tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20375322.post-26370771507624384112007-04-05T16:02:00.000-07:002007-04-05T16:07:34.857-07:00Germans are the most gifted and most highly educated people who ever devoted the full strength of a modern state to stopping the exchange of ideas; they are the most highly organized people who ever devoted all the coercive power of government to the abolition of their own intellectual life; they are the most learned people who ever pretended to believe that the premises and the conclusion of all inquiry may be fixed by political fiat."<br />Walter Lippmann. (1936), The Good Society<br />In 1939 my father, who always wanted his children to "fight through the smog<br />of propaganda and see the truth," took me to Union City New Jersey, not far from our home, to witness German American Bund members march through the streets, swastikas and all. I remember him shouting swear words at them in Russian and English. We joined other members of his trade-Union there. I was fifteen and confused. "Why?" I kept asking him, "are they not Americans?"<br />"Because they are afraid to be called un-German" was his answer. He explained that from the early thirties The German Students' Association conducted a propaganda campaign named "Against the Un-German Spirit" that led to the idiotic book burning.<br />and masochistic destruction of wonderful German culture that began to bloom again following the First World War.<br />Many first and second generation German Americans were afraid to oppose Nazism for fear they would be classified as" UN-German" and their life in the German communities in which they lived would become unpleasant. .<br />A February 1939 rally was held claiming that white gentiles were the "true American patriots and German Americans who did not understand that Hitler was their leader were Un-Germans." This Madison Square Garden rally drew a crowd of 20,000 who consistently booed President Franklin D. Roosevelt and chanted the Nazi salutation "Heil Hitler."<br />The German American Bund closely cooperated with the "Christian Front" organized by the anti-Semitic priest Father Charles Coughlin who spewed anti-Semitic<br />Hatred from his radio pulpit.<br />Does it all sound familiar? Perhaps Walter Lippmann could say the same thing about present day Israel.<br />Today in 2007 young Jews know very little, if anything, about the campaign to make Young German Americans afraid to be called UN-German and to make it unpleasant for them in their own community. Even if they did, I doubt that it would make any difference for as Henry David Thoreau said, "Every generation laughs at the old and follows religiously the new."<br />No, I am not Un-Jewish or a Jewish self-hater, or anti-Semitic. I am opposed to the atrocities perpetrated against the Palestinian people by out of control Zionism and I stand with the peace makers in Israel.<br />David Truskoff<br />www.erols.com/suttonbearDavid Truskoffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16870362123720973570noreply@blogger.com