Crying wolf

I can’t say these are good ideas:

• The German attempt to remove old Nazi filmclips from YouTube.
• The threatened criminal prosecution of a German hotel that that let guests visit a Nazi bunker in its cellar.
• The State Department’s Report on Global Anti-Semitism.

The actions of the German nanny state can speak for themselves. As for our State Department, I’m not sure why it should treat vilification of Israeli leaders as a major human rights issue any more than vilification of big business, George Bush, the Pope or Jerry Falwell. I’m even less sure why the U S.government should officially get on board with the anti-hate speech movement by calling for more indoctrination for children, special training for police and judges, and specific laws for actions motivated by dislike of Jews. It all creates an impression of special treatment that I think one would want to avoid.

Fighting the last war is usually a bad idea, and at this point the Holocaust is several wars ago. The more it recedes in time, though, the more it becomes a sort of absolute authority. There are Nazis under every bed, even though there seem to be no Nazis to speak of, just juvenile delinquents, pranksters trying to be shocking, and various leftists and Muslims who never liked Jews much but really hate Israel.

It seems more sensible to look at abusive conduct in general than to pick out one particular kind and do everything you can to suppress it absolutely. Threats come from all directions, and pick some particular one as the supreme thing to worry about looks very much like an attempt to make the world more manageable than it actually is, and thus to avoid facing the reality of our situation. It can make you do stupid things and ignore actual problems.

It can also make the worrier and eventually his cause look like more of a problem than the threat itself. Think Abe Foxman. For another example see the English TV documentary David Icke: The Lizards and the Jews, in which someone who used to claim that he is the son of God and now claims that the world is run by 12-foot extraterrestrial blood-drinking lizards is persecuted as an “anti-semite” by various ADL and progressive types, who only succeed in turning him into a rather appealing folk hero and making themselves look obsessed (as well as personally rather repellant).