From Sun Dec 14 15:18:34 1997
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>Date: Sun, 14 Dec 1997 16:18:07 -0600 (CST)
>From: “Louis R. Coatney”
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>To: mahan@microworks.net, Mahan@microwrks.com
>cc: “Louis R. Coatney” ,
> “William D. Anderson”
>Subject: Re: THE NOT-SO-FORGOTTEN HOLOCAUST
>Precendence: bulk
>Sender: mahan-owner@microworks.net
>Reply-To: mahan@microworks.net
>
>On Sun, 14 Dec 1997, John Forester wrote:
> > Japanese home islands would not have been defended in the fanatical manner
> > of Okinawa, but there was no means of predicting that at the time, nor even
> > to reasonably state, now, that it would not have happened. War within one’s
> > homeland raises up all sorts of nationalistic emotions, and the Japanese
> > were distinctly nationalistic. It may be that only the influence of the
> > Emperor made the occupation peaceful; again, something about which we can
> > never be sure.
>
>John, I believe that if the Emperor had been a “bestial fanatic” like
> the Bushido fascists, he wouldn’t have cared about his people and would
> have demanded a Goetterdamerung … like Hitler apparently wanted (but
> didn’t entirely get).
>
>Hirohito seems to me to have been a basically good and decent person. (He
> had a brother who was Western educated and downright liberal.) However,
> he carried a tremendous cultural/traditional responsibility on his
> shoulders, his real power was always in question, and he knew the
> fanatics were capable of confining/killing even him, if they chose to.
>
>I see him as sort of a Wizard of Oz character … and he did, after all,
> have all those *neat toys*, like the Imperial Fleet, which anyone
> would want to play with … and with which some of us still do. 🙂
> I know there has been recent claim that he was more a monster than
> most people realize, but my assessment is that he was nowhere near
> as evil as the junta leaders were.
>
>It is too bad that President Roosevelt didn’t try some in-person
> diplomacy with young Hirohito. FDR’s inspiring personality and
> egalitarian/anti-racist convictions could have impressed and moved
> Hirohito … and maybe a significant few Japanese … even as
> caught up in militarism as they were … assuming the fanatics didn’t
> try assassinating FDR … or Hirohito, of course.
>
>On Sun, 14 Dec 1997, mike wilson wrote:
> > Wow, how weird; Tennessee Tech is my undergraduate alma mater. I’ve got a
> > buddy who’s a relatively new history professor at TTU – I’ll try and track
> > him down over the Christmas break and ask him why Lukas left. If he had
> > tenure, I doubt they could have forced him out against his will,
> > though…it sounds like an odd concept to me, though, given the innate
> > conservatism of the TTU administration…
>
>Mike,
>
> It has been a long time, but my recollection is that he started
>getting un-choice classes, teaching hours, and other such “thousand
>cuts” stuff … and it wasn’t because of institutional *conservatism*.
>He has written a lot of things leftists don’t want people to remember
>or know about … and pressure can be exerted on (as well as within)
>academic institutions … professionally … in many ways.
>
> Whenever Poles produce academic work about their historical trials
>and tribulations, it gets stereotyped as “ethnocentric.” Zb. Brzezinski
>skirted the Katyn issue *very* carefully when in office, if you notice.
>In the ’80s, I was *really* hammering (my Alaska) U.S. Senator Frank
>Murkowski about Katyn … to little or no avail … although he is
>proud of being Polish-American … and knew prominent Polish-Americans
>(I knew) who apparently expressed their own impatience with his slowness
>to him. (I am sure I am on Frank’s all-time s.l., which is too bad, since
>one of his prettiest daughters is still unmarried/childless, the last I
>heard. 🙂 🙁 )
>
> Meanwhile, it seems every American and college is setting up its
>Holocaust program, much like Afro-American studies. And there is still
>ethnic bitterness between Christian Poles and Jews. Both suffered at
>the hands of the Nazis, but many of the Polish peasants were deeply
>anti-Semitic, which the Catholic church had done nothing to ameliorate.
>(… unlike many of the Polish intelligentsia who would die at places
>like Katyn, as well as Auschwitz/Birkenau.) While it is nice that
>Pope John Paul has sought reconciliation with Jews … finally, after
>all these centuries … this is “after the fact,” and it would have
>been more “Christian” if *all* Christians had done more to try to
>control Nazism and protect the Jews when it counted. On the other
>hand, some Poles have felt that some Jews in Eastern Poland
>collaborated with the Soviet occupation. (It goes on and on ….)
>
> However, on H-Holocaust I am now seeing the charge that the
>Holocaust was enabled and abetted by inherently anti-Semitic Christian
>society. This not only fans an enrighteousing sense of victimization
>… and paranoia and ethnic fanaticism … but it seems intended to
>instill guilt … possibly to secure favored ethnic status … as
>embodied by the inappropriate positioning of the Holocaust Memorial
>on the Capitol Mall(??) … and continuing/resuming? carte blanche
>to Israel?
>
> My riposte saying that this is dangerously and hurtfully similar
>to the rightwing/Nazi claim that Judaism produced Communism … and
>that Hitler was recognized early-on to be an anti-Christ and revelled
>in (his) neo-paganism … has been rejected, of course. I was
>also asking how active the Jewish clergy has been in opposing the
>injustices and deaths Palestinians have suffered … for purposes
>of comparison.
>
>(There were a number of Jewish-descent people involved with Communism
> and its SS-like atrocities. Marx, Trotsky, Kameniev, Zinoniev,
> Kaganovich, Mekhlis, etc. However, Communism (like Nazism) was
> politically *inevitable*, and not any more “Jewish” than nuclear
> theory would be because Einstein happened to be Jewish … and Jews
> are hard intellectual workers who are in the forefront of *any*
> enterprise … as long as it isn’t anti-Semitic like rabid
> nationalism usually is. Minorities — Feliks Dzerzhinsky was of
> petty Polish nobility — were useful as Soviet “enforcers” because
> they were less likely to show mercy to Russians, having suffered
> “Russification,” pogroms, etc. Lenin’s “Latvian Legion” was his
> elite para-military shock force. After the Russian Revolution,
> 3/4s of the Kiev CHEKA was Jewish … which was probably remembered
> after the Ukrainian Famine holocaust and the primary criminal motive
> for some Ukrainians’ participation in — and/or more’s acceptance of
> — the extermination of Ukrainian Jews during the Nazi occupation.)
>
> At least my post mentioning the 1940 Nazi SS-Soviet NKVD “summit
>of evil” … wherein the Soviets shared their vaster experience with
>mass deportation/extermination (albeit using the more primitive
>tools of exposure, starvation, and disease) was posted … but
>it is becoming clear to me that H-Holocaust has its own ethnic (and
>political?) agenda and does not welcome anything showing that the Nazi
>Holocaust was part of a greater 20th Century mass-murder phenomenon,
>which some individuals of Jewish descent were also involved in
>and perpetrating.
>
> Communism is as much a counter-product of Western, Judeo-
>Christian civilization as Nazism is … and no one people is all evil
>… or all innocent. I fully agree … as I wrote in my U.S. Senate
>Hearing 104-40 “Enola Gay” testimony … that “Never Again!” *means*
>”Never Forget!” … but there must be greater balance and fairness in
>that memory … or the seeds of another whirlwind will be sown.
>
> We need the determined fairness of people like Ted Koppel — a
>Jewish-American, I might add — now more than ever. Whether or not
>they can stave off the ideological/ethnic radicalization and
>destruction of our society, though, is not hopeful.
>
>Lou Coatney, mslrc@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu
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