IBM, Disney, Bush: Nazis?

[davemarc]

From: Terrance <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
>
> Once they gained power yes, the Nazis were the powerful
> destroying the weak. But how did they get it and how did the
> Jews, who of course had  some power,  lose it?
>
> When the power struggle commenced the Jews had  some power.
> One of the reasons
> they were a target is the fact that they had some power.
>
> The Jewish businesses were blamed, the Jewish leaders were
> blamed, they were targeted and subjected to the blame game.
> The objective was to win a power struggle first and then get
> rid of the defeated enemies. How did the Nazis go about the
> blame game? Didn't they use the media? Didn't they use
> propaganda? Didn't they use history to associate the Jews
> with horrors from the past that were supposed to be
> connected, to be causes of problems in the present? Didn't
> they use the latest arts and sciences, the latest
> technologies?
>
> The blame game is a power struggle between those that have
> power. The weak are down hill, where everything flows after
> the blame players toss their shit around. The weak are not
> in the game. They don't have power.
>
The term "blame game" is mild and inappropriate when applied to the
persecution of European Jews, who were scapegoated consistently and very
violently for centuries.  It was not a matter of a power struggle between
powers.  On the contrary, it was a practice of many European governments and
religions to ghettoize or otherwise marginalize Jews and blame them--and
persecute them--for all sorts of alleged problems for which the Jews were
not responsible.  The blame was essentially based on pernicious
superstitions (i.e. the widespread "blood libel" that asserted that Jews
cannibalized Gentiles, and the idea that Jews were to blame for the death of
Christ) and terror campaigns (used by government leaders to assert power,
divert blame, exorcise neuroses, and cow opponents).  This is at the basis
of many massacres and mass migrations of wholly innocent and powerless Jews
over centuries.  Regrettably, it's as much a European tradition as
Lutheranism and Catholicism.

Anyone who has trouble imagining that such "blame campaigns" could exist can
read innumerable documents related to Jewish history, and look to similar
examples throughout history, such as lynchings and mass burnings of property
held by slaves and African Americans.  Or persecution in Rwanda.  Or even in
the idea that rape victims "have it coming."

Terrance's remark that "The objective [in the alleged "blame game" between
the Jews and the Nazis] was to win a power struggle first and then get rid
of the defeated enemies" is exactly the kind of falsehood that fueled such
oppression against Jews.  Positing the existence of such a power struggle
was part of Hitler's original agenda (which demonized Jews and formed the
basis for Nazi and eventually German national policy).  There was, in fact,
no Jewish conspiracy to take over Germany or, for that matter, the world.

Terrance asks "Once they gained power yes, the Nazis were the powerful
destroying the weak. But how did they get it and how did the Jews, who of
course had  some power,  lose it?"  This question, which has been answered
extensively in books, seems to overestimate the power that Jews had, and
also to type Jews as some kind of collective that was as unified as the Nazi
party.  I think it's safe to say that the majority of Jews in Germany (a
diverse lot) considered themselves patriotic German subjects.  Despite
anti-Jewish sentiment in German culture, they gained whatever power and
influence they had through ordinary means, such as conducting business,
proving themselves in military service, and pursuing excellence in
scholarship, the arts, medicine, etc.  The Nazis gained power by espousing
mindless patriotism, exploiting the German militaristic tradition, making
promises that appealed to impoverished masses, invoking the tried-and-true
monsters of Jew-hating and Communist-baiting, and resorting to sheer
brutality and intimidation.  Once they gained power, they managed to pass
legislation that denied basic rights to Jews, not based on their actions,
but on their genealogy.  No trials were necessary to rid German Jews of
jobs, homes, liberty, and life, all of which had in effect become the
property of Nazis.  And then things got even worse.

There was no such Jewish persecution--or anything close to it--of the Nazis
or the Germans at any time.

The great power struggle that the Nazis engaged in was one for domestic and
then international domination.  Jews did not constitute a power in that
sense.  They only consituted a power as a source of requisitioned property,
slave labor, and symbolic fuel for the Nazi propaganda machine, and as an
oppositional force that was especially energized by personal awareness of
Nazi horrors.

d.