|
|||||||||
Posted September 26, 2002
Slavery
Regarding Alan Koontz's letter of September 11:
...If moral credibility is something that you strive for at Antiwar.com then I suggest you keep the partisans of race based chattel slavery like Alan Koontz off of your Backtalk page.
The American Civil War is a long dead conflict, but if there is to be an American peace movement is it so weak and futile that it needs to align itself with the losers of that just and rigorous conflict that lifted so many innocent Americans from a most undeserved suffering? Will you be posting any letters from any of the Aryan Nations prison gangs? I am just wondering if their is any group that you consider off limits. ...
The Backtalk editor replies:
Letters that advocate slavery, racial hatred, or racial violence are, and have been, off limits. Mr. Koontz's letter expressed opposition to the precedent-setting "War of Northern Aggression," not to its (unintended) result, the incomplete freeing of the slaves. His quoting of an antiwar abolitionist should have made this distinction clear.
Leaders
Regarding your [Harry Browne's] excellent article "America, Meet Your Leaders":
They are not my leaders, because they are not leaders. I am an old World War II Marine Corps machine gunner warrior, and Bush and his chicken hawks, do not care about anyone who is not involved in the oil business. They do not even care about the thousands and thousands of children, and innocent civilians who have been starved or killed, thanks to our, and the English, government. They are not leaders, they are maniacal killers of innocent people. How they can look themselves in the mirror is beyond me.
~ Former Sgt. Albert Mezzetti, U.S. Marine Corps.
Loonies
In Justin Raimondo's recent screed, "Smearing the Germans" he gave a link to the NY Jewish Defense League's enemies list. One has to wonder why this Israel hater calls us "loonies." Look who is on the "enemies list." It's Ramsey Clark and Brian Becker. It was Mr. Raimondo whom last year called Ramsey Clark's International Action Center a front for the communist World Workers Party. We have Hal Turner, a man who is a Nazi radio host who calls Jews "hooked nosed beasts" and calls blacks and Hispanics "n*gger and sp*c savages." ... Clark and Becker are supporters of Fidel Castro, Communist China, Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein. Talk about hypocrisy from Raimondo. If you want we can put Mr. Raimondo on the list in the near future and we will mention the rumors of him being a homosexual. We, the JDL, find Antiwar.com and Justin Raimondo to be hypocritical beyond belief. Antiwar.com is anti-Israel, anti-India, yet pro-China, pro-Pakistan and pro-Saudi Arabia. Never mind that Pakistan and Saudi Arabia helped financed the Taliban and that China is a still a dictatorship. Yet all Raimondo and Antiwar.com could do is bash Israel. Of course since Justin Raimondo has supported Pat Buchanan and used a very discredited Seymour Hersch for his sources on Jonathan Pollard, one doesn't have to think hard about Raimondo's motives. If Raimondo thinks that anti-Semitism in Europe and the American college campus is a myth, then he doesn't read the newspapers. Maybe has not heard of numerous synagogues being firebombed by Arab Muslims in France, Belgium, England and Germany. Or maybe he has not heard on how at Concordia University in Canada last week, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had to cancel his speech, because hundreds of Arab students rioted on campus and beat up numerous Jews. Also Antiwar.com has in the past linked to a notorious anti-Jewish website called "Arab News." This site has printed essays by Holocaust deniers and notorious Nazi David Duke. Frankly serious people don't take Antiwar.com seriously. Then again, we all know who really finances Antiwar.com.
~ Boris Wolfe, Deputy Director, NY Jewish Defense League, New York, New York
Half of Germany
I like Mr. Raimondo's column, even if I don't always agree with every word. But his column today ["Smearing the Germans," September 23] includes one statement which must be challenged.
The US did not hand half of Germany to the Communists. The USSR conquered half of Germany, got to Berlin ahead of the US and the Brits, and politely handed them a piece of it.
Sending $
Just writing to say that I'm sending $20 and to tell Antiwar.com readers that if every single one of them sends at least $10 or $20, this website should be out of financial trouble in no time.
~ Michel Versailles, Quebec, Canada
March Needed
There needs to be a widespread call put out in the activist community for an immediate and massive march in Washington protesting the proposed attack on Iraq, along the lines of the J-20 march protesting Bush's inauguration. This march needs to take place as soon as possible to make sure that Bush's resolution is defeated in Congress. Our representatives must see us take a united stand against this war before it's too late. Let's act, and now!
The Nazi Seizure of Power
Regarding "Smearing the Germans":
Bravo
to Justin Raimondo for debunking the twin notions that Germans are a morally
inferior people and that opposition to Israel or the War Party is anti-Semitism.
The story of how ordinary Germans opposed and fought the Nazis in the
1930s is virtually unknown in the US, in large part because the elite
have used Hollywood films, bogus books like Goldhagen's and liberal educational
programs (such as Facing History and Ourselves) to paint a stereotype
of Germans as rabidly anti-Semitic followers of Hitler, when in fact,
...every
time Germans had a chance to vote for or against Hitler, the great majority
voted against him. Hitler ran for President in March, 1932 and got only
30% of the vote; in the run-off election the next month he got only 37%,
versus 53% for the incumbent Field Marshal von Hindenburg. Nazi electoral
strength peaked on July 31, 1932 when Nazi rhetoric about representing
all Germans and not special interest groups lured some voters away from
the numerous small, special-interest conservative parties. The Nazis won
230 out of 608 total seats in the Reichstag (parliament). But their main
foes, the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the Communist Party—both of
which were led by Marxists and received mainly working class votes—jointly
captured 222 seats in the same election. Voting records show that the
richer the precinct, the higher the Nazi vote.
Working class Germans not only voted against the Nazis, they fought them in the streets. In the German province of Prussia alone, between June 1 and June 20, 1932, there were 461 pitched street battles between workers and Nazis, in which eighty-two people died and four hundred were wounded.
In his classic account, The Nazi Seizure of Power: The Experience of a Single German Town, William Allen gives a detailed account of events from 1930 to 1935 in a small German rural town with a population of 10,000 mainly middle-class Lutherans.
Allen describes a typical incident. Three weeks before the July 31, 1932 Reichstag elections, twenty-five men in the Reichsbanner (a Social Democratic Party militia organization) got into a fight with sixty Nazi SA (militia) men while crossing a bridge in opposite directions. Homeless people in a nearby Army compound rushed to help the Reichsbanner, and when police arrived there was a surging crowd of about eighty persons pelting the Nazis with stones.
In the next Reichstag election on Nov 6, 1932 the Nazis lost 34 seats, reducing them to only 196 deputies, while the Social Democratic Party and the Communist Party won a total of 221 seats -- 25 more than the Nazis. This was the last free election before Hitler came to power.
This last free election suggests how little support anti-Semitism had in the German electorate. The Social Democratic Party condemned anti-Semitism as "reactionary" and was known for its history of refusing to combine with anti-Semitic parties in election runoffs even when it would have gained from doing so. The Communist Party also rejected anti-Semitism (In fact the Nazis lumped Communists together with Jews as being all part of the same evil conspiracy.) Votes for these two parties were votes against anti-Semitism
Editor's
note:
Backtalk editor Sam Koritz is profiled in the Real World section of October's Smart Money magazine (print version only, not available online).