Recommended.

FDR said as much:

like the "comedian" cited in the article are vile haters.

Obviously, I can't speak for anyone else. But I don't think it was an attempt to make an excuse for the pathology, but rather, an attempt to identify the cause.

If a population is doing well economically, and are comfortable, they are generally less prone to hate. But when large groups are suffering the effects of the loss of economic security and its comforts, there will be those who allow their fears and anxieties to morph into hatred.

The specific type of hatred identified in the OP has a long and terrible history. It has always been rooted in the group-thinking of sick people who attempt to justify their own low level of being, by blaming what they view as a target they feel safe in hating, and far too often, safe in attacking.

The hatred directed at Jewish people is, in my opinion, a most important measure of the sickness of any society. It is often shocking, yet the threats it poses -- to everyone -- should never take us by surprise. When we see certain conditions beginning to take hold of any society -- and that surely includes our own -- we need to be prepared to oppose that type of hatred in every instance.

I assumed that was what that person was saying.

-Laelth

We've been down that path before, with the economic depression in Europe serving as an excuse to target certain groups—Jews above all—and to lay blame on them for the problems.

You can never, never sit back and say you are not shocked. It's that kind of nonplussed stance that allows fascism to ascend to power. National Front, anyone?

Economic conditions are not a cause for hatred, they're an excuse for hatred, and we should always be shocked at that.

Those rhetorical strategies can be effective, over generations, at changing the world. Those strategies work especially well on children. My preference, however, is for more immediate results. I'd prefer to address the root causes of fascism rather than to do nothing, let fascism rise, and then be outraged. I'd like to see income inequality and rising poverty addressed. I sense that actually addressing the root cause of the problem is the best way to avoid the problem, itself.

-Laelth

much of it stemming from the Middle Ages and not yet totally resolved. We thought that maybe the horrors of WWII would "cure" it, but apparently not. As was pointed out above, during times of economic stress people dredge up old hatreds as they look for someone to blame. Invariably, of course, they pick the wrong people to blame and hate.

Here in the US, we don't have as much blatant anti-semitism, since other groups are more obvious and easy to target. The Jews are at least sort of white and blend in. Our racists won't bother much with them until they get over their hatred of people with a skin color that makes them easier to spot.

People are tribal by nature, and it takes an effort to get over the fear of the "other" in whatever form that may take. Conservatives tend to be less interested in making that effort than liberals IMHO.

be rooted in tensions arising out of Israel and the Middle East. The plight of the Palestinians contributes to that. As for the U.S., Jews have always been and still are, prominent targets of neo-nazi groups, though I agree that most racists are focused on more obvious targets- that and the fact that the racists in the xian right have a creepy alliance with Israel.

Many of them came to Europe with a lifetime of listening to hate media in their backgrounds. I suspect a good few of them are plants of terrorist groups sent to worm in and create problems in the hated "West." A small percentage TBS, but it doesn't take many agens provocateurs to foment unrest and violence, especially in populations who are ripe for seeding, like the poor/working class in Europe and the US.

America has done a kind of poor job trying to stem violence in the Middle East, and many of our actions have tended to inflame people instead of dampening it down. Pres Obama has been a little better in his striving for negotiations and diplomacy, but his drone strikes and overall continuence of some of the Bush policies re: terrorism have not helped.

I guess there are Faux Noise equivalents in Europe eager to fan the flames of hatred for profit, too. One of the problems of free speech/press is that one has to 'tolerate' actions like the comedian above. It's also an advantage, in that assholes tend to out themselves by their words. It is up to the public at large to snub such creatures, though, and there hasn't been a lot of that, here or abroad, lately. It doesn't help that the perpetrators of hate speech in the media seem to feel no shame, and are immune to public ridicule, as long ast they get their paychecks.

led mainly by Muslim immigrants or native born Muslims.

When in doubt.....

The attack on the bus full of Jewish children was just a topper. France has been quite hostile to Jews, as has most of Europe throughout history. But being openly anti-Semitic has become more acceptable and less offensive in the past few years, not just there either.

Last edited Sun Jun 22, 2014, 09:08 AM - Edit history (1)

The Germans had theirs forced upon them by their defeat in World War II. It took a generation, but it was mostly successful for two reasons. First, there weren't a lot of Jews left after the war, and the Allies kept Germany under their thumb for a generation--the Germans were forced to confront their victims.

France didn't leave their last big Arab colony until after the last uprising in Algeria int he 1960s. They then opened their country to millions of residents of their former colonies, but they forgot one major detail--they offered them a house, but not a home. Millions of Arabs came to France and were stuck in ethnic ghettos and ignored. Shocking living quarters, economic and racial discrimination, and high unemployment in general made for an explosive mixture. After 1967, when Arabic language broadcasts helped fuel hatred of Israel (a vague concept to the kids of Algerian immigrants in Paris) and Jews (very real and visibly present in Paris), now there was a focus. Couple that with the latent vestiges of Anti-Jewish sentiment left in tiny parts of the European French population, and you have a fertile ground for recruiting hate violence.

I have Jewish friends in France, and one of them has indeed moved to Israel. After all that has gone on in recent years, their feeling toward the Arab community in general is mutual. However we also get together with Muslim Arab friends when I'm there, so it's a weird mixed bag of feelings directed toward nebulous groups, but always other people "out there," who are nothing like the guys we hang out with at the local café.

-Laelth

But I AM in France every week, speak the language with near native fluency, and have personal contacts that stretch back decades. I obviously don't know everyone who lives there, but I do write from experience, not from theory.

And I was thankful that you were willing to share some of that experience.

-Laelth

A friend of ours, herself an immigrant from Poland who suffered as a child when she first came to Germany in the sixties, speaking no German, and having cruel, taunting classmates,* was visiting us yesterday.

My wife and I treated her to an informal guided tour of our town, which has been here in some form or other for a thousand years or so. It was conducted by a local woman whose family came here from Bavaria 200 years ago. One of the streets we passed through was "Synagogengasse," whose name is just what it sounds like. But this time, we noticed a plaque on the outside wall of a building that is usually hidden by shrubbery. The plaque commemorated the site of the local synagogue, which had been built in 1817, and destroyed by the Nazis in 1936. The building is now an Italian Pizzeria, but the plaque on the outside is in both German and Hebrew.

*She recently went to a 40th reunion of her high school class, and was surprised to be approached by many of her former classmates who wanted to apologize for their cruel behavior when they were children, begging her forgiveness, mentioning their ignorance about the world, and how awful it must have been for her. She said it provided her with some needed closure.

rec for awareness.

The French National Front had traditionally been very anti-Semitic (under Jean Marie Le Pen). His daughter seems to have shifted the party's focus to Muslim immigration and has tried to mend fences with the French Jewish community.

Of course, that does not mean that everyone on the far-right is on board with this change.

As the economic disaster is endless, French has known since few month records breaking in unemployement rates. And therefore, a huge part of the population seen no foture ahead. So they are looking for scapecoat to erase their frustrations. And those scapegoats are, not only Jews, but also fellow uneployed, disabilied people, different people, undocumented ones, Muslims, and Roma!

Guess who gets blamed when economies go bad: (1) the jooooooos; (2) those eeevil immigrants.

The LePen crowd aren't too keen on either group.

France has never been the worst country in Europe for anti-Semitism and general all-round racism and xenophobia; but it's never been the best either.

Thank you for bringing this here, and making us all aware how much worse things are gettting.

But lets give a hand to austerity for doing best what it does- enable facism.