
By all means, get vaccinated if you will. But don’t force others to: that is a demand we should not make.
Regarding what turns out to be the Crocodile Dundee myth, let James Morrow have the last word:
Clive James once remarked that the
problem with Australia wasn’t so much that it was a nation of convicts
as a nation of jailers. It’s a good line, but jailers don’t win in the
long run without a deferential population happy to give up their lives
to authority.
Australian hospitals are bursting at the seams, having reached their
breaking point after being flooded with patients during the pandemic.
The Australians streaming into the hospitals don't have COVID, though,
but instead are just bloodied and bruised from cops beating them up for
not wearing masks, going outside for fresh air, and talking to other
people.
Since commemorations of 9-11 are taking place all over the world, I
thought we should search the archives of No Pasarán for the personal
memories of two of the blog's initial bloggers, as well as the chilling testimony of one of No Pasarán's earliest French readers. (Merci pour le hyperlien, Monsieur Driscoll…) Erik and Bill's posts will help
explain why they started to blog:
September 11, 2001, in France
In view of the 20th anniversary of 9-11, I
thought it would be appropriate to recount my experience of 911 and the numerous
instances of French solidarity I encountered in the following days. (Alright, the satire ends here and now…)
On the afternoon of September 11, 2001, I was having a drink in the TGV's dining car, heading north to Paris.
Cel phone communication is hard to come by on trains, but at one point
I heard I had a message on the answering machine. I called the number
to hear the message. It was my (New York-born) mother, and all the
message said was to please call back: "There has been a series of
catastrophes in the States".
Befuddled, I headed out into the corridor and called my parents, and
after answering, my mom said I should talk to my dad. I listened
incredulously as my father explained that planes had been deliberately
flown into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and that both Twin
Towers had collapsed.
Needless to say, I headed back to the dining car in another state of
mind, totally closed off and unable to communicate with anyone.
At one point, three or four members of some state-owned company (they may have been EDF) entered the dining car.
Although they were discussing the day's events, they were obviously heading
to Paris to demonstrate against the government, and during their
conversation, I overheard one of them making a joke (sic). With a
snicker, he said "Ils l'ont fait exprès pour saboter notre manifestation"
(They [obviously meaning the Americans] did it on purpose, in order
to sabotage our demonstration). Alhough the others barely laughed at
what was obviously an instance of sophisticated humor à la française
(smiles were in order, though), the comment should give a better idea
of the real state of friendship harbored towards America then the
presumed one extant in the myth of the squandered sympathy.
I was too emotionally drained to react to this comment, and anyway
without a radio and a TV set to get a better idea of the situation, the
extent of the terrorist attacks was hard to believe. I had listened to
learn more, and had certainly not expected anything but empathy for
Americans.
Anyway, another two hours went by without news, without images of any
kind, and when I arrived at Gare de Lyon, I rushed home faster than I
ever have before, arriving drenched with sweat just in time for the 8
o'clock news. That night I hardly slept, as I stayed up in front of the
TV all night long, wishing, wishing drastically that the news wasn't
true.
For the next couple of weeks I wore a bandanna with the Stars and Stripes everywhere I went.
At my office the following day, there was certainly nobody among my fellow journalists
who had anything sympathetic to say about 911 (or what they had to say
they certainly weren't sharing with the guy wearing Old Glory on his
head).
The previous August, I had joined a group of a dozen hikers (all of
them French) in crossing the Himalayas at a point in northern India,
and some of us had decided to meet again at one of our apartments on the
Saturday three weeks after our return from the trek. This turned out to
be September 15.
A couple of people brought their companions along. Eventually
discussion turned to the events of the previous Tuesday. I never
expected anything but sympathy to be shown (like I had on the train),
but one female hiker's boyfriend obviously had none. I don't remember
if he actually said he was happy about 911 or in so many words that
Americans deserved it, but he certainly had not the smallest empathy
for them, saying he hated their guts.
That is where I lost my cool.
"So that is the famous French solidarity, huh?!" I interrupted from my chair.
He tried to say something, but he wasn't about to get the chance.
"So that is the famous French generosity, huh?!" I bellowed.
He again replying, but…
"So that is the famous French tolerance, huh?"
I got up.
The others were begging me to drop the matter, to shut up.
"So that is the famous love of fellow human beings, huh? I am so-o-o-o impressed!"
His girlfriend was begging me, begging both of us, to let the matter drop, but I piled on with acerbic irony.
"Do you have any other examples of France's famed lucidité, we would love to listen to them!"
The other people were alarmed, they seemed to think we were going to
come to blows, and, truthfully, both then and later, I felt like I was
battering him, except by the use of words instead of fists.
"Oh, I am so impressed by your avant-garde feelings of solidarity towards the entire world — please, please, can you give us some lessons!"
Suddenly, the guy got up, crossed the room towards the front door of
the fifth-floor apartment, and — walked out. Leaving his girlfriend
behind, he started running down the stairway. In my fury, I still
managed to register surprise, because that was the last thing I
expected.
I sat down again, fury still registered on my face, and the topic
quickly changed to something totally unrelated to international news.
The point is that, as John Rosenthal
(among others) has pointed out, the story of the squandered sympathy
is nothing but a myth: Over the following months, or years (weeks?), we
are told, America's president (i.e., Bush) and his government squandered the sympathy that the world generously bestowed upon America in the immediate aftermath.
As it happens, the comment I heard in the apartment occurred four days
after the terrorist attacks, and the comments that I heard in the
train and that W heard in the Paris café occurred within hours (if not dozens of minutes) after learning of the terrorist attacks.
Those give quite a different context to the expressions of friendship
such as those seen by clicking on the photo above. As many of our
French commentators make clear, what is said in public (and nobody
denies Europeans' mastery in handling the délicatesse of diplomacy) and
what is said behind one's back can be quite a different matter; in
any case, the friendship is tinged (soaked, rather) with (self-serving)
paternalism.
Close friendship with America: it is all a lie, folks, it is all a
lie. (Or if you want to be charitable, at best it is self-deception.) (September 09, 2005)
Let's set the record straight for all the politically correct, terrorist appeasing, revisionists out there
9-11 in Paris
11-9-2001 à Paris
Quite a few falsehoods are being spread about America
'squandering' French sympathy in the aftermath of 9-11. So let's set the
record straight for all the politically correct, terrorist appeasing,
revisionists out there. There was no French sympathy, period. The first
images I saw of the attacks were on the TV in a Paris café shortly
after leaving the office. As images of people jumping from the Towers
were shown a French guy at the bar made a back handed wave at the TV
screen and said, 'to hell with them'. All the customers' discussions in
the café were along the lines of 'its a terrible thing BUT ...'
quickly followed by vague justifications why it was not such a terrible
thing after all. Kids were running down the street yelling 'the States
are fucked'. In the days following the attacks, graffiti praising Osama bin Laden appeared daily on the ATMs throughout the neighborhood. Dope using French judo champ Djamel Bouras, appearing on the first edition of 'Tout le Monde en Parle' following the attacks, stated
'Why do the French newspapers declare that we are all Americans? Why a
minute of silence for the dead Americans? What about a minute of
silence for the dead Palestinians?' Answer to Bouras: because the
Palestinians are bloodthirsty murdering terrorist scum, that's why. Now
go use your smack. French celebration of 9-11 continued thereafter. Dubya said it best, 'Never forgive, never forget'. [March 18, 2003]
Enormément
de mensonges circulent au sujet de la sympathie française qui a été
'gaspillée' par l'Amérique suite aux attaques du 11-9-2001. Remettons
les pendules à l'heure pour tous les révisionnistes politiquement
corrects qui font des accomodements vis-à-vis du terrorisme. Il n'y a
jamais eu de sympathie française, point barre. Les permières images des
attaques que j'ai vues étaient à la télévision dans un café parisien
peu de temps après avoir quitté le bureau. Au moment où les images
étaient transmises de gens qui sautaient des Tours un mec français au
comptoir a fait un geste de la main vers le téléviseur en disant,
'qu'ils aillent au diable'. Toutes les discussions parmi les clients
consistaient à dire 'c'est une chose affreuse MAIS ...' vite suivies de
justifications pour dire qu'il ne s'agissait pas de quelque chose de
si affreux en fin de compte. Des mômes courraient dans la rue en
criant, 'on a niqué les USA'. Dans les jours qui ont suivi les
attaques, les guichets automatiques du quartier étaient recouverts de
graffiti faisant l'éloge d'Oussama ben Laden. Djamel Bouras, champion français de judo et consommateur de produits dopants, lors de son passage à la première émission de 'Tout le Monde en Parle' après les attaques, a déclaré
'Pourquoi les journaux français disent qu'on est tous des américains?
Pourquoi il faut faire une minute de silence pour les américains morts?
Pourquoi pas une minute de silence pour les palestiniens morts?'
Réponse à Bouras: car les palestiniens sont des fumiers de terroristes
meurtriers et sanguinaires. Alors, occupe-toi de ta came. Par la suite,
le culte français autour du 11-9-2001 a pris de l'ampleur. Bush l'a bien dit, 'Ne jamais pardonner, ne jamais oublier'.
9-11 Remembered by a Young Frenchman
One of No Pasarán's earliest French readers, who wishes to remain anonymous, penned the text below around 2006. Keeping in mind that we usually think of the military and the police (both domestically and abroad) as being conservative and therefore pro-American, the middle (the third) paragraph is particularly chilling:
… if, on the one hand, communism has never been so popular and influential around the world, in a furiously trendy word, on the other hand, capitalism is the subject of all-out demonization, from the arts and letters to the local café through TV and university curriculums: witness the anti-Americanism that oozes through every pore of the planet, especially in France.
For example, I remember September 11, 2001. I had my mother on the phone, she was asking me "Why, my son, why?!" with all the anguish in the world in her voice and, suddenly, she started to cry like a rainstorm had erupted the second she saw on her screen a man and a woman jump from a burning tower hand in hand.
But I also and especially remember September 12, 2001, when all my colleagues mocked me during the coffee break, laughing at my dismay, shouting at the "arrogance" of the Yankees and the "imperialism" of their leader Bush. What is worse is that … at the time I was not working in an artistic or intellectual environment which is traditionally anti-capitalist, therefore anti-American. No, I was working in a Parisian police department.
I say it because I have lived it from the front row: on September 12, 2001, an overwhelming majority of French people did not shed half a tear over what had just happened in New York. Moreover, no wonder, French anti-Americanism being in line with its astonishing complacency vis-à-vis communism.
Also, on the first day of the American intervention in Iraq in March 2003, 4% of the French approved "completely", 87% disapproving. 4%. Four miserable French people out of a hundred ... And what about the coverage of the war in Iraq which, in France, reached and continues to reach heights of hatred where the lie is in dispute with ridicule for atrocious coverage ... And yet America is the only utopia that ever worked.
En version originale :
… si, d’une part, le communisme n’a jamais été aussi populaire et
influent de par le monde, en un mot furieusement branché, d’autre part,
le capitalisme fait l’objet d’une diabolisation tous azimuts, des arts
aux lettres en passant par le café du coin, la télé et l’université.
Témoin l’anti-américanisme qui suinte par tous les pores de la planète,
en particulier en France.
Par exemple, je me souviens du 11 septembre
2001. J’avais ma mère au téléphone, elle me demandait « Pourquoi, mon
fils, pourquoi ?!... » avec toute l’angoisse du monde dans la voix et,
soudainement, elle se mit à pleurer comme la pluie de la seconde où elle
vit sur son écran un homme et une femme sauter d’une tour en feu main
dans la main.
Mais je me souviens aussi et surtout du 12 septembre 2001,
quand tous mes collègues me raillèrent durant la pause-café, se
gaussant de mon désarroi, conspuant l’« arrogance » des yankees et l’«
impérialisme » de leur chef Bush. Ce qui est pire, c’est que, bien que
je puisse aujourd’hui être étiqueté comme artiste ou intellectuel, à
l’époque je ne travaillais toutefois pas dans un environnement
artistique ou intellectuel qui sont traditionnellement
anti-capitalistes, donc anti-américains, non, je travaillais dans la
police parisienne.
Je l’affirme pour l’avoir vécu aux premières loges :
le 12 septembre 2001, une écrasante majorité de Français ne versèrent
pas la moitié d’une larme sur ce qui venait de se produire à New York.
Au demeurant, rien d’étonnant, l’anti-américanisme français est dans la
logique de son ahurissante complaisance vis-à-vis du communisme.
Aussi,
au premier jour de l’intervention américaine en Iraq en mars 2003, 4%
des Français l’approuvèrent-ils « tout à fait », 87% la désapprouvant.
4%. Quatre malheureux Français sur cent …
... Et que dire de la
couverture de la guerre en Iraq qui, en France, atteignit et continue
d’atteindre des sommets de haine où le mensonge le dispute en abjection
au ridicule, les beaufs pinard-baguette du Parti Communiste donnant la
main aux beaufs baguette-pinard du Front National pour danser la
carmagnole anti-américaine, vieille antienne franchouillarde. Et
pourtant ...
Et pourtant, l’Amérique est la seule utopie qui ait jamais marché.
What a contrast with the Lexington column of January 5, 2019, in which Donald Trump was described as
"ill-disciplined", with "little attention span", or with any "long-time view of almost anything"
(in addition to holding "awkward" addresses). The 45th President, we learned then, "has made many bad moves in security and other policy against the generals' advice", while, luckily, "strong, reliable public servants" like Jim Mattis and John Kelly have tried to act as "safeguards against calamity." In January 2021, we were told that Republicans face a choice between Donald Trump and reality.
The Democrats' 2020 election message was that the grown-ups would be back in charge. So who made the moronic decision to close Bagram air base and to remove America's soldiers from Kabul before (not after) it removed its civilians? Joe Biden? His generals?
Who made the unfathomable decision to leave some of America's most advanced military hardware — including 350,000 assault rifles, over 20,000 Humvees, and over 150 military aircraft, along with
million-dollar drones — to the Taliban (who probably will sell
a few units to the Chinese and the Russians), instead of taking them
home or destroying them? If it wasn't General Milley and Secretary of State Austin, did those "public servants" not try to counter Joe Biden's lamebrained decisions in their capacity as "safeguards against calamity"? (Thanks for the link, Ed…)
Americans and foreigners alike who supported Trump were not blind to his
faults, real or alleged. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, Trump to them was the
worst politician in America, and the worst leader in the entire world. In both cases, with one
single exception. All the others.
Né
le 9 avril 1933, Jean-Paul Belmondo aura tourné plus de 80
longs-métrages et joué des rôles inoubliables dont celui du jeune voyou
insolent d'A bout de souffle qui l'a révélé au grand public en 1960. S'en sont suivis de nombreux autres succès L'Homme de Rio en 1963, Le Cerveau en 1969, Peur sur la ville en 1975 ou encore Le Professionnel en 1981.
In The Economist, D. Charles Bogan of Santa Fe writes that
Donald Trump did not whip up the mob that stormed the Capitol building (“The reckoning”,
January 16th). During his speech near the White House he urged his
followers to cheer on members of Congress who were objecting to and
debating the electoral-college count (Democrats in the House of
Representatives also disputed the count following the 2000 and 2004
general elections). Never did Mr Trump call for violence, or tell his
supporters to storm Congress. Condemning the entire rally as an
insurrection ignores the fact that the vast majority of the people there
were exercising their constitutional rights to assembly and speech.
Extremists
who show up to rallies are not part of the wider movement. Last year,
while cities across America burned and were looted, we were lectured
about not blaming the “peaceful” protests for the criminal actions of
the rioting crowds. True supporters of Mr Trump denounced the violence,
just as they did in places like Kenosha, Minneapolis, Portland and
Seattle. Many Democrats can make no such claim. Nancy Pelosi actually
described law enforcement officers who were defending a courthouse under
constant siege as “storm troopers”. Some in her party openly called for
unrest. Did The Economist denounce those politicians? Have their social-media accounts also been closed down?
Violence to bring about political change is never justified. Extremism on both the left and right should be condemned.
D. CHARLES BOGAN Santa Fe, New Mexico
I am disappointed that a publication of
your erudition feels the need to use the informal “mobocracy”, when a
perfectly good word, “ochlocracy”, already exists.
After 20 years of military presence and war in Afghanistan, reports the Wall Street Journal (thanks to Instapundit), "Biden Wanted to Leave … He Knew the Risks. Generals and diplomats warned about a pullout, but the president told his team the U.S. was simply providing life support for the Kabul government while neglecting more pressing issues."
was committed to ending the U.S. military role in
the country. The president told his policy advisers the U.S. was
providing life support for the Afghan government, which, in his view,
was corrupt and had squandered billions of dollars in American
assistance, according to current and former administration officials. He
wanted to reorient American foreign policy onto what he sees as more
pressing international matters, including competition with China, and
domestic issues including infrastructure and battling Covid. “I am
deeply saddened by the facts we now face, but I do not regret my
decision,” he said Monday.
What is missing here? What Biden wants, the WSJ reports, is "to reorient American foreign policy onto what he sees as more
pressing international matters, including competition with China, and
domestic issues including infrastructure and battling Covid."
It seems to me that the main issue missing here regarding "the more pressing international matters" and the more pressing "domestic issues" is that there is a point where the two converge. That is, the members of the Biden administration, like the drama queens in all Democrat administrations, knows that the true enemies of America, of the planet, and of all mankind are not the Taliban, the Islamists, the Chinese, the Russians, the Soviets, the communists, etc, etc, etc…
The top pressing issue is to turn the United States government and the United States military against those whom all leftists, both in America and abroad, know are America's, are humanity's, true enemy — the Republicans, i.e, the American people who still believe in the country, in the flag, and in the Constitution. Also known as fascists, as Nazis, as Adolf Hitlers, and — to this administration — as "insurrectionists" and as "domestic terrorists."
Those include rewriting elections laws so that the good and competent people (such as Joe Biden and Kamala Harris), deserving dreamers all, will remain in power forever, and using all the force necessary to change hearts and minds or at least keep the despicable deplorables in line — such as keeping the January 6 rioters (aka the mutineers?) jailed in isolation forever…
The memes and jokes that the joint chiefs of staff, along with the rest of the Democrats, are more concerned with Critical Race Theory, Karl Marx, and white supremacy turn out, unfortunately, to be very serious: that is precisely where they see the true enemy, aye, the only enemy… (Thanks to Instapundit…)
Update: In the Biden White House's "overarching focus on the domestic matters [that] it has prioritized for the last eight months" (Los Angeles Times), the Instapundit blog just reminded us of Jonah Goldberg's take on the Democrats' “the moral equivalent of war”. As Ed Driscoll puts it:
Not surprisingly, the party whose organizing method is “the moral equivalent of war” views American politics as the continuation of warfare by other means, to flip von Clausewitz’s
axiom on its head. And as the last week has illustrated, they’re far
more focused on fighting against the American people, rather than Middle
Eastern terrorists.
“In something that I find profoundly troubling, when I’ve had this
discussion before, I’ve had a Caring Liberal tell me that the example of
Iraq doesn’t apply, because ‘we kept the gloves on’, whereas fighting
America’s gun nuts would be a righteous total war with nothing held
back… Holy shit, I’ve got to wonder about the mentality of people who
demand rigorous ROEs to prevent civilian casualties in a foreign
country, are blood thirsty enough to carpet bomb Texas. You really hate
us, and then act confused why we want to keep our guns?”
“How does that saying go? ‘If you want to know who
your rulers fear, look at who they threaten to nuke?’ It’s quite obvious
that ruling class America hates and fears the American people much more
than they hate and fear any foreign power on Earth.”
In our new compassionate, tolerant, be-nice-to-everybody world where hatred and stereotypes are taboo, there is in fact one type of person throughout the five continents whom it is not only acceptable to ridicule, castigate, demonize and, yes… hate, it is in fact almost mandatory to do so. And that is: a leader or member of America's Republican party. And no, that it is not something that is recent (or the fault of Donald Trump or George W Bush…)
As an 1860 presidential contender, Abraham Lincoln, put it more than 160 years ago, as he tried to address Southerners and members of the Democrat Party only five or six years after the birth of the Republican Party,
You consider yourselves a reasonable and a just people … Still, when you speak of us Republicans, you do so only to denounce us as
reptiles, or, at the best, as no better than outlaws. You will grant a
hearing to pirates or murderers, but nothing like it to [Republicans].
In all your contentions with one another, each of you deems an
unconditional condemnation of [Republicanism] as the first thing to be
attended to. Indeed, such condemnation of us seems to be an
indispensable prerequisite — license, so to speak — among you to be
admitted or permitted to speak at all.
A Democratic insider and vocal ally of the Biden administration claimed last week that former President Trump and "Trumpist extremists" are a bigger threat to the United States than the Taliban and all the al Qaeda fighters combined.
David
Rothkopf, who is frequently retweeted by White House Chief of Staff Ron
Klain, tweeted, "The Taliban, all of them together, plus every Al Qaeda
fighter in the world, do not pose the threat to the United States that
Trump or Trumpist extremists do. Let's maintain our perspective."
… His columns also attacked Republicans, including one earlier this year that said the Republican Party is the "party of thugs, terrorists, racists and dopes."
… In an email to Fox News on Wednesday, Rothkopf …
doubled down on his tweet and claimed they do not "pose an existential
threat to the United States or our way of life" like Trump and his
supporters do.
"Trump
and his supporters have, with support of one America's most dangerous
enemies, actively sought to undermine democracy in America. The coup
attempt on January 6th and the propagation of the Big Lie are an example
of this," he said. "Their efforts to suppress the vote are an example
of this. Trump's active obstruction of justice is an example of this.
Should they succeed, democracy in America will be gutted, our way of
life end, our values undermined and our standing in the world destroyed.
They may yet succeed. As a consequence the threat they pose is far
greater to the United States as a whole."
While Bruce Carroll shakes his head at Biden "showing more anger toward unvaccinated Americans than toward Taliban terrorists who still hold hundreds of Americans hostage" — indeed, JD Vance protests that "Biden is talking about millions of American citizens like they're vermin" — Glenn Reynolds points out that
Democrats always hate Americans who won’t bend the knee more than foreigners who want Americans dead.
Once again, Democrats, liberals, and other drama queens are going berserk as they proclaim how "racist" a particular Republican is, or all Republicans are. That is rich, quips American Thinker's Deborah Bucknam (thanks to Instapundit), given that
the Democrat party is the oldest and most enduring racist political
party in history, and its racism continues to this day. Here are the
facts:
The Democrat Party was founded in 1828.
Its first national party platform, ratified during the 1840 Presidential
election, stated:
“ that all efforts by abolitionists or others, made
to induce congress to interfere with questions of slavery… are
calculated to lead to the most alarming and dangerous consequences, and
that all such efforts have an inevitable tendency to diminish the
happiness of the people… and ought not to be countenanced by any friend
to our political institutions.”
The message was clear: the Democrat Party did not consider Black Americans to be “people” deserving of “happiness.”
That same language was in every national Democrat party platform for the next 16 years.
Democrat party leaders acted on their
racist principles, committing high treason against their country and
their fellow Americans between 1861-1865 in order to preserve the system
of Black human bondage.
In 1868, the Democrat Party platform urged amnesty for the traitors
who, during the Civil War, killed hundreds of thousands of Americans for
the purpose of preserving slavery. The platform also called for “the
abolition of the Freedmen's Bureau; and all political instrumentalities
designed to secure negro supremacy”:
In 1904, seventy-six years after its founding, the Democrat party’s platform complained about the Republican platform:
“The race question has brought countless
woes to this country. The calm wisdom of the American people should see
to it that it brings no more. To revive the dead and hateful race and sectional
animosities in any part of our common country means confusion,
distraction of business, and the reopening of wounds now happily healed.
We therefore deprecate and condemn the Bourbon-like selfish, and
narrow spirit of the recent Republican Convention at Chicago which
sought to kindle anew the embers of racial and sectional strife, and we
appeal from it to the sober common sense and patriotic spirit of the
American people.”
The Republican party’s “hateful” rhetoric in their party platform that the Democrats condemned? Here it is:
“We demand equal justice for all men, without
regard to race or color; we declare once more, and without reservation,
for the enforcement in letter and spirit of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth
and Fifteenth amendments to the Constitution which were designed for the
protection and advancement of the negro, and we condemn all devices
that have for their real aim his disfranchisement for reasons of color
alone, as unfair, un-American and repugnant to the Supreme law of the
land.”
Throughout most of the 20th century,
Democrats condoned or excused policies of apartheid and
disenfranchisement of Black Americans. Senate Democrats successfully
filibustered a Republican led anti-lynching bill in 1934, and a
Republican-led effort to ban the poll tax in 1940. At the time, the
poll tax was so effective in the American South that only 3% of Black
Americans were registered to vote there. Elected Democrats fought tooth
and nail against anti-racist legislation, filibustering the Civil Rights
Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and engaging in so-called
“massive resistance” against school integration into the early 1970s. A
century and half of racist policies vigorously supported by Democrat
party leaders -- no other political party in history comes close.
[Vermont Democrat Party chair Bruce] Olsson’s
commentary included the perennial claim that Republican President
Richard Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” -- an effort to bring two-party
rule to the South in the 1960s -- was racist. I lived in Tidewater
Virginia in the late 1960s. Coming from New England, I was shocked at
the abject poverty of Black American families and the rigid segregation
of virtually all institutions there, despite the heavy federal military
presence. The South was truly, as one historian put it, a third-world
country in a first-world nation. Since the successful Republican Southern strategy, the South is no
longer a third-world country, but a first-world economic powerhouse.
And today, the South is more integrated than the northern cities run by
Democrat machines. Some “racist” strategy.
The Democrat party
has never shed its racist past. Today the party fights vigorously
against school choice and voter ID laws, both overwhelmingly supported
by minority communities. Its leaders support abandoning crime-ridden
Black communities by its “defund the police” movement. It zealously
supports expensive and unreliable “renewable” energy which hurts the
poor and minorities, and its environmental land use policies are the
equivalent of yesterday’s restrictive covenants that redlined
minorities. The Democrats’ latest racist push is critical race theory,
which denigrates the courage, sacrifice and enormous achievements of
Black Americans, while pushing for resegregation through so-called
“affinity groups.” As they say, a tiger doesn’t change its stripes.
It’s
time for a racial reckoning. Democrats insist on apologies and
accountability from the rest of us. Democrats must take their own
advice and own up to their own endemic racism. Then perhaps real racial
healing can take place.
Did you know that in the 1850s, members of the Democrat party were referred to regularly as fire eaters or as locofocos? It kind of sounds like my calling them drama queens, with BDS and TDS being replaced by LDS (Lincoln Derangement Syndrome), does it not?
Before we get to the controversy surrounding the Yellow Star badge — examining various pertinent facts of World War II with the help of one of our generation's greatest historians in the process (in the second third and in the third third of this post, below Bruegel's Renaissance painting) — let us set the stage somewhat: Glenn Reynolds
reproduces two memes in the New York Post from mask bullies that Ann Althouse saw on Facebook.
One read: “It took ‘click it
or ticket’ to get people to wear a seatbelt. I wonder if ‘mask it or
casket’ might work.” The other said: “It’s a face mask, not a Star of
David or pink triangle, you whiny, privileged dolt. You’re not being
shoved into a cattle car and taken to camp. You’re going to Walmart for
twinkies and Diet Coke. Grow up.”
They’re both poor efforts at persuasion, of course: Generally, calling
people names, threatening them and saying they’re stupid are ineffective
ways of winning them over.
… Maybe the mask fanatics are just poor persuaders. But it seems just as likely that they are engaging in poor persuasion because they aren’t trying to persuade.
As with so much that goes on in today’s society, and especially on
social media, this sort of thing isn’t aimed at convincing those who
disagree, but rather at garnering high-fives from people who agree and,
ultimately, creating an ideological veneer for unquestioned elite
rule.
"I don't want to villainize anyone here," (re)assures ArnoldSchwarzenegger — right after calling any mask-averse person "a schmuck" in addition to spitting out "screw your freedom" (if that ain't the height of gaslighting, I don't know what is) — "but I just wanted to tell everyone, let's work together and let's stop fighting."
Playing both good cop and bad cop, the "Austrian loudmouth" wants it both ways, effectively saying, both as a threatening bully and as a gentle father figure, Shut up, ye despicable deplorables, and show pride as ye join the growing army of valiant fellow travelers (or, if you prefer, as ye join behind our intrepid leftist leaders in yet another “moral equivalent of war” or as ye join our archbishops in their latest holy crusade). Here is one of the memes that I chanced upon, with the final word doubling as a sexual (homophobic?) command to stuff your face and effectively "Shut up":
"lol Imagine having the eligibility and access to get the vaccine and saying nahhhhh" writes one Philip DeFranco with a couple of smileys. "Also to the pearl clutchers offended by this tweet yes I am calling you stupid and you can go fuck yourself you ignorant selfish fuckface."
Leftists can't debate; those drama queens are so full of scorn and… hatred (yes, correct, they are the true haters — with Caroline Glick explaining why below) for the despicable deplorables that they can only insult and demand we shut up. (Danke Schön for the link, Ed Driscoll.) "The illogical structure of “Click it or Ticket” bugs me every time I see it," JPS tells Althouse:
Setting aside the parallel illogic, “Mask it or casket” would be
self-discrediting. “Wear your seatbelt or you’ll get a ticket” only
works as a threat if you then have a fairly high chance of getting a
ticket if you don’t. “Wear your mask or you’re going to die,” for a
malady with a case fatality rate under 2%, tells people who aren’t
already on their side, Yes. You people are panic-mongers.
Something has changed in the way people are accepting conformity that is
enforced in one way or another. A mask mandate: if the evidence is in
dispute, we are asked to believe the onus is on citizens to prove the
inconvenience is comparable to being shipped to a concentration camp and
perhaps killed. Isn't the onus on public officials and their alleged
experts to prove there is some good goddam reason to do all this? Isn't
liberty precious, even during a pandemic?
The overlying problem with the drama queens' attitude is that not only is the dire seriousness of the Coronavirus not proven, everything points in fact toward it being no worse than the pandemics of 2009 and 2002 (not to mention the1968, the1957, and the1889outbreaks), or even a common flu season. (The comparison with getting "people to wear a seatbelt" is therefore immaterial and beside the point, as is ArnoldSchwarzenegger's parallel with deliberately driving through a red light…)
In view of the fact that during those other pandemics, not to mention during the annual flus, • the authorities did not
force (or even simply ask) the population to wear unhygienic, oxygen-blocking face coverings;
• did not try to destroy the economies of the Western world (with
bankruptcies running into the tens of thousands); • and did not try to
implement a freedom-destroying vaccination passport, some of us are somewhat skeptical as
to why any one of those should be necessary this time around…
Now let us examine the central point of this post: to what extent, if at all, is it inappropriate to use the Yellow Star badge as a comparison for the vaccine pass?
Calling the comparison nothing less than odious, Chuck has assembled a list of nefarious villains ("schmuck" and "whiny, privileged dolt" are far too gentle for this this liberal; "ignorant selfish fuckface" is more like it — Chuck is seething with hatred for those dastardly despicable deplorables):
The
"Star of David" reference is purely reactive in the context of the
vaccine debate. The list of Trumpublicans who began this odious chapter
in the saga of the COVID vaccine have made specific references to the
Jews' holocaust-era forced wearing of the Star of David is almost too
long for a single comment. But...
A GOP state representative in Washington actually wore a yellow star: https://www.newsweek.com/rep-jim-walsh-wears-yellow-star-david-protest-covid-vaccine-mandates-washington-1605698
Congressional maniac Marjorie Taylor Greene did it back in May: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/marjorie-taylor-greene-holocaust-vaccine-b1853545.html
The Chairman of the Oklahoma GOP engaged in the comparison: https://www.oklahoman.com/story/news/2021/08/01/john-bennett-oklahoma-gop-defends-comparing-covid-vaccine-mandates-treatment-jews-holocaust/5447961001/
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) made a more general holocaust comparison. Check out this delightful takedown from The Bulwark: https://www.thebulwark.com/should-lauren-boebert-visit-auschwitz/
There are many, many more links. But you get the idea.
Actually, Chuck, yeah, we get the idea. We get the idea that the left's drama queens, panic-mongers, and outrage peddlers are again at work.
But let us examine the question: in this particular case, might the leftists have a point?
But it turns out that the true question is actually this: is it even a correct assessment to state that (clueless) conservatives using the Star of David image cannot see the difference between those wanting to (cough) protect us from China's Wuhan virus and the instigators of the Holocaust?
Leave aside, for the moment, the — entirely legitimate — point that the drama queens outraged by the Jewish badge (besides putting on regular displays of antisemitism) have themselves been — invariably — comparing everything and everybody to Hitler and to National Socialists for years, nay, for decades.
They invent the so-called Godwin's Law (click here to see Mike Godwin in person reacting — haughtily and dismissively (i.e., in a typical liberal fashion) — to our blog's pointing out his Law's greatest flaw, i.e., its double standard; see Update 3); and then the drama queens segue into comparing everybody and everything to Adolf and to Nazis and to fascists, from presidential candidates to their wives through the rest of the conservative population…
Like Antifa and BLM seething with rage at despicable deplorables, and doing all in their power to make them second-class citizens and rain violence upon their heads, the leftists do not realize that if we are seeing seeing echoes of Hitler's Germany, Nazism, and fascism, it is clearly on one side only: that of Antifa, BLM, and like-minded liberals.
… the Democrats have repeatedly projected all of their
prejudices, malicious actions and plans onto Trump and the Republicans
… What is clear … is that if you want to understand who the
Democrats are and what they are doing, all you need to do is look at
what they are accusing Trump and his colleagues of being and of doing.
Chuck derides the comparison of the vaccine passport with the "Jews' holocaust-era forced wearing of the Star of David" while the meme quoted by Ann Althouse said "You’re not being
shoved into a cattle car and taken to camp."
What is the truth?
The truth is that the Yellow Star and the Holocaust, although (obviously) related, are not exactly the same thing.
The Holocaust did not start until after the eruption of war, and only (so to speak) two years and almost six months after it broke out, to wit only after the Wannsee Conference in January 1942, although in Soviet occupied territory, it started as early as August 1941 (albeit by bullets, not by gas).
That was three years and six months after the Yellow Star was introduced, at the end of the 1930s, as a means of a means to publicly identify, humiliate, and isolate despicable and deplorable elements of the population. But no one imagined at the time — including the top leaders of the Third Reich (as we shall see)! — what horrors it could, or would, lead to.
Nazi propaganda minister Josef Goebbels was the first to suggest a
"general distinguishing mark" for German Jews in a memorandum in May
1938.
The yellow star led to the second-class citizens' removal from public life but it — and the accompanying ostracizing, scorn, and hatred (along with their easy identification) — did not have to lead to their internment in concentration camps, although it eventually did.
The demonization and internment of the second-class citizens did not have to lead to, second, the horrors of the Shoah, but it eventually did.
In any case, the whole point of the Star of David badge imagery is not the Holocaust; it is that it is the start of a slippery slope…
However, at the outset of the Yellow Star policy, few people had imagined the Final Solution. As Antony Beevor states below, they include the Third Reich's top leaders, not excluding, as incredible as it may sound, the fiends who would eventually meet at Wannsee…
Indeed, leftists: Any Jew, or any other person, for that matter, including pro-Nazis, who would have predicted in the late 1930s, that the Yellow Star would lead to the Shoah would have been as ridiculed and vilified as American conservatives are being in the 2020s, as mad, as outrageous, and as insulting to the (Third Reich) government.
Moreover: Had any Americans of the 1930s charged that the Weimar Republic was curtailing freedom by simply registering firearms (not even banning them), might they not have been mocked and vilified as
well? And yet the policies of their Democratic predecessors allowed the National Socialists, once in power and that only years later, to confiscate the weapons, from Jews and non-Jews alike.
What we have, here, is from the good ol' Democratic playing book (aka the handbook of Saul Alinsky?): Just like leftists charge that despicable Republicans are against immigration — when conservatives are only against illegal
immigration — they charge that republicans are "anti-vaxers" (sometimes
they add "flat earth" anti-vaxxers to hammer the alleged anti-science
point home) when conservatives are only against forced vaccination. And the leftists pretend that conservatives are using the Holocaust as a comparison when they are only using the instigating Yellow Star as one.
All what I have written is confirmed by Antony Beevor in his history of The Second World War. The Rassenkrieg chapter provides interesting details:
Until September 1939, the Nazis had hoped to force German, Austrian and Czech Jews to emigrate through maltreatment, humiliation and the expropriation of their property. Once war began, that became increasingly difficult. And the conquest of Poland brought a further 1.7 million Jews under their jurisdiction.
In May 1940 during the invasion of France, Himmler had written a paper for Hitler entitled "Some Thoughts on the Treatment of Alien Populations in the East." … [Regarding] the Jews, he wrote: "I hope completely to erase the concept of Jews through the possibility of a great emigration to a colony in Africa or elsewhere." At that stage, Himmler considered genocide — "the Bolshevik method of physical extermination" — to be "un-German and impossible."
Himmler's idea of shipping European Jews abroad focused on the French island of Madagascar. (Adolf Eichmann, still a junior functionary, was thinking of Palestine, a British mandate.) … The problem was that, even if Vichy France agreed, the 'Madagaskar Projekt' would not work in the face of British naval superiority. Yet the idea of deporting Jews to a reservation somewhere still remained the preferred option.
So: let us review some core points here:
• At its outset, the Yellow Star was passably benign, relatively speaking, brought about to humiliate the despised second-class citizenry, and was meant to lead to their banishment from public life and eventually to their emigration out of the homeland
• At the time, as improbable as it may sound, the Final Solution had not been thought of, not even in the minds of the worst Nazis (such as Himmler and Eichmann)
• As an aside, even the fascists initially considered genocide as an exclusive communist way of operating (how many socialist-loving kids are taught about this communist trait in school?)
There were essentially two parts to the Holocaust — what Vasily Grossman later called "the Shoah by bullets" and "the Shoah by gas" — and the process which eventually led to the industrialized murder of the death camps was uneven, to say the least.
… The "Shoah by bullets" is usually remembered by the activities of the 3,000 men in the SS Einsatzgruppen. As a result, the massacres carried out by the 11,000 men in twenty-one battalions of Ordnungspolizei, acting as a second wave well to the rear of the advancing armies, have often been overlooked.
… there seems to have been no official indication at this stage of encouraging the murder of Jewish women and children.
The killing of Jewish males began as soon as the German armies crossed the Soviet frontier on 22 June [1941]. Many of the early massacres were carried out by Lithuanian and Ukrainian anti-semites, as [Reinhard] Heydrich had predicted. … the process became self-escalating. The original targets of "Jews in party and state positions" immediately expanded to include all male Jews of military age, then to all males regardless of age.
… The "Shoah by gas" also had a haphazard development. … As several historians have emphasized, the Nazis' [earlier] euthanasia program provided not just the blueprint for the Final Solution, but also the foundation for their ideal of a racially and genetically pure society. … Only from the month of August [1941] did total genocide become standard, with Jewish women and children also killed en masse.
So, as it turns out, the Yellow Star debate (or outrage) fits just about as beautifully as any other "controversial" subject into Larry Correia's summary of the matter (via Instapundit):
There’s an important lesson here for when the fake outrage weenies try
to swarm you on social media. Never apologize, never explain, always
mock. They suck, and they are nobodies.
As the Biden administration continues to peel away the
accomplishments of his predecessor, what I hear most from family,
friends, and social media posters is a fear that Democrats have become
power-mad with their recent ascendancy to a majority position in the
House and Senate. They wonder if the current crop of radical officials
is hell-bent on weakening, and ultimately destroying, the country that
gave them those positions. Beginning with reversing President Trump's
southern border policies, which has led to an invasion of illegal aliens
unprecedented in our history, to the shutdown of the Keystone pipeline,
taking away our energy independence, and several other policy changes
that adversely affect our safety and our economy, one has to suspect the
motives of those in charge.
The wisdom of Occam's Razor seems to
apply in this context. Watching our country being led by folks who
appear to be more concerned with getting revenge on Trump than with
solving the problems facing this great republic meets the requirement of
O.R. — that the simplest explanation is usually the best one.
… as we watch in horror as potentially millions of migrants from all over
the world walk casually into our country, Democrats will look us in the
face and say things are getting better.
Every time we think the delusional left can't get any crazier, these
people come up with more abysmal notions that defy common sense and
imperil more lives. How about telling us how imperative it is for us to
get vaccinated, wear masks, and engage in social distancing while they
invite hundreds of thousands of untested migrants into our country and
transport them to cities from coast to coast? Does it take a conspiracy
theorist to suggest that Democrats are distributing the virus
throughout our country in order to keep us infected and locked
down? How else can the Biden administration explain why they are suing
Texas to block Governor Abbott's executive order that allows state
troopers to stop vehicles suspected of carrying illegal aliens because
they may be spreading COVID-19?
Keep in mind that Texas is among the
reddest states in the union, and Abbott is one of the most severe
critics of Biden's handling of the southern invasion. Biden wasted no
time in stopping the construction of the border wall, another attempt to
destroy a Trump campaign pledge. It's become evident that Democrats
have hatched a plot to create a constitutional crisis between the
federal and state governments, but only against those states that didn't
vote for Biden. Has vengeance become the driving force behind every
tactic employed by Democrats? Has political rivalry reached a stage in
which the winning parties are hell-bent on destroying their opponents?
In the middle of all this political hostility, the American people
are captively watching a vindictive ping-pong match among the power
elite who seem to have relegated us to insignificant victims of
collateral damage. Congressman Chip Roy (R-Texas, 21st District) said
it best on the floor of the House a few days ago:
"The speaker says we
must wear masks in the people's house, while we've got thousands of
people pouring across our border, many of them heavily infected with
COVID, and Democrats don't do a damn thing about it! Mexican cartels
are raping, pillaging, and transporting infected migrants into our
country, and what does this institution do? Tell us to wear masks in
this chamber."
The congressman is expressing more than
outrage. He, like millions of other Americans, is wondering out loud
what the heck is going on in this country. It's clear that we're not
being governed according to constitutional principles; we're being ruled
by a despotic gang of venal socialist thugs who plan to hold onto their
power in perpetuity, even if it means using the increasingly
left-wing-indoctrinated military to accomplish their nefarious goals.
What A LONG, STRANGE TRIP it has been, notes Glenn Reynolds as he reflects back on two decades of blogging on the 20th anniversary of Instapundit.
No Pasarán joins in the celebrations and the congratulations because our blog would never have made it so far (17 years), with so many posts, without Instapundit's guidance (along with the occasional Instalanche)…
