Meinungsdiktatur und Verunglimpfung

Josef Joffes Durchfall

Nachfolgend Auszüge des Artikel in der europäischen Ausgabe von TIME:

November 17, 2003 | Vol. 162 No. 19

An Old Evil Raises Its Weary Head

Sixty years after the Holocaust, Europe still wrestles with anti-Semitism

By JOSEF JOFFE

"General Reinhard Gunzel was the commander of Germany's fabled Special Ops force, the KSK. No more. Last Tuesday, he was sacked for writing a letter to an obscure backbencher named Martin Hohmann. Normally, penning a letter to a parliamentarian hardly qualifies as high crime and misdemeanor. Germany is different, and for good reason.

In his missive, the general praised the deputy for an "excellent speech" and assured him that "the majority of our people shares your thoughts." What had Herr Hohmann said? He'd called the Jews not a nation of victims but a "nation of perpetrators," responsible for millionfold murder in the name of socialism and bolshevism. As "proof" he adduced Karl Marx, the son of converted Jewish parents, who had invented it all; Henry Ford, who detected the bloody Jewish hand behind Soviet communism in his infamous 1920s tract, The International Jew, which reads like an American version of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion; and finally, those Jews who were prominent leaders of the Bolshevik takeover: Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev. Never mind that Lenin, the real Mr. Big, was no more Jewish than Hohmann. Never mind that thousands of Jewish communists were purged and murdered by Stalin. The Jews had done it, and now to Hohmann's dialectical somersault: Of course, this verdict "may sound horrible," he mused, but after all, isn't this precisely the "same logic" that led to the stigmatization of Germany as a "nation of perpetrators?"

For non-Germans, this screed cries out for decoding. The unspoken logic is this: if the Jews were as bad, or worse, than our forefathers, then they have no special moral claim on us. The original Holocaust was invented not by us, but by them; so let them stop pointing their fingers at us. If we are criminals, so are they. But if they aren't, how can we be? Thus, the score is evened, and we are (almost) out of the moral doghouse.

Is this anti-Semitism? The denigration and demonization, the attribution of boundless power and evil, clearly are classic signs of Jew hatred."

"Hence the uniform condemnation of both men in the opinion pages of the German press. But there is more significant evidence still."

"So, can we sleep sound and tight? No. The problem with such data is that post-Holocaust anti-Semitism is enveloped in a most powerful taboo — people hide it and surveys underreport it. But perhaps there's another way to measure it. Judging from the news out of Brussels last week, one might surmise that some anti-Israelism is a form of sublimated anti-Semitism. To hate Jews is not permissible in polite society, but to loathe Israel, and especially its Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, carries no such stigma. One can certainly oppose Israeli policy without being an anti-Semite. But something more than policy differences are behind the astounding poll released by the E.U. last week, which shows that six out of 10 Europeans regard Israel as the greatest threat to world peace, ahead of North Korea and Iran."

"There is a quip ascribed to the Israeli psychoanalyst Zvi Rex: "The Germans will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz," meaning that Germans (and all of Europe that let it happen) do not want to live under the burden of the Holocaust forever. Hence the projection of a guilt — as most recently executed by Martin Hohmann — that evens the score and lightens the burden of moral responsibility."

"Josef Joffe is editor of the German weekly newspaper Die Zeit"

Meine erstes Gefühl war: "verbal diarrhea" (ein amerikanischer Ausdruck, der soviel heißt wie sprachlicher Durchfall).

Schade aber, daß dieser Durchfall mehr Schaden anrichtet als nur zum Himmel zu stinken. Das "alte Europa" wird wiedermal als moralisch dekadent dargestellt, selbst wenn Lippenbekenntnisse zu seiner Verteidigung abgegeben werden.

Aber tatsächlich ist es noch schlimmer, hier stellt Josef Joffe im zweiten Absatz die unhaltbare Behauptung auf: "What had Herr Hohmann said? He'd called the Jews not a nation of victims but a "nation of perpetrators,", worauf er dann sein ganzes weiteres Geschwafel basiert.  Dieses angebliche Zutat ist aber eine infame Falschdarstellung, die mit selbem Inhalt vom "Stern" verbreitet worden war, eine Behauptung die ihm (dem "Stern") vom Oberlandesgericht Frankfurt verboten wurde nocheinmal aufzustellen. Denn Herr Hohmann hatte das Gegenteil gesagt, nämlich "Daher sind weder "die Deutschen", noch "die Juden" ein Tätervolk."  So werden Zeitungsleser desinformiert und Andersdenkende gegeiselt und geächtet, gerade weil seriöse Argumente fehlen, sonst könnte man ja bei der Wahrheit bleiben.  Aber wie kann sich ein Redlicher gegen diese Volksverdummung wehren? Glücklicherweise sind viele im Volk intelligenter als Demagogen vom Format des Josef Joffe annehmen - aber steter Tropfen höhlt den Stein, und es tropft von fast überall her.