Europe, getting back to its roots?

Captain Ed writes:

The German magazine Der Spiegel has published its interview with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and it should disturb anyone who reads it fully. The interview reveals Ahmadinejad as a man obsessed with Jews, and one intent on provoking German resentment over its post-war humiliation to split the West on Israel:

Ahmadinejad: Look here, my views are quite clear. We are saying that if the Holocaust occurred, then Europe must draw the consequences and that it is not Palestine that should pay the price for it. If it did not occur, then the Jews have to go back to where they came from. I believe that the German people today are also prisoners of the Holocaust. Sixty million people died in the Second World War. World War II was a gigantic crime. We condemn it all. We are against bloodshed, regardless of whether a crime was committed against a Muslim or against a Christian or a Jew. But the question is: Why among these 60 million victims are only the Jews the center of attention?

SPIEGEL: That's just not the case. All peoples mourn the victims claimed by the Second World War, Germans and Russians and Poles and others as well. Yet, we as Germans cannot absolve ourselves of a special guilt, namely for the systematic murder of the Jews. But perhaps we should now move on to the next subject.

Ahmadinejad: No, I have a question for you. What kind of a role did today's youth play in World War II?

SPIEGEL: None.

Ahmadinejad: Why should they have feelings of guilt toward Zionists? Why should the costs of the Zionists be paid out of their pockets? If people committed crimes in the past, then they would have to have been tried 60 years ago. End of story! Why must the German people be humiliated today because a group of people committed crimes in the name of the Germans during the course of history?

Der Speigel notes in a separate piece that Ahmadinejad's remarks will give new energy to the anti-Semitic neo-Nazi groups currently on the fringe of German politics. Financial Times Deutschland gave mild criticism DS for carrying such potent propaganda on behalf of Ahmadinejad while noting that "an open society should know its enemies". After reading the entire interview, I see nothing to criticize on that score. The DS interviewer continually challenges Ahmadinejad's answers regarding Holocaust denial. (Less worthy of praise is the interviewer's repeated assertion that America has lost the war in Iraq; with Saddam gone and a freely elected representative government in place, DS should have included its criteria for success.)

It is not only an “anti-Semitic neo-Nazi” fringe that this will give “new energy” to. The average European citizen and the average European politician have been longing for a way to put the Holocaust behind them.

The old, traditional European anti-Semitism has not gone away; it is as strong as ever it is simply held in check, submerged a few millimeters below the surface by the memory of the Holocaust. If a way can be found to either deny the event or to at least say that it is long over with and has absolutely nothing to do with anything today think of the advantages (the European thinks to himself). How much more money can be made by trading with the Arab/Persian Muslims if the question of the Jews isn’t tangled up in things. Think how much peace we could buy if “that shitty little country”, as a high official in the French government called Israel a little while back, wasn’t there anymore.

It is only a matter of time before Europe finds its historic Jew hatred to be just too comfortable, too natural, to be resisted any further.