Anaxagoras
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Joined: 5/9/2009
From: Eire
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ORIGINAL: vincentML
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Fair point, the Nazi's did kill Jews amongst others but its tough to draw a convincing parallel between Mormon baptism which may offend some people (understandably of course), and full on systematic murder. Murder of any group of people specifically targeted for ethnicity would be a hate crime against them, whether or not other groups were killed as well.
I was exorcized by this topic because there were some on here who had no clue of the history involved and in fact didn't understand why the "Jew was so special." The Jew is not special imo because of the 'chosen people" albatross but because of the history of persecution . . . the long history. It is within this context that the affront of posthumous baptism ought to be viewed. Again imo.
Yes the context you describe should be understood as to why so many Jewish people object to the posthumous baptisms. However, we ought to be reflecting on the acts of the mormons on their own terms because their own motivation is key to whether they do this from a state of antipathy toward Jews. If they truly single out Jews as a group for this treatment then I would suggest anti-Semitism may be a significant motivating factor. However, it would appear that they apply posthumous baptisms to all races and creeds.
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Also its worth saying out that Nazi Germany was a secular form of governance so whilst it inherited a cultural history of Christian persecution, I wouldn't think Christianity is explicitly to blame. Eric Voegelin (another great albeit lesser known 20th C thinker) wrote in depth how Nazi Germany was defined by its capacity to throw off conventional morality.
Hanna Arendt makes a similar point and it is a powerful one, I grant you. That was the banality of evil of which she wrote. I haven't read Voegelin but I have read the first volume of Kershaw's dense biography of Hitler (the early years in the 19th Century) Clearly, Hitler grew up amidst a zeitgeist of anti-Semitism in Austria.
Indeed no argument there. Ian Kershaw's work is also extremely good.
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This from Wiki:
"Although Wilhelm Marr is generally credited with coining the word anti-Semitism (see below), Alex Bein writes that the word was first used in 1860 by the Austrian Jewish scholar Moritz Steinschneider in the phrase "anti-Semitic prejudices".[12] Steinschneider used this phrase to characterize Ernest Renan's ideas about how "Semitic races" were inferior to "Aryan races." These pseudo-scientific theories concerning race, civilization, and "progress" had become quite widespread in Europe in the second half of the 19th century, especially as Prussian nationalistic historian Heinrich von Treitschke did much to promote this form of racism. He coined the term "the Jews are our misfortune" which would later be widely used by Nazis.[13] In Treitschke's writings Semitic was synonymous with Jewish, in contrast to its use by Renan and others.
In 1873 German journalist Wilhelm Marr published a pamphlet "The Victory of the Jewish Spirit over the Germanic Spirit. [SNIP]
The pamphlet became very popular, and in the same year he founded the "League of Antisemites" ("Antisemiten-Liga"), the first German organization committed specifically to combatting the alleged threat to Germany and German culture posed by the Jews and their influence, and advocating their forced removal from the country."
Hitler didn't make this shit up out of his own beady little brain. I refer you again to Eugenio Pacelli's address to the College of Cardinals cited above reminding them of the intransigence of the "killers of God." Pacelli was born a dozen years before Hitler. So, yeh, the Catholic Pope neatly summed up the long vendetta against the Jews by Christianity. (You would think in their gratitude for Jesus' dying for their sins Christians would be thankful also for the roles played by Judas and the Pharisees.) I agree that the Nazi gang went to extraordinary lengths to validate their comic book heroic myths but they were products of Christianity just as I am despite my atheism, and as were the Nazi Hitler and Pius Pacelli. So, yes, j'accuse Christianity, acknowledging despite the centuries old doctrine of persecution many individual christians were heroes in defense of the Jews, especially Angelo Roncalli, who later became Pope John xxiii. Some people have the strength of moral conviction to rise above evil.
Have a good day, Anax 
I agree that Christianity bears some responsibility. Where we would differ is the extent of it. You cited the 19th Century "scientism" which was often an effort to rationalise hatreds using quasi scientific language, hence anti-Semitism didn't refer to Semites but rather it was about Jews on the whole. The Catholic church and other pages of Christianity do bear responsibility, and the Holocaust can be understood as merely the climax of a millennia of hatred. Yet that would be to ignore the dramatic changes in Western society from the Enlightenment onward with the rise of romaniticism in Germany etc. Nazism was a fusion of left and right, atheistic and religious, pagan and Christian. It was almost Hegelian.
BTW Vincent you are a clever chap! Perhaps I should say that more. 
< Message edited by Anaxagoras -- 10/10/2012 10:21:26 AM >
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"That woman, as nature has created her, and man at present is educating her, is man's enemy. She can only be his slave or his despot, but never his companion." (Venus in Furs)
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RE: Wearing a Romney T shirt is like being in the KKK - 
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