Jew Hatred, Fanaticism, and True Believers

On Friday, September 4, I wrote about new efforts by “gun-grabbers” trying to find ways around the Second Amendment. At one point in the commentary I referred to the way the Nazis banned gun ownership and how this contributed to the way German Jews and others were rounded up and systematically murdered in concentration and death camps.

---

That was quite enough to unhinge some who read the piece and proceeded to email me to dispute the six million figure of Jewish victims that included Jews from all the conquered nations in Europe; one that is commonly agreed upon and cited when mentioning the Holocaust.

Warning: Profane language to follow:

“Hey, Alan, YOU wouldn’t know WHAT it takes to serve this country, you ill-read, XXXXX, so go XXXX yourself. Non servium (sic) XXXXX like you make me sick! I really do suspect you of being a Zionist XXXX piece of XXX, what with your baseless, factless, XXXX propaganda. Matter of fact, I am going to make you a prime candidate for my wrath and let everyone know what a lying, resourceless XXXX you are.”

He concluded saying, “if the holocaust actually happened the way the jews say it did, we would be CELEBRATING it instead of DENYING it!” I will spare you the rest of this rant, but the writer had identified himself as “a marine” in a prior email and I had replied that he was a disgrace to the uniform. For the record, I served in the U.S. Army, so I know what it means to wear my nation’s uniform. If he was or is a Marine, he is a prime candidate for what we used to call a “Section 8” discharge for being a mental case. It happened that I was re-reading Eric Hoffer’s classic book, “The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements” when the email arrived. If I were to construct a list of books that everyone should read, Hoffer’s would be among them. It is available in softcover from Harper & Row, Perennial Library these days. It was first published in 1951.

“All mass movements generate in their adherents a readiness to die and a proclivity for united action; all of them, irrespective of the doctrine they preach and the program they project, breed fanaticism, enthusiasm, fervent hope, hatred and intolerance; all of them are capable of releasing a powerful flow of activity in certain departments of life; all of them demand blind faith and single-hearted allegiance.”

The fervor that Barack Obama stirred in the 2008 campaign was a tad frightening to those of us familiar with a long line of tyrants from the last century and this one. It’s the reason a lot of parents reacted instinctively to the prospect of his addressing the nation’s school children, complete with Department of Education teacher instructions on how to use this event. This wasn’t Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush issuing greetings at the start of the school year. This reeked of indoctrination. Hoffer wrote, “Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil. Usually the strength of a mass movement is proportionate to the vividness and tangibility of its devil. When Hitler was asked whether he though the Jew must be destroyed, he answered: ‘No…We should have then to invent him. It is essential to have a tangible enemy, not merely an abstract one.’” Jews have served this purpose for both Christianity and Islam. They became a convenient and tangible representation of “the enemy” and they retain this status to this day, despite the horror of the Holocaust. Hoffer wrote at a time when Communism was the predominant mass movement of the age, but he also made frequent mention of Islam in ways that one would call prescient today. “The practice of terror serves the true believer not only to cow and crush his opponents but also to invigorate and intensify his own faith.” The bile and hatred spewed by the writer of the email confirms what Hoffer wrote more than a half-century ago. “Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life. Thus people haunted by the purposelessness of their lives try to find a new content not only by dedicating themselves to a holy cause, but also by nursing a fanatical grievance. A mass movement offers them unlimited opportunities for both.” Why do I suspect my email correspondent is rushing to his computer this very moment to let loose yet another senseless diatribe about the Jews? Editor’s Note: A visit to the website of Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership includes a chart documenting what happens when populations are denied the right to own weapons. Historically, they died in the millions.

---