It’s a very small group though. The vast majority of German ‘protester’ types are lefties, anarchists. They’re definitely not pro-Bush. Actually, the center-right population isn’t pro-Bush either.

That’s very different from a little over a decade ago. There was actually a lot of support for Bush Sr.— and Raegan, for that matter. That was under Kohl. Those were good days, as far as I’m concerned.

They seem very similar to the views of the British left-wing critic Christopher Hitchens:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Hitchens

That’s because religion has its back against the wall in the west. If they can’t tolerate each other, then they’ll lose even more market share to secularism. If religion becomes widely relevant again, then they’ll work against each other again.

re: anti-Germans

Leave it to Germans to over-intellectualize something political and then form a movement based on it. Typical.

In Germany, there’s a group called the anti-Germans. Most of them call themselves communists, yet support George Bush and demonstrate for Israel:

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,2145701,00.html

The anti-Germans have had interesting celebrations, such as celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Dresden bombings eleven years ago.

“In 1995, on the 50th anniversary of the destruction of Dresden by the allies, the anti-Germans praised the bombing of the civil population, since in their view, so many had supported the Nazi regime.”

cinevivo

http://www.cinevivo.com.ar

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5275866.stm

The owner says the Hitler poster that figures in one pic was put up by a guest. The motive to name a restaurant after Hitler: “Just like Hitler wanted to conquer the world, I want to conquer at least my area through the food served in my restaurant.”

I wonder what they serve and whether they’re aware that Hitler was a vegetarian…

Of course my comparing Luther with Hitler is a mistake. But Karl Jaspers was living through the Hitler era and I’m sure for him it was a matter of contemporary relevance that Luther had propagated much the same thing as Hitler and indeed, Hitler was distributing Luther’s anti-semitic propaganda to justify his expulsion of German Jewry.

Luther was an old and bitter man when he wrote the anti-semitic pamphlet. He had indeed been more tolerant of Jews in his youth and as long as he thought he would be successful in converting Jews to Christianity, he had a positive attitude toward them. When he realized that they wouldn’t buy his arguments about Jesus and stubbornly persisted in their faith, that’s when he started hating them. I don’t think he saw the existence of Jews as something that would endanger the Reformation or something that would be more beneficial to Catholicism than to Protestantism.

Luther took it as self-evident that he had the right to tell the Jews what to believe in and that the Jews had no right to freedom of religion. He justifies his anti-semitism with saying that he had heard a rumor that some Jews had tried to convert Christians to Judaism. Now whether that rumor was true or not, that’s what made him enraged. The mere thought that Jews would want to compete with him on the same terms, that made him ask for burning books and synagogues and expelling Jews.

If you compare Luther’s attitude toward freedom of religion with that of the Taliban, there are many similarities. History of Europe in 16th and 17th Centuries, both Protestant and Catholic, is most fascinating when read through a current-day prism. The Spanish Inquisition, the witchhunts, all of that was happening in an era of religious fanaticism. European Christians were behaving in exactly the same way as the Taleban and other jihadist fanatics of our day.

Religion is power in many parts of the world this very day. There are more religious people in the world than non-religious ones. I don’t see that as a problem at all, the whole issue is about how to stop the political power of religion. Religion is power in many Islamic countries, but also Hindu extremism has had its great moments and indeed in many Christian countries religion still is power.

It’s normal that the church has evolved after Luther’s day and indeed, Lutheran churches are not at all anti-semitic. Indeed it’s true that most Lutherans have given up on anti-semitism, especially after the Holocaust happened. Lutheranism of today is not a particularly anti-semitic religion and there is open discussion on the topic, which is highly admirable.

But Luther’s legacy is important in the history of anti-semitism. Many people have hated Jews over the centuries, not because other Gentiles hated them too, but because they identified with Luther. This is especially so for the hundred or two hundred years after Luther’s death. Luther was a man whose views were listened to. Even if today’s Lutherans prefer to take their cue from the more tolerant sermons of the young Luther, it is the anti-semitic old Luther who for a very long time set the Lutheran standard in how to relate to Judaism.

You’re probably right about Martin Luther not being the most tolerant figure. But looking at him through a current-day prism is probably a mistake.

Unlike today, religion was power. And ML’s power was always challenged.by the Catholic church. In fact, within ML’s lifetime, converting Catholics was probably still a top priority.

Perhaps ML saw the Jews as a divisive group who, by their very existence, could undermine those goals. So converting (or expelling) them was just par-for-the-course.

He might have seen the lternative as sliding back into Catholicism, so the ends justified the means.

Lithuania is another example of a country with strong anti-semitism that centuries earlier had been an oasis for people of all faiths, when the rest of Europe already had fallen to Christian persecutions of nonbelievers. As late as the 14th Century (Lithuania converted to Catholicism in 1387), Lithuania was a multiethnic and multireligious superpower ruled by Pagans. The advance of Christianity often meant an advance in anti-Semitism in European history. Typical example is the victory of Christianity in Spain, when all Jews were told to either convert or be expelled (a key event in European history that might have been in Luther’s mind when he was advocating the expulsion of Jewry).

Lithuania and Poland share a common history, as the conversion of Lithuania led to a union and Poland-Lithuania still was among the most tolerant countries in Europe. Jesuits, counterreformation, the spread of religious fanaticism from Western Europe etc. contributed to a growing anti-Semitism.

Ha! Good one, I must admit

My guess is that antisemitism was distributed evenly prior to WW2. Russia was no different than Germany or France or Poland in that regard. The Nazis simply capitalized on this anti-Jew sentiment most effectively.

By the way, prior to the late 1800′s, the state of Germany didn’t even exist. Instead, it was divided between the Prussian Empire and the Holy Roman Empire/ Habsburgs, with many transitions throughout history. So it’s not like ‘Germany’ per se, always hated Jews. The sentiment was Europe-wide.

“I’m not saying that the Jews were always treated nicely, remember occasional purges or ghettos … but they were not hanged on sight.”

Of course, I realize that. I was just being facetious and exaggerating a bit. And yes, there were many who were wealthy and influential–probably a disproportionate number. For this reason, I can somewhat understand why the public bought-into the notion of hating them; people with great wealth and power can influence things like economies and wars, for example–perhaps not always to the benefit of the common man.

To me, it seems similar to the Finns vs. Swedes/Finn-Swedes situation in past times. The Swedes/Finn-Swedes comprised and aristocracy of sorts and the Finnish peasants resented it. But, as in the case of Jews in c. Europe, I’m sure not all Finn-Swedes were wealthy. Just a disproportionate number were.

So I guess, here in Finland, we had the Swedes to deal with; we didn’t have time to hate the Jews

Burning books, or even synagogues, doesn’t seem to be enough for Luther:

“But what will happen even if we do burn down the Jews’ synagogues and forbid them publicly to praise God, to pray, to teach, to utter God’s name? They will still keep doing it in secret. If we know that they are doing this in secret, it is the same as if they were doing it publicly. For our knowledge of their secret doings and our toleration of them implies that they are not secret after all and thus our conscience is encumbered with it before God.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Jews_and_Their_Lies_%28excerpts%29

He is clearly saying that even if somebody would put his program of religious persecution in practice and the Jews wouldn’t be able to praise the Lord in public, more should be done to ensure that they can’t practice their religion in private.

Somehow I get the feeling that the old and bitter Luther at the age of sixty was theory and the Nazis, Lutheran or not, Christian or Pagan or secular, were practice. The wikipedia article on Luther’s pamphlet also noted that Karl Jaspers (famous anti-Nazi existentialist philosopher with a deep knowledge of theology) had said about Luther’s infamous book: “There you already have the whole Nazi program.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Jews_and_Their_Lies

Interestingly enough, one of Luther’s sources was a Catholic pamphlet called “Most Excellent Inquiries Rejecting Judaic Falsities by the Catholic Faith”.

“I am a descendant of Martin Luther, who wrote many anti-Semitic tracts during the 16th Century. I hang my head in shame and I have great sorrow in my heart for the tracts he wrote and for the influence that his writings had on those who persecuted the Jewish people”.

http://christianactionforisrael.org/antiholo/luther.html

That story has been published in 1997 in the Toronto Star.