Do you think, Karl in #3, that they were sympathetic with the Nazis, or proud that, as citizens of an occupied country, they counted as second class Aryans and their blonde boy ‘got to serve’ in the army? You can blame the complacency of the masses, but when peace-seeking people are terrorized and brutalized, they usually give in and compromise to save their families in the short term. This isn’t agreement, or identification, or approval; it’s an attempt by the powerless to survive. Go along, get along, until the bully wipes you out too.

Muslims aren’t free to have their own opinions, they are not even free to have their own facts! See DISCOVER’s website for a good article on Muslim scientists, who must be careful not to research anything against Allah’s will, who must fit their results into a Koranic framework even if it renders the exercise absurd (numbering the bones in the human body, for instance). The backwardness of their science is blamed on the oppression of the West. In such a climate, how could a “moderate” even truly exist?

Emanuel Tanay

The article seems to bring to the surface the psychological issue that humans by the majority are often oblivious to their world and its problems until its too late. The vast majority are followers and not leaders. The vast majority only do as they are told as the do not wish to offend. They vote with their pack, they celebrate with their pack and are not wanting to run from the pack nor lead it.

It is a lesson in understanding that because of religion, race, skin color, country, tribe, or political party that it does not create a universal label for all of those within that group.

Our culture in America is very myopic. Our culture is very opinionated and open about our ideologies. In many other cultures in this world you are not allowed to possess open opinions. It could cost you your life. Yes, even today.

We have the same issues in tribal warfare in our urban streets only on a smaller scale. We have grown to view it and empathize with the innocent that live there, but how many are really taking an active step to eliminate the problem? Not many. Would you move there? Never. Would you take action? Not until it lands in our back yard. We too are a peaceful majority. Until when?

The Bush administration has assaulted the constitution with its warrantless wiretapping of citizens and political enemies and you want me to fear Muslims or Islam? I fear what has happened to my own country under the Bush crime family who also outed a CIA agent because her husband did not agree with them. They have bankrupted my country, sold it to China and other countries, broken our armies and not secured our borders. Shame on America and its people who have found no voice.

Barbara Beneitone
Beneitone@aol.com

@ Karl: How can I be “completely wrong” when I didn’t even write the article?

@ Nestor: Beautiful and timely words. Thanks for sharing them.

“History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.”

“In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
–Martin Luther King Jr.

The decisive bit is not what the fanatics do. It is not even, to stay with your analogy, why Britain let this happen in Germany. The decisive bit is why Germans not only let it happen but sympathized. I don’t know what’s the value in saying not many Germans were ‘true’ Nazis, whatever the definition of a true Nazi is. Certainly not every German was a member of the SA, and not all who were will have identified with that altogether. But read a little on the theory of fascism and you will see that such fascist mass effects don’t happen without backing of the masses. The masses may not initially identify with every aspect of it, but it does not succeed if it does not strike a nerve in a way the nourishes some fundamental desire.

With Nazi Germany it was certainly that inferiority complex brought about by the defeat in WW I and a desastrous economy that made people crave for some self-respect. In such a time, the message “You are somebody, you are the best even. It’s not your fault. It’s the fault of … er … the Jews.” was well-received. Surely, not everybody appreciated every consequence of that message, but deep inside it did strike a nerve. It did allow people to free themselves of self-doubt, self-loss, fear of failure, of inferiority by externalizing those fears and projecting them elsewhere outside into enemies that could actually be fought.

So, the point is, it is much more effective than battling fanatics (there will always be crazies) to wonder how we can stop people from rallying to them. How can we stop people from sympathizing with the fanatics enough to keep them aware of the errors of the fanatics’ ways? The question is not “How can the peace-loving Americans stop fanatic muslims?” but “How can we get to a point where peace-loving muslims will stop fanatic muslims?” Much like some more respect might have helped the people of the Weimar Republic, that point will clearly not be reached by keeping on disrespecting the whole of the muslim world. That is just going to make the fanatics’ message of the West as the muslims’ enemy more true.

P. S.: History lessons are never simple and blunt, because life is not simple and blunt. History only becomes simple when used in propaganda! Again, read some theory of fascism (or read Golding’s “Lord of the Flies” for a start) and stop clinging to most Germans actually having been nice chaps. Then don’t stop at believing fascism is some specific German trait. Go to a pub, wait till people have had enough alcohol, listen to them rant about whatever minority is the current fashion, and you will see the same seed of fascism in action. Every single of our human psyches is vulnerable to the underlying psychological mechanisms. And again, the question is why we only hear such rants in pubs, not in politics (hopefully) and how we can keep it that way. How can we keep the majority of people from sympathizing with such pub rants so much that it becomes commonly accepted to think that way? Not quite that simple.