Banal as they may seem to me, to many others Cohen’s comments generated a wide variety of commentary to iht.com.
However, too much of it seemed to come from deep seated feelings of guilt and an apparent belated sense of self-exculpation. Sad and sadder as I read lotsa comments. Maybe too many comments coming from what I like to call conventional wisdom. But two posters stood out for me. First from a non-European:
The quote from Faust speaks of and to humanity, not just Germany. These pictures are yet another reminder (not the only one) of the potential for great good and great evil that are part of the ordinary human intellectual and psychological condition, and the danger of unchallenged dogma in societies everywhere. These were ordinary people. That is the real lesson of all holocausts.
[2] Posted by: Chris Noble, Winchester, MA — 24 September 2007 7:56 am
There were many from European posters, but this excerpt stood out for me:
Think of Nazi Germany, the behaviour of the US and British governments, France in Vietnam and Algeria, the KKK, the Israeli army and so many of the Zionists, and all with the support of millions, of tens of millions of civilians; those caring, indoctrinated patriots. The list of countries and peoples and events is long and grows. The USA, Britain and others are fearful for their soldiers and mourn, but don’t care a fig for the Iraqi dead – I never detected a tear in the N.Y. or the London Times. Weep for 48,000 dead and missing in Vietnam; but the more than 1,500,000 dead Vietnamese? Never a thought! They are dead And I didn’t know them. Why bring up such an uncomfortable idea. And anyway, they were commie SOBs.
Was it necessary to drop the second atomic bomb on Japan? Why do you ask such an uncomfortable question? And anyway, they were Jap SOBs.
Does this sound familiar? Mr. Cohen.
The mentality, the morality, the motivation of those who do these things never changes, and we do not attempt to change it, and our governments show no interest in change.
We are all guilty, even you Mr. Cohen.
[45] Posted by: Alan Buckle, Maria Ellend, Austria+ — 24 September 2007 9:37 am
The last words above may seem a form of self-exculpation, but after reading about Spain, the USSR, France and other countries like Chamberlain’s Britain, I feel the special nausea of a refugee from Barcelona in July 1936 and France in 1940 reading too many self-serving commentaries.
Even a quick overview reading of Arthur Koestler’s provocative title about ex-pat life in late ’30s France, The Scum of the Earth, can only leave one the heavy feeling of being part of the collective guilt for the Holocaust visited on the scum of Europe, including about 6 million Jews, by Hitler, Stalin and all their Eichmann-act alikes.
Mr. Cohen, no words can appease that feeling. Certainly the violence being practiced on Palestinian “scum” today by a holier than thou regime in Isreal is only too reminiscent of what has happened to so many scum-like folk in human history in Europe and every other part of the “civilized global community”.
Mr. K. Hocker paid a price in the end but that also was banal.
I say to all those who blame the very human reaction of the Newberry’s of our “civilized” Western World, it’s too easy to sit there and blame! But to really do something is not so easy.
Just consider how the US pundits spend lots of words pointing out how easily a “good” Republican candidate for the US presidency could turn the 2008 vote on its head! It happened elsewhere and it could happen again mostly because human banality is every where, even in Washington DC and Topeka et al.
