Cambridge Analytica

Were the directors, managers and staff of Cambridge Analytica – the company that turned out to be so instrumental in the election success of Trump – all Trump supporters? Or was their willingness to use their tradecraft pure greed? Do they not care who they serve, as they prostitute their brains, as long as they get richer?  How far are such people willing to go?

Professionals of all sorts who knowingly serve evil or dangerous ends, should be made to suffer social pariah status. Whether undermining democracy turns out to be legal is not the issue. The question is whether it is moral. We do not want such people in our midst. Kick them out. If you have friends working for such companies – unfriend them.

It is easy to concentrate one’s hate on figures such as Trump, Netanyahu or even Hitler. More must be done to disable the enablers. Those characterless enablers, who get richer and richer by serving evil.

On making the right decisions

Some years ago, I spoke to an elderly German couple, who admitted to have voted for Hitler when he first came to power. They explained: “you cannot imagine how dangerous the Communists were, at the time.”

So much for making the right decisions.

Metaphors change

We cannot say that we have not been warned: Some six months ago, Turkey’s president, explained that his craving for more power, has precedent and brought Hitler’s Germany as an example.

Now we have stage II: In the aftermath of last week’s putsch attempt, thousands, probably tens of thousands, have been arrested. Erdogan, who has promised to bring in the death penalty, explained that "they will pay a heavy price for this. This uprising is a gift from God to us because this will be a reason to cleanse our army." 

Erdogan spoke of the need to “clean the virus responsible for the coup.” The virus being the purported "terror group", led by Erdogan’s former associate, Fethullah Gülen.  

Going back to the role models, brings to mind the “night of the long knives”, in which Hitler had the head of the SA, Ernst Röhm, killed. Röhm had been a close friend and ally, who had become too powerful for the rest of Hitler’s team. As Hitler and his associates set to dismantle Röhm’s organisation, Hitler explained, “I gave the order to cauterise down to the raw flesh the ulcers of this poisoning of the wells in our domestic life.”   

Virus or ulcers poisoning the wells… Metaphors change.

Hitler in London

 

London’s former mayor, public school educated, or rather mal-educated Boris Johnson, who is a leading figure in the Brexit movement, explained why the British should vote to get out of the EU: “Napoleon, Hitler, various people tried this out, and it ends tragically. The EU is an attempt to do this by different methods.”

Hitler seems to be forever useful: a few weeks ago, there was a great uproar in the British Labour party after Johnson’s predecessor as mayor of London, Labour party’s Ken Livingstone, explained that Hitler supported Zionism.

Why did they not boo Netanyahu off the stage?

Netanyahu in a speech he gave last week to delegates of the Zionist World Congress in Jerusalem, invented the following dialogue that he claimed took place between the Palestinian Mufti, Haj Amin al-Husseini and Adolf Hitler during their 1941 meeting in Berlin in:

"He flew to Berlin. Hitler didn’t want to exterminate the Jews at the time, he wanted to expel the Jews. And Haj Amin al-Husseini went to Hitler and said, 'If you expel them, they'll all come here.' 'So what should I do with them?' he asked. He said, 'Burn them'."

What accusation can be worse than to have instilled Auschwitz in Hitler’s mind? Propaganda must be simple and I just love the idea of Hitler – in typical Hitler manner - sitting there and asking the Mufti advice or even instructions: “so what should I do?” In his desire to blame Palestinians, Netanyahu almost whitewashed Hitler. The world has stopped listening to his ranting about Iran as the perpetrator of the next Holocaust and now it’s the Palestinians who are and always have been out to annihilate the Jews.   

Does Netanyahu believe the bullshit he utters? Did the former President of Iran, Ahmedinejad, believe his claim that the Holocaust is a myth? Did promoters of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” believe them to be true or was political expediency behind their emergence and re-emergence?

Netanyahu has form. He has form as a liar and as an inciter to hatred. This is what Israelis evidently want or at least are willing to accept. Otherwise, he would not be prime minister. But Diaspora Jews must also carry some of the blame. 60 per cent of the 525 delegates represent Diaspora Jewry and they sat and listened to Netanyahu’s speech. They should have booed him off the stage. Instead they stood in line for a photo opportunity with him. 

Prince Charles

There is very little to like about Prince Charles, however… the supposedly private conversation (or is the 87-year-old Jewish lady who showed him around the Halifax museum an old Polo chum of his?)…

Like so often before, and similar to his father, Charles arrogantly says things, which he should not. This time, I like the outcome: the Putin / Hitler comparison is on the table and, moreover, it's a royal table.

But please God, Save the Queen!

Culture and Politics - II

In Freiburg, to celebrate Epiphany, my friend Corinna invited to a cultural soiree: Life and Music at the Pringsheim Residence was the subject of German writer Inge Jens’ lecture. A piano trio played Pringsheim’s music.

Pringsheim, whose residence in Munich was nothing but palatial, emanated from a very wealthy Jewish family. Until 1933, invitations to events at the home of mathematics professor and arts connoisseur Alfred Pringsheim (1850-1941) were highly sought after in the city’s high society. Nowadays, he is known mainly as Thomas Mann’s father-in-law.

Jens depicted the tragedy of this assimilated bourgeois German Jew who like many other educated German Jews had absorbed and integrated into German culture. With Pringsheim, this climaxed in his worship of Richard Wagner. So fascinated was he by Wagner that he not only supported him financially but also composed his own convincingly beautiful piano arrangements for some of Wagner’s music.

Leaving all this was not easy and the Pringsheims left it to the last moment. They did manage to get out of Germany in October 1939. The distressed old man, who by then had lived through six years under Nazi rule, was 89 and perhaps too weak to consider the tragedy and irony of having a joint idol with Adolf Hitler – who had caused his misery and degradation.