This already happened recently in New Zealand. A certain class of people could not work, use public services. or travel. It was for health reasons but people were also put in camps, then later hotels.
And yet every time we bring up such parallels, we’re accused of histrionics. The fact is that all modern, technically advanced societies are capable of such behavior. The only differences are the severity with which they happen to violate individual rights. The Nazis went all the way and actively murdered people. The Communists of the USSR mostly just stripped people of their ability to support themselves economically, which led to death by starvation in the Holodomor.
In the West, we’re imposing social death on people. They may continue alive as organisms, but they’re stripped of livelihoods, sometimes their children, and increasingly of their ability to act economically at all, if debanking isn’t stopped soon.
Yet, it’s all happening JUST SLOWLY ENOUGH that people not attuned to this stuff, or paying much attention, won’t notice it. Until it’s too late.
Another "WHY" question is, why do these things happen? It seems sometimes like one thing "begets" another, action is followed by reaction in what may be a long chain of events and circumstances, each event laying foundations for something that comes afterwards.
That Jewish gravestone as a latrine lid is something I don't have a word for. What an emblem of the hatred. And the head on the walking stick. Geez. I don't think reading about them would have nearly the same impact as seeing them, even just in a picture.
Here's another strange one, one that I like to point out.
When Joseph Ratzinger was little he lived in Marktl am Inn on the border with Austria. His mother would often cross into Austria with her children on their Sunday walks. One nearby place where they walked was the village of Sankt Radegund, the home of anti-Nazi martyr Franz Jägerstätter. It is entirely possible they passed each other on the road.
Jägerstätter returned to Sankt Radegund from the iron mines in late 1934 or 1935, when he was about 27. Ratzinger moved from Marktl am Inn in 1937, when he was 10. So it could have happened.
I'd like to recommend "The Shrinking Circle: Memories of Nazi Berlin, 1933-1939." The author, Marion Freyer Wolff, describes her childhood and escape. She was forced to leave her school and attend a segregated Jewish school run by two sisters who later disappeared in the Shoah. The two sisters were my uncle's cousins. They had a brother who escaped and made it to India but was never heard from after that.
To me one passage really stuck out: how the author would walk home from school and pass Hitler Youth in the streets who sang of stabbing Jews and watching their blood flow.
Not to excuse, but to note: you write often about the Treaty of Trianon. Austria, too, was dismembered after WWI. Its industrial heartland and 3 million ethnic Germans were in Czechoslovakia, their economy was ruined, and they were forbidden to unite with Germany. Vienna was now the capital of a pitiful little rump state. One can imagine why they might welcome a resurgent Germany even in that form.
I don't think even the most vicious American Leftist would go for round-ups of the "deplorables." Perhaps Hillary Clinton but she's not much longer for this world. The Leftist way is to marginalize their enemies socially and economically.
My opinion: any American persecution, should it come, will be therapeutic. It would follow the outpatient model, so no camps. Court-ordered psychiatric medication. If people are damaged by the drugs then euthanasia would be in the cards.
For a short time we put our kids into the public school system in the town outside of Boston to which we had moved. The principal of the elementary school our daughter attended was a thug. He looks like the man who comes around to collect the vig. Talked like it too. A woman down the street, who had a son in the same grade as our daughter, said that this man told her if she didn't put her son on Ritalin he would call DSS, the dreaded Department of Social Services, which in Massachusetts is more feared than the Winter Hill mob. She felt so ashamed she flushed the pills down the toilet and told her son to tell anybody who asked he had taken the pills. They moved away pretty soon after that. We put our kids into parochial school, which was no paradise, but pharmaceuticals were not involved. So we're halfway there.
The only thing we miss about Massachusetts is the Cape. Still among the nicest beaches in the world, with little waves on Nantucket Sound for little kids. And that's it.
That is shocking, and an indicator that MA DSS needs to be brought to heel in the court system. I don't know how long ago this was, but if parents were that terrified of it, and some wayward principal knew he had that kind of power, I'm pretty sure some Constitutional rights were being violated.
I'm an old man. It was a long time ago. DSS has changed its name to Department of Children and Families (doesn't that make you feel all warm inside?) but it's the same old horror. They kill children, or try to: https://nrlc.org/archive/News_and_Views/Jan09/nv010709.html
I've told this story at least twice in these boxes. For years The Boston Herald, the tabloid, Howie Carr's paper, ran an ad on page three or five, a column wide and say four inches deep. "TROUBLE WITH DSS?"
My attorney has had several run-ins with DCF. His greatest criticism is that DCF is so adverse to bad publicity they will refuse to take on a case in which a child has a serious risk of death. Better to let a kid die than to open a case and then get bad publicity because the kid died.
Regarding constitutionality and the courts in Massachusetts: do you think it is, as Joseph Stalin would say, an accident that McCarrick was declared unfit to stand trial in a Massachusetts court? Or that it took so long to reach such a conclusion? If you want to know what soft totalitarianism feels like, head up to Boston, for your sins.
I recall the state of Massachusetts being at the center of the horrific medical kidnapping case of Justina Pelletier. And with the trans lobby gaining ground against parental rights in numerous states, we’re well on our way to a dystopian world where “wrong-thinking” parents can be punished by having their children removed to state custody.
Now imagine the same story but it's an inner city kid, fatherless. What I see happening is the monetization of kids from broken homes and poor people.
I've mentioned here before that my sister was a counselor in the Bronx. We were talking one day about my job. I was complaining that as a firefighter, I was running into the "false injury"phenomenon at car accidents and "slip and fall" injuries in stores and parking lots. It seemingly came out of nowhere. Around 2010, (in the poor neighborhoods especially), we had to "package" almost everyone at minor fender-benders. All of a sudden we had to tie up ambulances, police, and fire units to immobilize and long-board every faker in sight.(Of course our union also used these stats to try to pry more hirings and money for training).
Anyway, my sister related that a very high percentage of the kids, from broken homes, that she served "had lawsuits". They had to be removed from class for therapy to maintain the fake narrative.
Also, ever hear about the Chiropractors who send short busses into the projects, scoop up their clients, give them a free massage, and bill medicaid for it?
These are the weasels that prey on kids.....they love the ignorant, and a broken home.
I first noticed it 30 years ago. My wife had gotten a job in the Bronx and we drove trying to work out a route for her to get to work. Some kid dawdled in front of our car. Nothing happened, but I remember thinking, "Did he want to get hit?" and "Yep."
I've mentioned this before, how when I taught in urban elementary schools the kids - with the exception of the immigrants - all had a very heightened sense of their 'rights.'
I think you’re absolutely right. Instead of outright punishment, which is once and done (paid one’s debt etc.), therapy aims at permanent invalidation, in every sense. After all, at bottom, why believe what a crazy person says? And that’s what’s going on today—adjudging people as mad and beyond the pale—Deplorables, Trumpers, White Supremacists, Fascists, Christianists, etc.
You are right. Ironically mental health advocates are busy fighting this prejudice. Many people with mental illness are not THAT crazy. I try to have a monthly lunch with my godson who has schizophrenia; it’s really not a big deal once we get used to it.
I see that prejudice policing as an attempt to control discourse rather than a humane attempt to appreciate human beings for what they are. I used “crazy” very deliberately here to indicate any discourse unapproved by the professional managerial class. Nowadays, the “crazy” are those trying to resist therapeutic capture. Of course, I’m not talking about true instances of mental illness where fundamental breaks with reality and perception are involved—severe depression, schizophrenia, etc.
Also, the therapeutic model would bypass the jury protections of the criminal justice system. Suppression of dissent would legally become an administrative issue.
Many states now have protections against involuntary committal and the like. In Florida (to which I am soon returning) a person can be hospitalized for no more than 72 hours and only on the sworn statement of two witnesses that the person is danger to himself or others. The days when people could just disappear difficult teenagers or eccentric elder kin into state hospitals are long gone.
This sort of thing is purely a function of states, not the federal government. It's unlikely that many of our states (Texas, Florida, Louisiana, South Dakota, Utah...) would go along with hospitalizing people for political dissent.
Eyeroll. Of course it is unlikely in the present climate, in fact it is more than unlikely. All I am doing is pointing out ways - consistent with our history - in which evil can be done should the climate drastically change.
And recall the scenario I was cooking up was an 'outpatient' model so ideally there would be no hospitalization or involuntary committal. Sure, that would be in the cards for the dissenters who refused to take their meds, but the totalitarians of my scenario would really not want to make use of such a last resort. Keeping everyone at home would be so much softer and nicer.
This happens all the time and results in guardianship/conservatorship. Yes, even in florida. I t is a well oiled machine to take an individual's assets or to fill a unit in the "nursing home", evn paid for by Medicaid. Some groups have been fighting this for decades - including AAAPG. Hospitals and nursing facilities employ people who will go along - sometimes young and nieve and then they are moved to a job in a different facility. The older ones have been hardened - how many murders? A little starvation and a shot of morphine. Prior to that chemical restraint is common - it saves the cost of food.
When the Left goes further left and the Right goes further right they end up meeting each other in the same place. The "deplorables," generally, are not wealthy people. The Jews, with their family culture and work ethic, tend to have a disproportionately high representation in the professions that generate financial success which provides easier access to power. The problem with sociological studies examining Jewish achievement is that the Far Left and Right have crazies that will use envy as an excuse to hate. On the other hand, a professional writer pointing out the financial success of an ethnic group can generate a backlash for the mere fact of noticing. Honest professional writers end up walking on egg shells.
What is the point of calling out "The Jews" here? Rod himself has apparently not seen this or I suspect he would have some words for you. Neither he, nor the vast majority of us post here are friendly to that sort of thing.
You've just made my point. Rod's article deals with a wealthy Jewish banking family being hated by the Nazis because of Jewish success. The resentment of Jewish success was a major component of Hitler's anti-Semitism. This ideological loathing of Jewish success in Austria or Germany by the Nazis expanded and metamorphosed into The Shoah which I don't believe will ever happen to the "MAGA Deplorables," in the USA, yet you want me to walk on eggshells.
It is best to avoid even a whiff of antisemitism in one's words. And in the US that's especially egregious behavior. as we have none of the history that could at least point to an explanation (but never a justification) for such prejudices in, say, Eastern Europe.
Now, you've reinforced my point and noxiously smeared my words as having a wiff of anti-Semitism without identifying those words and its contextual framework. A hit and run? How noble of you! I shall cease replying in this thread and chalk it up to "Jon being Jon," lest we make this more uncomfortable for Rod.
This is reminiscent of what W.G. Sebald. Stories of the suffering and the loss of Europe’s Jews often told obliquely through digressions and pictures of objects:
“I believe, said Austerlitz, they know they have lost their way, since if you do not put them out again carefully they will stay where they are, never moving, until the last breath is out of their bodies, and indeed they will remain in the place where they came to grief even after death, held fast by the tiny claws that stiffened in their last agony, until a draught of air detaches them and blows them into a dusty corner.”
Please don’t forget about what we did to the Japanese Americans. So many of my friends’ families lost everything when they were imprisoned during WWII. It is too easy to forget places like Tule Lake, and the people who died there due to the government’s mistreatment of them.
Meanwhile, the former president decided to stir that pot, beginning with "Just a quick reminder for liberal Jews who voted to destroy America & Israel because you believed in false narratives! Let’s hope you learned from your mistake & make better choices moving forward! Happy New Year!”:
Trump's daughter Ivanka is married to a Jew. Ivanka Trump and her husband are raising their children in the Jewish faith, and Ivanka herself converted to Judaism. President Trump's administration brokered the Abraham Accords, and President Trump fostered warm relations with Benjamin Netanyahu. Citizens of Jerusalem named a boulevard after President Trump.
Well, Netanyahu is as much of a transactionalist, and in as much trouble for various aspects of transactions he's apparently committed, as Trump. They are both... definitely unorthodox. As for the Kushners, well... "Paris is worth a mass", and that much wealth is worth a conversion.
It’s not my intent to be pedantic. But, the correct term is ceramist, not ceramicist. It’s a very common misnomer. I hold a Master of Fine Arts in Ceramics. I’ve taught ceramics at the college and university level for the last 30 years. I’m ambivalent about deWaal. On the one hand I respect his academic credentials and professional activity. On the other hand, I was disappointed in his monograph on Bernard Leach. My university professor was an apprentice of David Leach and Michael Leach - Bernard’s two sons.
This already happened recently in New Zealand. A certain class of people could not work, use public services. or travel. It was for health reasons but people were also put in camps, then later hotels.
It's never far away.
Maybe it was a rehearsal.
And yet every time we bring up such parallels, we’re accused of histrionics. The fact is that all modern, technically advanced societies are capable of such behavior. The only differences are the severity with which they happen to violate individual rights. The Nazis went all the way and actively murdered people. The Communists of the USSR mostly just stripped people of their ability to support themselves economically, which led to death by starvation in the Holodomor.
In the West, we’re imposing social death on people. They may continue alive as organisms, but they’re stripped of livelihoods, sometimes their children, and increasingly of their ability to act economically at all, if debanking isn’t stopped soon.
Yet, it’s all happening JUST SLOWLY ENOUGH that people not attuned to this stuff, or paying much attention, won’t notice it. Until it’s too late.
"The Communists of the USSR mostly just stripped people of their ability to support themselves economically..."
Aren't you forgetting the Terror? https://www.amazon.com/Great-Terror-Reassessment-Robert-Conquest/dp/0195317009
Also, the lady who did this in New Zealand is currently the darling of the US elite in Hollywood and Harvard.
The Communists guaranteed people jobs-- but you had to work at what they gave you if you couldn't find one of your own.
I should have been clearer that I was referring to their way of dealing with groups like the Ukrainians of the 1930s, who weren’t on board.
This is the residual energy that haunted me in Vienna. Thank you for sharing the layers of a meaningful day.
Rod, this is what you do best- tell a story we should know, and then explain in a non-didactic style WHY we should know.
Another "WHY" question is, why do these things happen? It seems sometimes like one thing "begets" another, action is followed by reaction in what may be a long chain of events and circumstances, each event laying foundations for something that comes afterwards.
I suppose this is one reason to study History.
That Jewish gravestone as a latrine lid is something I don't have a word for. What an emblem of the hatred. And the head on the walking stick. Geez. I don't think reading about them would have nearly the same impact as seeing them, even just in a picture.
Regensburg- the home of Oskar Schindler and Pope Benedict. Life is strange.
Here's another strange one, one that I like to point out.
When Joseph Ratzinger was little he lived in Marktl am Inn on the border with Austria. His mother would often cross into Austria with her children on their Sunday walks. One nearby place where they walked was the village of Sankt Radegund, the home of anti-Nazi martyr Franz Jägerstätter. It is entirely possible they passed each other on the road.
Fascinating.
Jägerstätter returned to Sankt Radegund from the iron mines in late 1934 or 1935, when he was about 27. Ratzinger moved from Marktl am Inn in 1937, when he was 10. So it could have happened.
Jagerstatter was a biker. He could have ridden by Pope Benedict.
There is an icon of him in which he is holding a Bible and wearing a leather jacket.
Wonderful story! Lots of synchronicity floating around you!
I'd like to recommend "The Shrinking Circle: Memories of Nazi Berlin, 1933-1939." The author, Marion Freyer Wolff, describes her childhood and escape. She was forced to leave her school and attend a segregated Jewish school run by two sisters who later disappeared in the Shoah. The two sisters were my uncle's cousins. They had a brother who escaped and made it to India but was never heard from after that.
To me one passage really stuck out: how the author would walk home from school and pass Hitler Youth in the streets who sang of stabbing Jews and watching their blood flow.
https://www.amazon.com/Shrinking-Circle-Memories-Berlin-1933-39/dp/0807404195/ref=sr_1_1?crid=9E0DWRGLT8AY&keywords=the+shrinking+circle
On the other side of my family my first cousins' paternal grandparents fled Vienna in exactly the same circumstances.
Not to excuse, but to note: you write often about the Treaty of Trianon. Austria, too, was dismembered after WWI. Its industrial heartland and 3 million ethnic Germans were in Czechoslovakia, their economy was ruined, and they were forbidden to unite with Germany. Vienna was now the capital of a pitiful little rump state. One can imagine why they might welcome a resurgent Germany even in that form.
I don't think even the most vicious American Leftist would go for round-ups of the "deplorables." Perhaps Hillary Clinton but she's not much longer for this world. The Leftist way is to marginalize their enemies socially and economically.
My opinion: any American persecution, should it come, will be therapeutic. It would follow the outpatient model, so no camps. Court-ordered psychiatric medication. If people are damaged by the drugs then euthanasia would be in the cards.
I hadn't thought of this. It's very plausible.
For a short time we put our kids into the public school system in the town outside of Boston to which we had moved. The principal of the elementary school our daughter attended was a thug. He looks like the man who comes around to collect the vig. Talked like it too. A woman down the street, who had a son in the same grade as our daughter, said that this man told her if she didn't put her son on Ritalin he would call DSS, the dreaded Department of Social Services, which in Massachusetts is more feared than the Winter Hill mob. She felt so ashamed she flushed the pills down the toilet and told her son to tell anybody who asked he had taken the pills. They moved away pretty soon after that. We put our kids into parochial school, which was no paradise, but pharmaceuticals were not involved. So we're halfway there.
The only thing we miss about Massachusetts is the Cape. Still among the nicest beaches in the world, with little waves on Nantucket Sound for little kids. And that's it.
That is shocking, and an indicator that MA DSS needs to be brought to heel in the court system. I don't know how long ago this was, but if parents were that terrified of it, and some wayward principal knew he had that kind of power, I'm pretty sure some Constitutional rights were being violated.
I'm an old man. It was a long time ago. DSS has changed its name to Department of Children and Families (doesn't that make you feel all warm inside?) but it's the same old horror. They kill children, or try to: https://nrlc.org/archive/News_and_Views/Jan09/nv010709.html
I've told this story at least twice in these boxes. For years The Boston Herald, the tabloid, Howie Carr's paper, ran an ad on page three or five, a column wide and say four inches deep. "TROUBLE WITH DSS?"
My attorney has had several run-ins with DCF. His greatest criticism is that DCF is so adverse to bad publicity they will refuse to take on a case in which a child has a serious risk of death. Better to let a kid die than to open a case and then get bad publicity because the kid died.
Regarding constitutionality and the courts in Massachusetts: do you think it is, as Joseph Stalin would say, an accident that McCarrick was declared unfit to stand trial in a Massachusetts court? Or that it took so long to reach such a conclusion? If you want to know what soft totalitarianism feels like, head up to Boston, for your sins.
McCarrick's sins are very helpful to the Left by discrediting the Roman Catholic Church.
I recall the state of Massachusetts being at the center of the horrific medical kidnapping case of Justina Pelletier. And with the trans lobby gaining ground against parental rights in numerous states, we’re well on our way to a dystopian world where “wrong-thinking” parents can be punished by having their children removed to state custody.
https://medicalkidnap.com/2017/05/11/justina-pelletier-and-medical-kidnapping-4-years-later-has-anything-changed/
Now imagine the same story but it's an inner city kid, fatherless. What I see happening is the monetization of kids from broken homes and poor people.
I've mentioned here before that my sister was a counselor in the Bronx. We were talking one day about my job. I was complaining that as a firefighter, I was running into the "false injury"phenomenon at car accidents and "slip and fall" injuries in stores and parking lots. It seemingly came out of nowhere. Around 2010, (in the poor neighborhoods especially), we had to "package" almost everyone at minor fender-benders. All of a sudden we had to tie up ambulances, police, and fire units to immobilize and long-board every faker in sight.(Of course our union also used these stats to try to pry more hirings and money for training).
Anyway, my sister related that a very high percentage of the kids, from broken homes, that she served "had lawsuits". They had to be removed from class for therapy to maintain the fake narrative.
Also, ever hear about the Chiropractors who send short busses into the projects, scoop up their clients, give them a free massage, and bill medicaid for it?
These are the weasels that prey on kids.....they love the ignorant, and a broken home.
Next time you're driving through "the south side" or wherever the poor folks live, take a good long look at the billboards.
I first noticed it 30 years ago. My wife had gotten a job in the Bronx and we drove trying to work out a route for her to get to work. Some kid dawdled in front of our car. Nothing happened, but I remember thinking, "Did he want to get hit?" and "Yep."
I've mentioned this before, how when I taught in urban elementary schools the kids - with the exception of the immigrants - all had a very heightened sense of their 'rights.'
Holy cow.
I think you’re absolutely right. Instead of outright punishment, which is once and done (paid one’s debt etc.), therapy aims at permanent invalidation, in every sense. After all, at bottom, why believe what a crazy person says? And that’s what’s going on today—adjudging people as mad and beyond the pale—Deplorables, Trumpers, White Supremacists, Fascists, Christianists, etc.
You are right. Ironically mental health advocates are busy fighting this prejudice. Many people with mental illness are not THAT crazy. I try to have a monthly lunch with my godson who has schizophrenia; it’s really not a big deal once we get used to it.
I see that prejudice policing as an attempt to control discourse rather than a humane attempt to appreciate human beings for what they are. I used “crazy” very deliberately here to indicate any discourse unapproved by the professional managerial class. Nowadays, the “crazy” are those trying to resist therapeutic capture. Of course, I’m not talking about true instances of mental illness where fundamental breaks with reality and perception are involved—severe depression, schizophrenia, etc.
Also, the therapeutic model would bypass the jury protections of the criminal justice system. Suppression of dissent would legally become an administrative issue.
Many states now have protections against involuntary committal and the like. In Florida (to which I am soon returning) a person can be hospitalized for no more than 72 hours and only on the sworn statement of two witnesses that the person is danger to himself or others. The days when people could just disappear difficult teenagers or eccentric elder kin into state hospitals are long gone.
This sort of thing is purely a function of states, not the federal government. It's unlikely that many of our states (Texas, Florida, Louisiana, South Dakota, Utah...) would go along with hospitalizing people for political dissent.
Eyeroll. Of course it is unlikely in the present climate, in fact it is more than unlikely. All I am doing is pointing out ways - consistent with our history - in which evil can be done should the climate drastically change.
And recall the scenario I was cooking up was an 'outpatient' model so ideally there would be no hospitalization or involuntary committal. Sure, that would be in the cards for the dissenters who refused to take their meds, but the totalitarians of my scenario would really not want to make use of such a last resort. Keeping everyone at home would be so much softer and nicer.
This happens all the time and results in guardianship/conservatorship. Yes, even in florida. I t is a well oiled machine to take an individual's assets or to fill a unit in the "nursing home", evn paid for by Medicaid. Some groups have been fighting this for decades - including AAAPG. Hospitals and nursing facilities employ people who will go along - sometimes young and nieve and then they are moved to a job in a different facility. The older ones have been hardened - how many murders? A little starvation and a shot of morphine. Prior to that chemical restraint is common - it saves the cost of food.
You are far too sanguine. I take it you haven't been keeping up with what some of them say or get up to.
Eye has not seen and ear has not heard the stuff the Left is cooking up for those whom they hate.
When the Left goes further left and the Right goes further right they end up meeting each other in the same place. The "deplorables," generally, are not wealthy people. The Jews, with their family culture and work ethic, tend to have a disproportionately high representation in the professions that generate financial success which provides easier access to power. The problem with sociological studies examining Jewish achievement is that the Far Left and Right have crazies that will use envy as an excuse to hate. On the other hand, a professional writer pointing out the financial success of an ethnic group can generate a backlash for the mere fact of noticing. Honest professional writers end up walking on egg shells.
What is the point of calling out "The Jews" here? Rod himself has apparently not seen this or I suspect he would have some words for you. Neither he, nor the vast majority of us post here are friendly to that sort of thing.
You've just made my point. Rod's article deals with a wealthy Jewish banking family being hated by the Nazis because of Jewish success. The resentment of Jewish success was a major component of Hitler's anti-Semitism. This ideological loathing of Jewish success in Austria or Germany by the Nazis expanded and metamorphosed into The Shoah which I don't believe will ever happen to the "MAGA Deplorables," in the USA, yet you want me to walk on eggshells.
It is best to avoid even a whiff of antisemitism in one's words. And in the US that's especially egregious behavior. as we have none of the history that could at least point to an explanation (but never a justification) for such prejudices in, say, Eastern Europe.
Now, you've reinforced my point and noxiously smeared my words as having a wiff of anti-Semitism without identifying those words and its contextual framework. A hit and run? How noble of you! I shall cease replying in this thread and chalk it up to "Jon being Jon," lest we make this more uncomfortable for Rod.
I really enjoyed this post, but was dismayed to have it juxtaposed with this article about Oberlin College and an Egon Schiele sketch:
https://legalinsurrection.com/2023/10/exclusive-oberlin-colleges-17-year-refusal-to-return-artwork-stolen-by-the-nazis-from-a-jewish-holocaust-victim/
This is reminiscent of what W.G. Sebald. Stories of the suffering and the loss of Europe’s Jews often told obliquely through digressions and pictures of objects:
“I believe, said Austerlitz, they know they have lost their way, since if you do not put them out again carefully they will stay where they are, never moving, until the last breath is out of their bodies, and indeed they will remain in the place where they came to grief even after death, held fast by the tiny claws that stiffened in their last agony, until a draught of air detaches them and blows them into a dusty corner.”
Sebald's "The Emigrants" is also a masterpiece, one of the most beautiful novels ever written about the tragic disasters of 20th-century Europe.
Speaking of Dave Rubin, and on the subject of what might be coming, see his interview with Dennis Prager (from 9/29): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryzl763xm0E
RE: "The most important lie to refuse right now is the one that tells you it can’t happen here!"
Exactly! It can happen anywhere, including in the US.
Please don’t forget about what we did to the Japanese Americans. So many of my friends’ families lost everything when they were imprisoned during WWII. It is too easy to forget places like Tule Lake, and the people who died there due to the government’s mistreatment of them.
They tried to do it to Italians, but having Fiorello LaGuardia as mayor of New York made it harder.
Well, right now antisemitic hate crimes are at an all-time high in America:
https://www.ajc.org/news/ajc-deeply-troubled-by-fbi-hate-crimes-data-showing-overall-increase-jews-most-targeted
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/education/2023/06/24/rise-in-antisemitism-hate-crimes-jews-colleges/70346697007/
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/antisemitic-incidents-on-rise-across-the-u-s-report-finds
Meanwhile, the former president decided to stir that pot, beginning with "Just a quick reminder for liberal Jews who voted to destroy America & Israel because you believed in false narratives! Let’s hope you learned from your mistake & make better choices moving forward! Happy New Year!”:
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/111083021216078581
Not sure why he thought this would entice more Jews to vote for him.
I would guess that Trump has about 1 % support amongst Jews.
Especially in NYC.
Trump's daughter Ivanka is married to a Jew. Ivanka Trump and her husband are raising their children in the Jewish faith, and Ivanka herself converted to Judaism. President Trump's administration brokered the Abraham Accords, and President Trump fostered warm relations with Benjamin Netanyahu. Citizens of Jerusalem named a boulevard after President Trump.
Well, Netanyahu is as much of a transactionalist, and in as much trouble for various aspects of transactions he's apparently committed, as Trump. They are both... definitely unorthodox. As for the Kushners, well... "Paris is worth a mass", and that much wealth is worth a conversion.
Reading a bit about the conduct of the Germans in World War Two often makes me think that not enough of them were hanged.
You can’t hang an entire country. At some point they had to stop.
It’s not my intent to be pedantic. But, the correct term is ceramist, not ceramicist. It’s a very common misnomer. I hold a Master of Fine Arts in Ceramics. I’ve taught ceramics at the college and university level for the last 30 years. I’m ambivalent about deWaal. On the one hand I respect his academic credentials and professional activity. On the other hand, I was disappointed in his monograph on Bernard Leach. My university professor was an apprentice of David Leach and Michael Leach - Bernard’s two sons.