More Echoes
Oliver Kamm introduces me to yet another set of splendid characters from modern British history. He cites the book "Semi-detached Idealists: The British Peace Movement and International Relations, 1854-1945," which I've added to my Amazon wish-list though it will be long before I can afford it.
And he quote the Marquess of Tavistock, founder of the pro-Nazi and antisemitic British People's Party, who served on the national council of the PPU through 1943. "In Peace News, 30 October 1942, he invoked the following rationalisation for Nazi aggression in Europe:
Then there's Vera Brittain. "In one of her regular letters to her fellow-campaigners, on 3 May 1945, Vera Brittain maintained that the gas chambers were being publicised by the allies:
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Like a lot of people raised in my generation, I was mistrustful of U.S. military power, and selfish goals. Like a lot of people, I was endlessly reciting the litany of "stupid American" stories and jokes.
I used to regard America as almost God-like in its invulnerability. Thus I naturally had a root-for-the-underdog identification with any people or group I felt as a victim of U.S. power. Like you'd slap a bad kid for kicking a dog. The slap won't hurt the child, but the kick could kill the dog.
Then I saw the reeking ruins in New York city. 3,000 dead -- people just like me, who probably told the same jokes and held the same views. Why dead? Because they were Americans. The whole edifice of the country was shaken, and it made me realize, this place is mortal, like any nation. Like the moment you realize that, someday, your parents are going to die, it changes you.
When I looked at America, for all its flaws, against its enemies, and all their purposes, I knew which I preferred, which side I was going to give my whole support. And when I looked at the way the rest of the world reacted to us -- telling us we deserved it, still more frightened of us than of anything else, a world where a hot-selling book in France right now is called "50 Good Reasons to Hate Americans" -- I saw the fruits of unrestrained America-bashing as clearly as I saw them in the ruins in New York when my son and I went up there.
Several times I read the words from the rest of the world and heard in my head the response, paraphrased from Shakespeare, "When you cut us, do we not bleed?"
Killing the Americans didn't start on 9/11. It is at least as old as the Palestinian hijacking of the '80s, when the Americans were routinely singled out on international flights and beaten to death.
It's a result of resentment of American power, you say? Very well, the Germans in the 1930s started killing the Jews not because they felt the Jews were weak, but because they were terrified of the supposed power the Jews had in the world.
John Middleton Murry, editor of the pacifist journal "Peace News" during WWII, wrote in that magazine on 9 August 1940:
Personally I don't believe that a Hitlerian Europe would be quite so terrible as most people believe it would be.
And he quote the Marquess of Tavistock, founder of the pro-Nazi and antisemitic British People's Party, who served on the national council of the PPU through 1943. "In Peace News, 30 October 1942, he invoked the following rationalisation for Nazi aggression in Europe:
... the very serious provocation which many Jews have given by their avarice and arrogance when exploiting Germany's financial difficulties, by their associations with commercialized vice, and by their monopolization of certain professions."
Then there's Vera Brittain. "In one of her regular letters to her fellow-campaigners, on 3 May 1945, Vera Brittain maintained that the gas chambers were being publicised by the allies:
... partly, at least, in order to divert attention from the havoc produced in German cities by allied obliteration bombing.
Thus an ethical objection to war - grossly misguided, but not inherently ignoble - became a position indifferent to tyranny and genocide, uncomprehending of the moral imperative of combating evil, and even complicit in support of that evil."
Like a lot of people raised in my generation, I was mistrustful of U.S. military power, and selfish goals. Like a lot of people, I was endlessly reciting the litany of "stupid American" stories and jokes.
I used to regard America as almost God-like in its invulnerability. Thus I naturally had a root-for-the-underdog identification with any people or group I felt as a victim of U.S. power. Like you'd slap a bad kid for kicking a dog. The slap won't hurt the child, but the kick could kill the dog.
Then I saw the reeking ruins in New York city. 3,000 dead -- people just like me, who probably told the same jokes and held the same views. Why dead? Because they were Americans. The whole edifice of the country was shaken, and it made me realize, this place is mortal, like any nation. Like the moment you realize that, someday, your parents are going to die, it changes you.
When I looked at America, for all its flaws, against its enemies, and all their purposes, I knew which I preferred, which side I was going to give my whole support. And when I looked at the way the rest of the world reacted to us -- telling us we deserved it, still more frightened of us than of anything else, a world where a hot-selling book in France right now is called "50 Good Reasons to Hate Americans" -- I saw the fruits of unrestrained America-bashing as clearly as I saw them in the ruins in New York when my son and I went up there.
Several times I read the words from the rest of the world and heard in my head the response, paraphrased from Shakespeare, "When you cut us, do we not bleed?"
Killing the Americans didn't start on 9/11. It is at least as old as the Palestinian hijacking of the '80s, when the Americans were routinely singled out on international flights and beaten to death.
It's a result of resentment of American power, you say? Very well, the Germans in the 1930s started killing the Jews not because they felt the Jews were weak, but because they were terrified of the supposed power the Jews had in the world.
