Thursday, January 22, 2015

The Nazi Who Was Hung for Drawing Cartoons

Norman Finkelstein and Mustafa Caglayan write:
In Nazi Germany, there was an anti-Semitic weekly newspaper called Der Stürmer.

Run by Julius Streicher, it was notorious for being one of the most virulent advocates of the persecution of Jews during the 1930s.

What everybody remembers about Der Stürmer was its morbid caricatures of Jews, the people who were facing widespread discrimination and persecution during the era.

Its depictions endorsed all of the common stereotypes about Jews – a hook nose, lustful, greedy.

“Let’s say, … amidst all of this death and destruction, two young Jews barged into the headquarters of the editorial offices of Der Stürmer, and they killed the staff for having humiliated them, degraded them, demeaned them, insulted them,” queried Norman Finkelstein, a professor of political science and author of numerous books including “The Holocaust Industry” and “Method and Madness.”

“How would I react to that?,” said Finkelstein, who is the son of Holocaust survivors.

Finkelstein was drawing an analogy between a hypothetical attack on the German newspaper and the deadly Jan. 7 attack at the Paris headquarters of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, that left 12 people dead, including its editor and prominent cartoonists. The weekly is known for printing controversial material, including derogatory cartoons about the Prophet Muhammad in 2006 and 2012.

The attack sparked a global massive outcry, with millions in France and across the world taking to the streets to support freedom of the press behind the rallying cry of “Je suis Charlie,” or “I am Charlie.”

What the Charlie Hebdo caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad achieved was “not satire,” and what they provoked was not “ideas,” Finkelstein said.

Satire is when one directs it either at oneself, causes his or her people to think twice about what they are doing and saying, or directs it at people who have power and privilege, he said.

“But when somebody is down and out, desperate, destitute, when you mock them, when you mock a homeless person, that is not satire,” Finkelstein said.

“That is, I give you the word, sadism. There’s a very big difference between satire and sadism. Charlie Hebdo is sadism. It’s not satire”

The “desperate and despised people” of today are Muslims, he said, considering the number of Muslim countries racked by death and destruction as in the case of Syria, Iraq, Gaza, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen.

“So, two despairing and desperate young men act out their despair and desperation against this political pornography no different than Der Stürmer, who in the midst of all of this death and destruction decide its somehow noble to degrade, demean, humiliate and insult the people. I’m sorry, maybe it is very politically incorrect. I have no sympathy for [the staff of Charlie Hebdo]. Should they have been killed? Of course not. But of course, Streicher shouldn’t have been hung. I don’t hear that from many people,” said Finkelstein.

Streicher was among those who stood trial on charges at Nürnberg, following World War II. He was hung for those cartoons
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6 comments:

  1. This is very well written and well thought out.

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  2. Claiming he was convicted and executed at Nuremberg because he was a jokester who published some offensive cartoons is at best cherry picking of the facts and at worst outright lies about his role during that period. The publishing of anti-Semitic cartoons was the least of the things Streicher did during the years leading up and during WWII and the holocaust. Der Sturmer(The Attacker), whose slogan was the absolutely not satirical "Die Juden sind unser Ungluck" (the Jews are our misfortune), was integral in the Nazi propaganda effort that led to the holocaust. The complete raison d'etre of the paper was anti-Semitism with the first issue proclaiming: "We will be slaves of the Jew therefore he must go". Through Der Sturmer, Streicher published blood libel, blamed Jews for the great depression, warned that Jewish men were sexual slavers degrading good Aryan women for sport. claimed missing children were victims of Jewish ritual sacrifice and on and on and on. Fine, free speech right? The problem is Streicher wasn't just a publisher.

    Streicher joined the NSDAP in 1921, was a leader in the Beer Hall Putsch and from 1925 onward held leadership positions in both the political and para-military arm (The SA) of the party until 1940 when he was drummed out for corruption. He was a member of the Reichstag from 1933 until the end of the war. He order the destruction of the main synagogue in Nuremberg on Kristallnacht. He gained possession of Jewish owned property as a result of pogroms against the Jews that he helped organize. Hitler thanked him directly in the pages of Mein Kampf for fuck sake.

    He repeatedly called for the extermination of Jews throughout the 1930's and through the war and the holocaust, for example these two quotes sum up his views as published in Der Sturmer: "If the danger of the reproduction of that curse of God in the Jewish blood is to finally come to an end, then there is only one way-the extermination of that people whose father is the devil" and in 1944 "Whoever does what a Jew does is a scoundrel, a criminal. And he who repeats and wishes to copy him deserves the same fate, annihilation, death".

    From the decision at his trial in Nuremberg:

    "... For his 25 years of speaking, writing and preaching hatred of the Jews, Streicher was widely known as 'Jew-Baiter Number One.' In his speeches and articles, week after week, month after month, he infected the German mind with the virus of anti-Semitism, and incited the German people to active persecution. ... Streicher's incitement to murder and extermination at the time when Jews in the East were being killed under the most horrible conditions clearly constitutes persecution on political and racial grounds in connection with war crimes, as defined by the Charter, and constitutes a crime against humanity”

    Where, in all of Charlie Hebdo's cartoons and commentary, is a call to marginalize, to remove power from, to burn their places of worship, to exterminate all Muslims? There isn't anything of the sort and equating Dur Sturmer and Charlie Hebdo satirizing delusional extremists who believe that publishing a drawing of a dead man is worthy of a death sentence is one of the most disingenuous pieces of shit commentary I've read on this issue so far.

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    1. Take a good hard look at the USA with Hollywood, the pornography industry, Federal Reserve System, and the amount of debt we're in (to banks) and then reread your first paragraph. You think it's coincidence the same thing is happening to the USA that happened to Germany?

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    2. Let me offer the same to you I offered to the author:

      Your comment very well written and well thought out. I read both his thoughts and yours, and can appreciate both of your perspectives.

      I would agree that Streicher was certainly hung for more than cartoon drawing.

      However I think you have not considered that there might have been an implicit "call to marginalize, to remove power" in Charlie Hebdo's cartoons aside from its highly offensive nature.

      As has been discussed/beat several times, there is no justification for a NAP violation in this regard. But in terms of context, I think it instructive to hear the translated(google) words of a co-founder:

      "Henri Roussel, one of the first editors of Hara-Kiri and Charlie Hebdo member until 1975, goes further by recalling the words of Wolinski at the time of the arson led to the drafting of Charlie Hebdo. "I think we are vulnerable and oblivious fools who took an unnecessary risk. That's all, "said the designer would. "We think we are invulnerable. For years, decades even, it is a provocation and then one day the provocation turns against us. We had to do it, "says Delfeil citing the late illustrator, adding that despite the warning of his colleague" Charb did it again a year later, in September 2012 ".

      He also stated his opinion that Charlie Hebdo had become an "organ for Islamaphobia".

      Regardless, there are many things I appreciate about your write up and I thank you for taking the time to do it.

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  3. "Where, in all of Charlie Hebdo's cartoons and commentary, is a call to marginalize, to remove power from, to burn their places of worship, to exterminate all Muslims?"

    ==========
    Don’t worry, I’m not saying that reading Charlie Hebdo automatically unleashes a craving to bucket a mosque with pig’s blood or to rip the veil off a supermarket shopper, as happens here and there. You’ve pointed out the targets, but you wouldn’t want some poor guy to attack them for real, because you’re against violence and against racism. As are, most certainly, your readers. They have no prejudice against Muslims. It’s just that they break out in whole-hearted laughter at that Charb cartoon where an Arab with a big moustache stops in front of a prostitute, while a bearded preacher sermonizes: “Brother! Why would you pay 40 euros for a single shag when for the same price you could buy a wife!” In the 1930s, the same gag - with Jews instead of Muslims - would have gone down a treat, except that, at the time, its teller would surely not have had the idea to wave around a certificate of anti-racism. The cartoon in question illustrated an article unmasking the dark designs of a small group of Salafists in Brussels. The subtitle sums up its thrust well: “Will all Belgium’s chips soon be halal? Some beards are pushing for it, and are fighting the democracy which allows them to exist[14].” What? Islamification of chips, democracy in danger? In their mind, the reader is already starting to clean their hunting rifle. In their mind only, because they’re anti-racist. At least until they go and pour their heart out on some internet site, applauding your daring deeds, in the manner of “lulupipistrelle”, author of this comment on Agoravox: “So do cartoons of the Prophet give Muslims ulcers? Well, I feel like punching all the veiled ladies I meet, and I’m not talking about the bearded ones... but I control myself...[15]”

    -- He worked there from 1992 to 2001, before walking out, angered by “the dictatorial behaviour and corrupt promotion practices” of a certain Philippe Val [former CH editor - trans.] Since then, Olivier Cyran has been an observer from a distance, outside the walls, of the evolution of Charlie Hebdo and its growing obsession with Islam.
    http://posthypnotic.randomstatic.net/charliehebdo/Charlie_Hebdo_article%2011.htm

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    1. If Charlie Hebdo is racist, then so am I — Zineb el-Rhazoui responds to Olivier Cyran

      http://thecharnelhouse.org/2015/01/15/if-charlie-hebdo-is-racist-then-so-am-i-zineb-el-rhazoui-responds-to-olivier-cyran/#comment-64421

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