The New Age Cult of Self Loathing

"Rhetoric" has several definitions but the most common one in use today would fall under this description: "the deliberate abuse of words so as to overexaggerate any realistic semblance of the truth".

In recent times I've found the worst offenders of such language to be what might aptly be described as "left wing lunatics". Such people base most all of their arguments on emotion and little to none on fact. They seriously annoy me because they try to come across as holier-than-thou and thus they feel that anything they say is the only correct course of action and must be followed. If you dare disagree with them then any combination of the following epitaphs are spat out at you: ignorant, stupid, Nazi, neo-con, conservative, . . . .

I've found many of these people to be atheists yet they've clearly found a new religion: the cult of environmentalism or socialism, or whatever "ism" happens to be popular with them that year.

I fully support their right to free speech but absolutely abhor their self-imposed exclusion of free thought. Try to question their convictions and you just get regurgitated talking points that they've clearly heard over & over again from news sources that all drum to the same beat.

Case in point is some of the reaction to Mark Steyn's recent visit to the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. You can listen to the full account of it here. Rather than accept as the truth what Steyn and other journalists have observed, some have instead chosen to invent complete fantasies of what they feel must be the case. I'm confident that a poll would reveal a close correlation of such folks with 9-11 conspiracy theorists.

Here's one such example, followed by Steyn's retort:

BUSH IS A NAZI, GITMO IS THERESIENSTADT
On June 23, 1944, the Nazis permitted the visit by the Red Cross in order to dispel rumours about the exterminations camps. The commission included E. Juel-Henningsen, the head physician at the Danish Ministry of Health, and Franz Hvass, the top civil servant at the Danish Foreign Ministry. Dr Paul Eppstein was instructed by the SS to appear in the role of the mayor of Theresienstadt.

To minimize the appearance of overcrowding in Theresienstadt, the Nazi deported many Jews to Auschwitz. Also deported in the some 7,500 were most of the Czechoslovakian workers assigned to 'Operation Embellishment.' They also erected fake shops and cafés to imply that the Jews lived in relative comfort. The Danes whom the Red Cross visited lived in freshly painted rooms, not more than three in a room. The guests enjoyed the performance of a children's opera, Brundibar, which was written by inmate Hans Krása.

The hoax against the Red Cross was so successful for the Nazis that they went on to make a propaganda film at Theresienstadt. Shooting of the film began on February 26, 1944. Directed by Jewish prisoner Kurt Gerron (a director, cabaret performer, and actor who appeared with Marlene Dietrich in The Blue Angel), it was meant to show how well the Jews lived under the "benevolent" protection of the Third Reich. After the shooting most of the cast, and even the filmmaker himself, were deported to Auschwitz. Gerron and his wife were executed in the gas chambers on October 28, 1944. The film was not released at the time, but was edited into pieces that served their purpose, and only segments of it have remained.

Often called The Führer Gives a Village to the Jews, the correct name of the film is: Theresienstadt. Ein Dokumentarfilm aus dem jüdischen Siedlungsgebiet (Terezin: A Documentary Film of the Jewish Resettlement). (Cf. Hans Sode-Madsen: The Perfect Deception. The Danish Jews and Theresienstadt 1940-1945. Leo Baeck Yearbook, 1993)

What a coward you are, Mark Steyn, and a traitor. You will be held accountable for your giggly and chillingly revolting bit of reporting on Gitmo.

You represent so absolutely the utter depravity of this nation and its hideous cult of authoritarianism. God help you in the next life when you will be forced to review your morally black actions here.

Celia Thaxter

MARK: So Gitmo is the new Theresienstadt, eh? Well, that’s an improvement. I thought you lot thought it was the new Auschwitz. But, just as a matter of interest, if Gitmo’s the new Theresienstadt, where exactly is the new Auschwitz? As to who will be forced to review their morality, perhaps one day you’ll sit down and stumble across your letter to me and think about what it is you’ve just done: you’ve compared your own government and your fellow citizens serving in the military to the perpetrators of one of the worst genocides in history. Do you realize just how nutty that is? Rational discussion with you is impossible because if you think Bush is Hitler and Gitmo is Theresienstadt then you have so debased the language that you will have no words left for genuine atrocities. Shame on you and your rotten diseased heart: you mock not just the young men and women I met at Guantanamo doing a thankless job for less pay than you get but the dead and bereaved of 60 years ago, who unlike you understood all too clearly what real horror was. You’ve become unmoored from reality. Good luck trying to grope your way back. I’ve got no further time for you.