Tag: Germany

Julian Abagond: Was Hitler evil?

Posted on by Migrant Tales

MT comment: Was Hitler and the Nazis an aberration or a product of European racism and colonialism?  Was the devastation that Hitler sowed the same beast that Europeans had imposed on others in Africa, the Americas,  Asia and Australia? By blaming Hitler and the Nazis for what they did, are we denying the problem of our own intolerance? Was Hitler German and/or white? 

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By Julian Abagond

Kuvankaappaus 2013-8-19 kello 7.42.45

Was Hitler evil?

Most White Americans will say yes: he killed 6 million Jews in the Holocaust!

But to avoid any double standard we should apply the same moral reasoning White Americans apply to their own history:

  1. Everyone does it. Tribalism goes back to at least the invention of the spear. History is full of mass killing of civilians: Rwanda, Congo, Darfur, Srebrenica, Hiroshima, Hanoi, Gaza, Dresden, Nanking, Tamerlane, Alexander the Great,  Mongols, Assyrians, Iroquois, the killing of Armenians, Kurds, American Indians, Australian Aboriginals, Tasmanians, Namibians and on and on. If Hitler killed more people than some others, it was because he had better technology.
  2. Technology made him do it. Anyone with Hitler’s technology would have done the same thing.
  3. Europeans kill each other all the time. What’s the big deal?
  4. Jews are racist too. They have forced Palestinians off their land, apply separate laws to them and regularly massacre Palestinian civilians.
  5. Americans are no better. They have forced American Indians off their land, applied separate laws to them and regularly massacred American Indian civilians.
  6. Hitler is not uniquely evil. See above.
  7. Hitler’s intentions were good. He saw the Holocaust as doing the world a favour.
  8. It was the times! The West back then was nakedly racist. Racism had the backing of science. The book Hitler called his Bible was bought by over a million Americans: “The Passing of the Great Race” (1916) by Madison Grant, a rich New Yorker. The word genocide was not invented till 1943 and not properly defined till after the war – by the winners to condemn Hitler! We should not judge the past by current morals.
  9. We should be grateful. Germans invented the printing press, car, jet plane, rocket, etc. They gave us much of the modern medicine that allows most people to live past 40. Albert Schweitzer and other Germans have helped people in Africa. Condemning Hitler without pointing out all the good Germans have done is unbalanced and hypocritical.
  10. Get over it! It took place a long time ago. My family did not take part in it. No one you know was affected by it. Why make such a big deal about it? The past is dead and gone. There are more important issues.
  11. It is racist to talk about racism. Talking about anti-Semitism keeps it alive. Condemning Hitler is divisive.
  12. You can dismiss what Americans say about Hitler: they were his enemies; many of their journalists and historians are Jewish; their schools teach patriotic lies.

Every single one of these arguments, with the names changed, have been used on this blog to downplay American racism, slavery and genocide.

W.E.B. Du Bois:

there was no Nazi atrocity – concentration camps, wholesale maiming and murder, defilement of women or ghastly blasphemy of childhood – which the Christian civilization of Europe had not long been practicing against colored folk in all parts of the world in the name of and for the defense of a Superior Race born to rule the world.

Read original story here.

This piece was reprinted by Migrant Tales with permission.

 

Spiegel Online International: A case that successfully challenged ethnic profiling in Germany

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This story, which was published by German Spiegel Online International, offers some good points on how to challenge ethnic profiling. It’s pretty clear that this illegal practice goes on in Finland as well and is more widespread than believed.  

Migrant Tales asked in June blog entry: “How serious is ethnic profiling in Finland? Denials that it doesn’t occur at all by the police suggest that it may be a much wider problem than believed.”

Like any challenge facing society, we need proactive solutions. This story of a black German who was a victim of ethnic profiling on Spiegel Online International is not only inspiring, but offers hope: We can challenge such an injustice with our example.

An important matter to remember if you are harassed in public or are a victim of ethnic profiling and discrimination, is that it’s all about our children and grandchildren. We want them to live in a society that lives up to its values and that its laws should protect everyone.

The black German simply got tired of being constantly stopped by police because of his ethnic background.

“In the two years prior, they [police] had selected me about 10 times for a random check of my identification. It’s a pretty rotten feeling. I was born and raised here. I am German. According to the anti-discrimination law in the constitution, skin color is not grounds for a spot check.”

Read I didn’t want to be treated differently any longer here.

 

Finland’s mini Breivik: gunman kills two and wounds seven

Posted on by Migrant Tales

What motivates a young man to take the law in his own hands and kill indiscriminately defenseless people? While we still don’t know the motives behind the killings in Hyvinkää, the suspect’s “likes” on Facebook may offer us some clues. 

Writes YLE in English: ”Police in the town of Hyvinkää, some 50km north of Helsinki, say a young man dressed in military fatigues began shooting with a rifle from the roof of a building in the city centre at 1:53am Saturday…

An 18-year-old woman was killed. Another victim, a 19-year-old man, died later in a hospital. Seven other people have been hospitalised with gunshot wounds, including a 23-year-old woman police trainee, who has critical injuries.”

Human rights activist and writer, Jussi K. Niemelä, states that the suspect’s “likes” on Facebook suggest the usual far-right ideology. Some of the suspect’s “likes” include the anti-immigration Perussuomalaiset party, Bundeswher, the German Defense Force, and Simo Häyhä, a Finnish sniper nicknamed “White Death” by the Red Army during the Winter War (1939-40).

Some have called the gunman Finland’s Anders Breivik, who killed 77 victims in Norway.

While we have to wait for the final report by the police to know the killer’s probable motives, one matter is certain: The attack was senseless and reveals the illness that has inflicted our society today.  It is the same ogre that we saw kill innocent victims in Jokela and Kauhajoki.

Migrant Tales offers its heartfelt condolences to the families of the victims.

Far-right groups and anti-immigration extremists in Finland and Europe flirt with fascism

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By Enrique Tessieri

When far-right groups and anti-immigration extremists flirt with fascism nothing good can ever come out of it. Even if it sounds incredible, we have in Finland our own holocaust deniers and those who claim the Nuremberg Trials were  a farce.    

Has Perussuomalaiset MP Jussi Halla-aho, Olli Immonen, Juho Eerola and his aide Ulla Pyysalo as well as Kotka councilman Freddy Van Wonterghem ever seen war? I don’t mean playing a Playstation 3 war game or seeing a war movie, but suffering and witnessing the real thing?

When politicians make statements denying or playing down the Holocaust, state that the the Nuremberg Trials [see Natsi-Saksasta] were “a farce,” or openly admit they like Benito Mussolini and fascism, they are breathing life back to a beast that can terrorize Europe again.

Even if the fascism they like is different from the one we saw in the 1930s, it is the same ogre but in twenty-first century garb. The scapegoats and enemies may have changed, for example Muslims today and Jews before, but it is the same beast.

Rudolf Hoess, the Auschwitz commandant during 1940-43,  justified the death of an estimated 2.5 million with the following quote:  “I had my personal orders from [Heinrich] Himmler [to exterminate Jews]…Not justified [to exterminate so many people] – but Himmler told me that if the Jews were not exterminated at that time, then the German people would be exterminated for all time by the Jews.”

But there is a far bigger question that Auschwitz doesn’t answer right away: Does that type of systematic mass murder that took place there reveal the dark side of the Nazis or something worrying about us?  Do we all have the potential as a group to become mass murderers?

If we look at the former Soviet Union under Stalin, the systematic genocide committed against Amerindians by white Europeans, the terror that reigned under the Pol Pot regime of Kampuchea, China under Mao Tse Tsung, the slave trade and European colonization of Africa  as well as many other cases, they prove beyond any doubt that we are capable of  barbaric deeds.

It makes no sense to spread hatred and attack and victimize other human beings and groups. If you disagree you need to reread your history again, and again, and again.

The author at the gate of the Auschwitz concentration camp where it reads Arbei Macht Frei, “Work Makes (One) Free.” 

 Some 400,000 Hungarian Jews were exterminated in spring 1944 at Birkenau, or Auschwitz 2.

 The shoes of the victims that ended up in Auschwitz’ gas chambers.  

Speigel Online International: Study (on Muslims in Germany) Hints that Mutual Suspicion Is Slowing Integration

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Comment: Here is an interesting story on Speigel Online International that highlights the problem between white Germans and Muslims and one that we should try to avoid in Finland. When looking at immigrants in Germany, we should point out that that country never had the intention of keeping the millions of Turkish workers that migrated there in greater numbers from the 1960s. The expectation was that they’d work for a few years and return back with their children to their home country.

It is pretty clear that with such a widespread attitude very little can happen on the integration front. Chancellor Angela Merkel highlighted the problem by placing the blame squarely on immigrants by stating that Germany’s multicultural society has “utterly failed.” 

A new study by the interior ministry appears to reinforce what Merkel said in October. One of the result of the survey shows that 20% of Muslims in the country are skeptical when it comes to integration.

Fine. But the question should be what has Germany done to make Muslims feel a part of German society. Even the interior ministry survey is one-sided and places blame on Muslims for not wanting to integrate, it fails to look at the host society. 

While Hans-Peter Uhl, the parliamentary spokesman on domestic policy for Mekel’s conservatives, called the study “horrifying,” others take a different view. “I find it surprising that the interior ministry has once again used taxpayer money to finance a study that creates headlines but no insights,” said Serkan Tören, an integration expert for the business-friendly Free Democrats, Merkel’s junior coalition partner.

Volker Beck of the Green Party went further. She said that those that see Muslims solely as a threat should stop telling them that they aren’t a part of our society. “They shouldn’t be surprised when that leads to defensiveness,” she said. 

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By Charles Hawley

A new integration study released on Thursday has triggered yet another debate about the role of Islam in Germany. The report found that a surprising number of non-German Muslims are skeptical about integrating into society. But the country’s own doubts about immigration may have muddied the data.

Read whole story.

The "us"-and-"them" smoking-gun statement that once justified mass murder in Europe

Posted on by Migrant Tales

One of the matters that surprises me about some politicians in Europe and Finland continue to flirt with ideologies that led Europe down a path of near-total destruction in the 1940s. The younger they are, and the further their time perspective of those times, the more they appear to flirt and idolize with fascism. To them I would like to give them a quote by Rudolf Hoess, the notorious commandant of the Aushcwitz concentration camp during 1940-43. 

When we speak of fascism we should put it in a 2010s context. It has different enemies but is the same political beast.

In order to understand the horrors of World War 2 and especially those of the Nazi régime, a very good starting point to understand those harrowing times is reading up on the Nuremberg Trials.

Hoess was not tried at Nuremberg but in Poland, where he was tried by a Polish military tribunal and hanged at Auschwitz on April 7, 1947.

One of the matters that strikes you when you read about Hoess, and all those that were tried for genocide and war crimes after the war, is how they played down their roles.

There is one quote by Hoess that, in my opinion, gives us the smoking gun to the madness, racism, hatred and mass murder that roamed Europe freely at the time.

This is how Hoess justified what he did that caused the death of about 2.5 million Jews at Auschwitz.*

Hoess: “I had my personal orders from [Heinrich] Himmler [to exterminate Jews].”

Question: “Did you ever protest?”

Hoess: “I couldn’t do that. The reasons Himmler gave me I had to accept.”

Question: “In other words, you think it was justified to kill 2.5 million men, women, and children?”

Hoess: “Not justified – but Himmler told me that if the Jews were not exterminated at that time, then the German people would be exterminated for all time by the Jews.”

The last quote by Hoess is chilling and reveals the smoking gun that justified mass murder by the Nazi régime. What is even scarier today is that it is still used by people to justify their racism and declarations of wars against other groups. Some of these are groups, politicians and individuals who claim that Muslims will take over Europe. They make up their stories with the help of high birth rates and a pocket calculator.

If predicting the future were so easy, then we have invented a time machine to the future (sic!).

* Leo Goldensohn: Nuremberg Interviews. Vintage Books. New York 2004. p. 296.

Spiegel Online International: Racism in Germany – A Story of Death Threats and Casual Insults

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Comment: Here is another story published by Spiegel Online International on the harrowing experiences of a family in Germany perpetrated by a far-right group.

Migrant Tales has published and commented on a number of stories about the worrying rise and crimes of the far right in Germany.  In Finland, we have seen the rise of similar parties as well. If we want to know what kind of a threat they represent to our society, Germany would be a good place to begin. 

Writes Spiegel Online International:  “Four weeks was the amount of time that passed between the two death threats the Krause family (eds. note: not their real name) found in their mailbox. The first letter came in August 2011. The sender had cut letters out of a newspaper to form a message warning that Mr. Krause and his family would be killed if they didn’t leave Germany.

Why? Because Mrs. Krause and the couple’s two children have dark skin. Because Mrs. Krause comes from East Africa.

The second letter came in September, and the sender spent far less time on it. He simply drew four crosses on a sheet of white paper — one for each member of the family. For the son, for the daughter, for Mr. Krause and for Mrs. Krause.”

What is the lesson we can learn from Germany on racism and far-right groups? 

Silence is a poor response to such an ominous threat to our society. 

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Germany was shocked to learn the extent of the crimes committed by a recently uncovered right-wing extremist group. But racism is hardly an anomaly in Germany. One family’s experience shows just how widespread prejudice and hate really is.

Read whole story.

Spiegel Online International: Neo-Nazi Killings Expose Broad German Xenophobia

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Comment: If you want to learn about how to treat neo-Nazi and far right parties, Germany would be the place to begin your search. Due to the horrific things that happened in Germany under the Nazi regime, the Germans if anyone know how self-destructive racism and xenophobia can be. 

Taking into account the rise of a populist party like the Perussuomalaiset (PS) that is anti-EU, anti-immigration and above all anti-Muslim, will we see in Finland more far-right parties gaining strength? If this happens, we have nobody else to blame than ourselves.  

We should not lay a red carpet for far-right parties. We lay a red carpet and bow to them whenever we are silent and don’t ask serious questions like journalist Lisa Bjurwald does in her latest book, “Euroopan häpeä – Rasistien voittokulku.”

Like the Spiegel Online International story below, which shows how neo-Nazi groups have been killing immigrants in Germany, an eerie question stares back at us: When will it happen here, especially after the horrific events that took place in Norway on July 22? 

During these very difficult times when racism and xenophobia are raising their heads in Finland, it is important that we look at countries where these types of social ills have been a problem before. Germany is one of these countries. 

Writes Spiegel Online International: “When racism raises its ugly specter in Germany, the response has always been the same: block it out, look the other way, change the subject. No one says anything when a woman in a supermarket in Greifswald is spit on because she looks Asian.” 

Just like neo-Nazi killings expose broad German xenophobia and racism, we should be just as concerned about the rise of these social ills in Finland. 

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A Commentary by Stefan Kuzmany

The discovery of a neo-Nazi terror cell in Germany has many concerned about the country’s reputation. With good reason. Racism and xenophobia have deep roots in German society — and the vocabulary used to describe the right-wing extremist crime spree is telling.

Read whole story.

Spiegel Online International: Skulls of Colonial Victims Returned to Namibia

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Comment: This gruesome story on Spiegel Online International is dedicated to all those in the Finland and the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party who  still continue to believe in racial superiority of the white man over other ethnicities. True, white racists in Europe don’t make such a distinction so clearly as in the early part of last century but it is still there behind the true context of their statements.

Instead of saying that such an ethnic group is “inferior” compared with one’s own, they speak of cultural differences. How many times have we heard these groups state that “x” is so barbaric that they could never be part of our society?They are saying, in effect, what some were saying in the early part of last century: We are superior to this group.  They can never be like us and therefore are excluded and rejected. 

In history there are too many grim example of the barbarism that Europeans carried out on other groups. Certainly World War I and II were rude wake up calls that revealed our potential for barbarism.

The Piltdown Man hoax is another example of academia’s collusion in maintaining myths about our national superiority.

All of the European colonizers committed atrocities in Africa. The story below by Spiegel Online International tells about what the Germans did in modern Namibia.

The German online newsmagazine writes: “The story of how the remains came to be transported back to Germany is horrific. They belonged to the victims of German colonial troops, killed mercilessly following a Herero uprising in January 1904 which left 123 Germans dead. After the decisive Battle of Waterberg in August 1904, the Herero fled into the desert towards Botswana, pursued by German troops. Thousands were killed as they fled; out of a reported 80,000, only around 15,000 reached the neighboring country. The massacre is considered to be among the first genocides of the 20th century.

In October 1904, the German commander in Namibia, General Lothar von Trotha, gave his infamous order to kill any Herero, armed or not, found within the limits of German colonial territory. The skulls in Berlin, which mostly came from Herero who had died in prison camps, were sent back to Germany for supposed scientific studies aimed at underpinning the doctrine of racial superiority of Europeans over Africans.”

What kind of stain is this on our European history and are we still playing the same game today but differently?

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Germany revisits the dark chapter of its brief colonial history this week with the return of 20 skulls belonging to genocide victims in a former colony. A Namibian delegation is in Berlin to take home the remains of those killed more than a century ago. This could be just the beginning of such reconciliations.

Read whole story.

SPIEGEL Interview with Economics Minister Rösler: “I Used to Dream I Was a Vietnamese Prince”

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Comment: Below is a very interesting interview with Vietnamese-born German Economics Minister Philipp Rösler on Spiegel Online. Rösler was brought up in a German family when he was nine months old. Rösler is for many immigrants and Germans of immigrant descent a role model.

The economic minister also questions indirectly Angela Merkel’s claim in October that multiculturalism has failed.  Spiegel asked him if Germany’s policies towards immigrants have been too indulgent with those who refuse to integrate. “My belief is that our policies have offered too little, in terms of language courses for example,” he said. “Punishment shouldn’t be our first response.”

Another interesting point Rösler made was on Muslims living in Germany. “There are around 4 million Muslims in the country and they to help to shape it, so yes, it’s also correct to say that Islam belongs in Germany.”

He had good advice for those that ridicule immigrants and minorities.  “How is someone supposed to become part of society when he or she is told from the beginning, “You’re not really a part of us?”

In my opinion, the last statement, “You’re not really a part of us,” is what exposes the true nature of the anti-immigration beast of parties like the Perussuomalaiset. 

How are people supposed to integrate and embrace our culture if these groups are constantly building walls around Finland?

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German Economics Minister Philipp Rösler, who was adopted into a German family from Vietnam at a young age, insists that he never had problems because of his background. He spoke with SPIEGEL about integration, discrimination and what it means to be German.

Read whole story.