German neo-Nazi bands attempt to appeal more broadly to an audience that is opposed to the government’s position on asylum seekers. Plato once wrote, in an argument postulating the banning of music, that “any musical innovation is full of danger to the whole State.” While an extreme position to adopt in its own right, the… Continue reading “Tracking German Neo-Nazism Through Music”
What should we make of a substantial Jewish presence in Trump’s right-wing administration? One of the apparent curiosities of the Trump presidency is the significant role played by American Jews in his administration and his personal circle of friends, confidants and ex-confidants. To illustrate: The president’s daughter, Ivanka, is married to Jared Kushner, an Orthodox… Continue reading “Donald Trump: The Odd Link between American Jews and the Alt-Right”
The Britons are probably the most significant British racists you’ve never heard of. Through their publishing efforts, The Britons kept an English translation of infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion in print from their founding in 1919 to their final demise in 1975. Usually appearing as mere background characters in general texts on British… Continue reading “Book Review – Nick Toczek, Haters, Baiters and Would-Be Dictators: Anti-Semitism and the UK Far Right, Oxon: Routledge, 2016.”
Eighty years ago, on 9 November 1938, an order was given by Nazi German authorities to terrorize and arrest German Jewish citizens, resulting in tens of thousands of people being sent to concentration camps. Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, marked a violent escalation against Jewish people. This escalation of violence was a continuation… Continue reading “In remembrance of Kristallnacht”
The assimilation policy of integration, actively practiced across Europe, is one of the main prerequisites of xenophobia. The latest measurements in Europe show that after a sharp spike in xenophobia and radicalism in 2015 caused by the migration crisis, the situation has improved slightly, but in some respects it has become even worse. In 2017, for… Continue reading “Europe Is Caught in a Wheel of Xenophobia”
Anti-Semitism is dangerous because of what it reveals about people and systems, not just in and of itself. In 2010, a British journalist born in Poland, Ewa Jasiewicz, spray-painted the words, “Free Gaza and Palestine” on part of the wall of the old Warsaw Ghetto, together with Yonatan Shapira, a former captain in the Israel Defense… Continue reading “What’s Wrong with Anti-Semitism?”
It is one of life’s great mysteries why other people vote the way they do, particularly when their favored candidates embrace policies that appear so obviously detrimental to them. ‘The forest was shrinking’, runs an ‘old Turkish proverb’ that has been circulating on the internet in recent months, ‘but the trees kept voting for the… Continue reading “Are Right-Wing Voters Being Duped? Or, Why Sane People Voted Fascist.”
Within a few weeks my fourth published work will hit the shelves. My latest monograph is entitled The Auschwitz Concentration Camp: History, Biographies, Remembrance, and is to be published by ibidem-verlag in Stuttgart on 24 April 2018. The book covers the history of the camp from its beginning as a Security Police prison for Polish… Continue reading “The Holocaust – Upholding the Truth”