The European parliament elections last week have provided further graphic evidence that Britain and Europe are in the throes of a profound political and cultural upheaval.

In Britain, Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party pulverized both Labour and the Conservatives by winning many more seats than either to become the largest single party in the European parliament – within just five weeks of being created.

Since Farage’s party stands for Britain leaving the European Union with no withdrawal deal, many Conservatives rightly believe that whoever they elect as their new leader (and therefore Britain’s prime minister) in the wake of Theresa May’s resignation will need to endorse a no-deal departure to have any chance of saving the party from total destruction.

That’s because they understand from this electoral meltdown that the fury of their mainly Brexit-supporting voters over the Conservative government’s failure to honor the 2016 referendum vote, exacerbated by the refusal of the Remainer-dominated parliament to leave with no deal, is off the scale.

Among other EU countries, which are similarly witnessing a revolt by the people against the erosion of their democratic independence and social cohesion, these elections produced a parallel collapse of mainstream parties and a rise of “populist” nationalists.

Many Jews have greeted these developments with unbridled horror. In Europe, they see the “populist” tide as threatening the resurgence of fascism and anti-Semitism. In Britain, Jewish community leaders try to paint Nigel Farage as an ally of the far-right and as an anti-Semite.

These reactions range from the grossly oversimplified, blinkered and ignorant to the grotesque.

Farage is no anti-Semite. He has repeatedly attacked the anti-Jewish policies of countries that ban Israeli Jews from entering. Remarks he has made about “globalists” and the “new world order” have been wrenched out of context to suggest falsely that he was talking about Jews rather than the EU. Other remarks about the Israel lobby in America have been similarly cherry-picked and distorted.

Farage, a friend of U.S. President Donald Trump, is himself a somewhat Trumpian figure – a loudmouth who is careless about both his language and the company he keeps,, rough-hewn round the edges.

Of course, his association with President Trump is enough by itself to finish him off in the minds of many Trump-hating Jews, for whom the most pro-Jewish, pro-Israel individual ever to have inhabited the White House looms nightmarishly instead as a supposed eminence grise to the Ku Klux Klan.

In mainland Europe, however, the situation is more complicated. The mainstream media, along with many Jews, tends to view all who want to uphold their country’s culture and democratic independence as “far-right” nationalists.

Some of these upstart parties are indeed troubling. In Germany, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) has Nazi origins.

In Austria, a corruption scandal involving the leader of the Freedom Party, which was part of the governing coalition despite its neo-Nazi links, has now brought the government down. Yet despite the furor, the Freedom Party’s voter support has remained broadly stable.

Hungary’s undeniably illiberal leader Viktor Orbán perceives that liberalism threatens the survival of his country by undermining its bedrock values, such as the family and cultural traditions.

Both Hungary and Poland are led by nationalists who are defending the integrity of their countries that was sacrificed to Hitler and Stalin. They resist Muslim immigration because they don’t want their populations to suffer the social disruption and dangers with which mass Muslim migration is now so obviously blighting other European countries.

Certainly, Hungary and Poland are themselves still riddled with anti-Semitism; and yet, right now, Hungary is arguably the safest country in Europe for Jews.

So why are so many getting so much of this so wrong? There are a number of reasons. First, there’s the implacable refusal to acknowledge that so many Muslims refuse to assimilate into Western culture. There’s a parallel refusal to acknowledge the rampant anti-Semitism they have brought with them, which is causing violence and intimidation against Jews across Western Europe.

Second, there is the stubborn insistence that the main threat of anti-Semitism is on “the right” when all the evidence suggests that the far bigger problem is on the left.

Progressive circles are institutionally anti-Jew, often (but by no means always) expressed through anti-Zionism. In Britain, the Labour Party is now being formally investigated by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which has received thousands of examples of Jew-hatred by party members.

The Greens, those populists of the left who also did well in the European elections, have a persistent problem with anti-Jewish prejudice. Britain’s Campaign Against Antisemitism cites Green Party members airing conspiracy theories about Jewish money-controlling politics, “Zionist pedophile rings,” or links between Israel and both Nazism and the Islamic State group.

In the United States, The New York Times recently bemoaned the resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe, though suggested that President Trump and Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu were helping fuel it.

This was preposterous on many counts – not least that one of the institutions that can reasonably be said to be helping fuel western anti-Semitism is The New York Times.

Its international edition recently published a disgusting cartoon depicting Netanyahu as a dog wearing a Star of David collar, leading a kippa clad President Trump.

A short while before that, its literary pages published a review by novelist Alice Walker recommending a book by the virulent anti-Semite and conspiracy theorist David Icke. All this quite apart from the obsessional lengths to which the paper goes to demonize, dehumanize and delegitimize Israel, which it singles out alone in the world for such treatment.

In Germany, where the Commissioner for Jewish Life, Felix Klein, recently warned Jews not to wear a kippa in public, the huge increase in anti-Jewish attacks is officially blamed on the rise of the far-right.

Yet among German Jews who have experienced anti-Semitic harassment, many believe their assailants were Muslim extremists. According to Klein, the official line is unreliable because when it’s unclear who the perpetrators are, the authorities automatically classify them as far-right.

The third mistake being made is to assume that nationalism means fascism and anti-Semitism.

But it wasn’t nationalism that led to Nazism. A lethal cocktail of resentment, humiliation and racial theories fueled not German nationalism but Nazi imperialism, the desire to subjugate or destroy other countries and cultures.

If Britain hadn’t had such a strong sense of national identity in 1940, it would never have stood alone against Hitler.

It’s where national culture and identity are weak or denied altogether that anti-Semitism roars out of control. Far from the EU being a bulwark against all this, its erosion of national identity and democracy are actually incubating it.

The desire of the vast majority to uphold their nation’s culture, with democratically elected legislatures passing laws reflecting that shared national project, is not a route to the destruction of liberty, tolerance and decency. It is, in fact, the only way to defend them.

No one can tell how this great battle for national identity and culture will end. But in the all-too likely chaos, the Jews, alas, are likely to find themselves in the firing line from all sides.

Source: https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/europe-starts-to-fray-at-the-seams/

The post Europe starts to fray at the seams first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Illustrative: In this photo from August 11, 2017, multiple white nationalist groups march with torches through the University of Virginia campus in Charlottesville, Virginia. (Mykal McEldowney/The Indianapolis Star via AP)

Not since the demise of Nazi Germany have fears — and ambitions — of a so-called “Fourth Reich” reached their current level of intensity, according to the author of a new book.

In “The Fourth Reich: The Specter of Nazism from World War II to the Present,” historian Gavriel D. Rosenfeld brings his counterfactual “what if” approach to the idea of a new empire based on Nazi ideals. It’s a dystopian future founded on a decades-old phenomenon.

“The case of postwar Germany makes it clear that western fears about a Nazi return to power were far from unfounded and that the concerns about a Fourth Reich served a useful function in making people vigilant about defending against such a possibility,” said Rosenfeld in an exchange with The Times of Israel.

A professor of history and Judaic studies at Fairfield University in Connecticut, Rosenfeld has published books on topics including the “normalization” of Nazism and sacred Jewish architecture after Auschwitz.

In Rosenfeld’s assessment, today the idea of a Fourth Reich has entered an unprecedented heyday.

“The Fourth Reich is currently experiencing a new phase of normalization,” wrote Rosenfeld, whose latest book was published in March. “Thanks to the tumultuous political upheaval throughout the western world, the concept is becoming increasingly universalized. The election of Donald Trump, the many unending conflicts in the Middle East, and the continuing crisis of the European Union have made the prospect of a future Reich highly relevant.”

In Europe, according to Rosenfeld, the prospect of a Fourth Reich is raised by European Union critics on both the Left and Right: Some claim Germany has turned the EU into a kind of economic Reich. Across the Atlantic in the United States, the Fourth Reich is invoked by anti-Trump protesters, some of whose posters and memes include Nazi imagery.

The concept of a Fourth Reich, wrote Rosenfeld, is “invoked in times of crisis and [fades] in times of stability.”

Gavriel Rosenfeld’s photo of his 2019 book (courtesy)

The first intense fears of a Nazi revival occurred during Denazification, the period when former Nazi supporters were expected to transition “from werewolves to democrats,” as Rosenfeld titled an early chapter. The most significant threat was posed by a radical right-wing underground group called Deutsche Revolution, whose top-line members included Klaus Barbie, the so-called Butcher of Lyon.

Deutsche Revolution’s plan was to infiltrate its people among British occupation authorities, with the ultimate purpose of convincing Britain to turn against Russia. In return for working against the Russians, Deutsche Revolution expected to receive “a series of Allied concessions: most notably, an end to Denazification, the release of Nazis from internment camps, the return of Germany’s eastern territories from Poland, and an end to economic reparations,” wrote Rosenfeld.

The threat posed by Deutsche Revolution activists and their vision of a Fourth Reich became so acute that the Allies enacted “Operation Selection Board,” a nighttime raid in which several thousand Allied troops “fanned out across Western occupation zones in frigid weather to arrest more than one hundred suspects associated with the Deutsche Revolution,” wrote Rosenfeld.

Klaus Barbie, head of Gestapo activities in Nazi-occupied France, at his post-war trial (public domain)

Many of the radicals who were arrested that night were former SS and Wehrmacht officers, according to Rosenfeld. There were also mid-level bureaucrats, the people needed to turn orders into action and who never appeared on trial at Nuremberg or in Jerusalem.

“It is easy to imagine ways in which the conspiracy might have been more successful,” wrote Rosenfeld of the episode. For example, if the radicals had taken advantage of tensions that developed later between the West and Russia, Deutsche Revolution’s goals might have gained wider acceptance among Germans. This would have strengthened the radical right, according to the author.

‘Fictional form of vengeance’

Beginning in the 1960s, pop culture in the US became obsessed with evil. A wave of books on the Fourth Reich kept people afraid of Nazis while simultaneously allowing readers to triumph over Germany’s wartime evil in a posthumous manner, according to Rosenfeld.

“Horror tales were especially popular, whether about satanic possession, serial killers, the paranormal, zombies, or psychopaths,” wrote Rosenfeld. “[Stories about] the Fourth Reich satisfied this interest in evil by featuring Nazi perpetrators committing acts of murder theft, military aggression and genocide,” wrote the historian.

Historian Gavriel Rosenfeld (courtesy)

A central element of the Fourth Reich genre was that readers were able to witness “Nazis paying for their crimes with their lives,” wrote Rosenfeld. People were able to channel their anger about real Nazis having “evaded justice for their crimes” into a “vicarious, fictional form of vengeance,” he wrote.

Tied to the development of Fourth Reich literature was the spread of Holocaust awareness, said the author. During the Eichmann Trial and through film, people were exposed to the genocide’s graphic aspects.

Some observers tried to “universalize” the Holocaust’s “significance by expanding its relevance to subjects that are unrelated, but ostensibly similar,” Rosenfeld told The Times of Israel.

“For example, left-wing activists who accused the Johnson and Nixon administrations of being a Nazi-like Fourth Reich because of American crimes in Vietnam [created] a polemical/rhetorical tool to raise awareness about a present-day concern,” said Rosenfeld.

Some of these activists “were motivated by their political agendas to elide the differences between the Nazi genocide of the Jews and present-day American deeds,” said Rosenfeld.

The politics of Nazism took center stage in Skokie, Illinois, when the National Socialist Party of America attempted to hold a march in the center of town in 1977. The struggle of Illinois authorities to block the gathering made it all the way to the US Supreme Court, which affirmed the neo-Nazis’ rights to the freedoms of expression and assembly.

Anti-Nazi activists in Skokie, Illinois, on July 4, 1977 (public domain)

---

The “Skokie Affair” occurred toward the end of the so-called “long 1970s,” an era in which the moral clarity of the immediate post-war era gave way to Nazi-based kitsch, explained Rosenfeld. In place of the Nuremberg Trials’ stark justice, SS men were transformed into “stock villains” and “superficial symbols,” wrote Rosenfeld.

“As the prospect of a Fourth Reich was becoming internationalized, its significance was becoming universalized,” wrote Rosenfeld. “Precisely as this happened, however, signs of a reaction against it became visible in the nascent efforts to aestheticize the Fourth Reich by stripping it of its moral and political significance.”

‘Muting the siren call’

As an academic cross-over book, “The Fourth Reich” is intended to wake people from complacency about the state of world affairs.

“The only way to mute the siren call of the Fourth Reich is to know its full history,” wrote Rosenfeld. “Although it is increasingly difficult in our present-day world of fake ‘facts’ and deliberate disinformation to forge a consensus about historical truth, we have no alternative but to pursue it.”

Neo-Nazi leader Frank Collin calls off the Skokie march in 1978 (public domain)

---

A major problem, according to Rosenfeld, is that few people understand the “historical appeal” of the Fourth Reich. This understanding is a prerequisite for prevention, wrote the author. In the US, for example, some people are making Fourth Reich analogies that “grossly exaggerate” what is taking place, said Rosenfeld.

“I have mixed feelings about employing Nazi analogies and terminology to criticize present-day American politics,” Rosenfeld told The Times of Israel. “On the one hand, invoking the Fourth Reich to attack Donald Trump, as some left-wing activists have done, is a gross exaggeration and, like the terms ‘Nazi’ and ‘fascist,’ can be viewed as overly alarmist and fall victim to the perils of ‘crying wolf,’” said the author.

At the same time, “Nazi analogies, if handled soberly — i.e., so as to expose differences as well as similarities — have their place in analyzing American trends.”

The cover of the latest issue of the German magazine Stern depicting US President Donald Trump extending his arm in a Nazi salute. (Screen capture: YouTube)

“On the other hand, it would be irresponsible to ignore the right-wing turn in American (and European) political life and not examine the possible ways in which it may contain the potential for something more serious,” said Rosenfeld.

Although the “siren call” of the Fourth Reich might be spreading around the world, Rosenfeld sees little in recent American history that portends a revival of National Socialism on American shores.

“People had ample reason, of course, for fearing German recidivism, whereas there are objectively fewer reasons for fearing such a turn in American life,” Rosenfeld told The Times of Israel.

Rosenfeld cautioned, “We’d be naive to think it impossible.”

Source: https://www.timesofisrael.com/siren-call-of-a-fourth-reich-is-spreading-warns-nazi-germany-expert/

The post ‘Siren call’ of a Fourth Reich is spreading, warns Nazi Germany expert first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.