Something very scary and very wrong is happening

Parent Cafe
401

Keep in mind that LEO officers were given a far greater benefit of the doubt and had far less constitutional constraints(i.e. No Miranda rights until the late '60s, more free to beat up citizens capriciously). Consequently, LEO’s had many more opportunities to abuse their authority and random citizens, especially young people and those from marginalized groups.

A HS history teacher I had who grew up in the '50s and early '60s recounted the local police in his White majority suburban town not only brutalized marginalized groups, but also any young person going about their daily lives.

He himself was beaten up by LEOs on a few occasions just for being a teenager despite being White himself and from a solidly middle-class home going about his business to/from school and most of his friends experienced the same.

However, because of the overwhelming 50’s style conservative attitude among parents of his generation and the town which gave LEO’s the overwhelming benefit of the doubt, they knew they couldn’t tell their parents because they wouldn’t be believed. It was only decades later that some of their accounts were confirmed and corroborated.

Also, right after WWII, there was an outright insurrection against the LEOs/local government of one Tennessee town by returning GIs because of a long history of police brutality and serious corruption from the then dominant LEOs/local government before the insurrection forced an effective end to such practices, prevention of more attempted corruption at the ballot box by the then prevailing local govt/LEOs, and a change in local government/LEOs:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Athens_(1946)

402

I do not support the “tit for tat” punishment – the administration has to practice what it preaches – encouraging open expression of all viewpoints. Canceling another speaker does not seem to promote that objective.

@alh I understand where you are coming from, but think that the expression of the views we so object to often serves to energize support on the other side. I notice that some of the campaign rhetoric and subsequent actions by our new administration has resulted in an outpouring of support that personally I never expected. Surprisingly, the NYC Women’s March that I attended in January was at least 30% male – fathers carrying their young daughters on their shoulders or H’s and BF’s simply walking with their wives, daughters or GF’s – never expected that. And you cannot deny the outpouring of support for the immigrant community that is occurring nationwide. Campuses across the country are also doubling down on proclamations that discrimination against or bullying of any group will not be tolerated.

So some of these speakers are tough to take but the response to them is often encouraging and helpful.

403

My march experience in DC was the same … and in spite of the fact it was a shoulder to shoulder, can’t move without bumping someone crowd, I didn’t hear one rude or unpleasant word all day, much less any violence. I wondered if it was because there were so many infants and children in the crowd and everyone extra cautious and helpful.

404

Well of course I would like to attribute it to the fact that the majority of the crowd was female!

405

A lot of that is also occurring against a background of increasing incidents of racist/anti-Semitic/homophobic vandalism, verbal harassment, and violent assaults/murders:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/03/07/the-kansas-murder-of-an-indian-immigrant-is-part-of-a-spike-in-hate-crimes-against-south-asians/?utm_term=.930abd14b109

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/police-search-man-shot-sikh-seattle-suburb-45912961

http://time.com/4676540/antisemitism-missouri-vandalism-jewish-cemetery/

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/11/13/a_list_of_racist_incidents_across_the_united_states_since_donald_trump_was.html

406

@cobrat at #389 - don’t confuse people in the pews with the leaders of the church. German bishops spoke out against the rise of Naziism and Pope Pius XII assisted the resistance. The church in Austria did support the aunschlass but the archbishop there got in trouble with the pope (actually two popes) over that. Not sure what happened.

Mao was raised in a Buddhist family. Hitler may well have had a Jewish daddy (despite attempts to whitewash that issue). None of that matters. There is this thing called “free will” which is the basis for the vast majority of our actions.

One does not need to be declared “excommunicated” to be so. Catholic teaching is pretty clear on that. No one with any understanding of Christian theology would confuse that for the ancient Germanic paganism, mixed with a good dose of Nietchze, that Hitler advocated.

Yes, there were Lutherans as well who were persecuted and gassed.

407

I’m not clear how I feel about a whole of this these days, but I’ve been following TheAtlantic’s posts for some time. I think this student deserves the right to a comfortable campus environment. For some students, college may be their only safe space time. And may give them time to develop the resources they will need to navigate the future.

TheAtlantic posted way upthread. Those were admirable posts. imho.

fwiw - and probably Harvest Moon remembers, I live in a very conservative, Baptist, rural farming community city where most did not go to college. I am on good terms with my neighbors. They drop in all the time to visit and invite me to their parties.

I’m not confrontational but they all know what issues are important to my family. I am living open dialogue

408

His record on that is mixed:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/oct/23/israelandthepalestinians-secondworldwar

Also, he’s been accused of at best ignoring and at worst, actively aiding in creation and maintenance of “ratlines” ran by some Catholic bishops…notably the pro-Nazi Austrian Bishop Alois Hudal to hide and aid Nazi war criminals in fleeing in order to avoid prosecution for their crimes at the end of the war.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alois_Hudal

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/may/25/nazis-escaped-on-red-cross-documents

Unlike Hitler, Mao publicly renounced links with any religious belief once he became a Communist from his youth onwards.

409

I do not live in a city… auto correct typo.

I live in the country, where neighbors can’t see each other from their own property. Where neighbors look out for each other and share whatever they have automatically.

410

One of the things that causes me great despair is the effort to maybe not justify, but at least explain, the progressive violence on campus and at Trump rallies by reference to the supposedly increasing number of hate crimes going on since the election. The problem though, and one of the reasons understanding your sources is important, is that the evidnece for this increase comes largely from a database maintained by the SPLC (see @cobrat’s link #4 above). While outlets like Slate take this as gospel, the database itself is entirely unreliable. The figures cited are, unless things have changed very recently, self reported from a form on the SPLC web site. See http://nypost.com/2016/12/05/report-buried-trump-related-hate-crimes-against-white-kids/ So there is no consistent effort to verify any of the data. It’s just thrown out there and repeated until it becomes fact.

That’s bothersome on a lot of levels, not least of which is that as with the SPLC’s designation of Charles Murray as a white nationalist extremist, this type of information is being accepted uncritically by people already seemingly inclined to believe that people with whom they disagree are in some way evil. And you then get what happened here.

411

Actually, Hitler’s father, Alois Hitler wasn’t Jewish and you’ve gotten the apocryphal legend mixed up.

The suspected Jewish link in Hitler’s lineage originated from the allegations of Alois Hitler’s father who was unknown as his mother had him as a 41 year old maid working in a well-off Jewish household.

However, there’s a few issues with that “legend”:

  1. There's no definitive proof Alois, Adolf Hitler's father was begotten through his mother's affair with the male members of the Jewish household.
  2. Even if "legend" was factual, Hitler wouldn't be considered Jewish under Jewish religious rules as Jewish status is passed through the mother, not the father.
  3. While he'd still have an issue under Nazi Germany's Nuremberg Racial laws, since he was born before 1935, he'd classified as a Mischling/Mixed race (second degree) and thus, not classified as Jewish. While most persons classified as Mischling faced serious discrimination under the Nazi state, it also made exceptions...such as Luftwaffe Field Marshal Erhard Milch or SS co-founder Emil Maurice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erhard_Milch

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emil_Maurice

412

As a Jew, I disagree with the assertion that anti-semitism is ‘recently’ rising, as though to tie it to the new administration. This isn’t an endorsement of the new administration, but I think it’s important not to only notice anti-semitism when is follows a narrative we want. Anti-semitism has been around forever, but has been noticeably rising for the past ten years, especially on college campuses, and the media was largely silent about it.

My kids, who have graduated undergrad, were all saddened and scared by the anti-semitism they repeatedly experienced on their campuses. This was during President Obama’s tenure (NOT blaming him; however if there is an attempt to blame the current administration I want to point this out). It was often whitewashed and/or under-reported, despite hard proof of incidents, eg swastikas, violence, open discrimination based on ethnicity.

From a 2015 ADL audit: “Another troubling finding: anti-Semitic incidents at colleges and universities nearly doubled last year. A total of 90 incidents were reported on 60 college campuses in 2015, compared with 47 incidents on 43 campuses in 2014.” Overall: " During the last decade, the number of reported anti-Semitic incidents peaked at 1,554 in 2006 and has been mostly on the decline ever since."

Jews are the largest victims of religious bias in the country, and the unfortunate truth is that it is not just tied to white supremicists. The only thing that has been rising very lately are bomb threats and graffiti but in both cases the perpetrators are unknown; it was recently found out though that 8 were caused by a supporter of Sanders in alleged retaliation against his girlfriend.

When we talk about campus intolerance, anti-semitism is one issue my own kids really felt–this was well before this administration, and I hate to say it, but tied to anti-Israel causes. It’s totally fine to criticize Israel of course, but this frequently spilled out to blatant anti-Semitism. Speakers who were perceived to be remotely ‘pro-Israel’ were pressured to be disinvited to campuses just because of their nationality/race, no other reason.

A handful of many examples: Janet Mock was disinvited from Brown simply because Hillel, a Jewish organization, sponsored her talk. Basseim Eid was disinvited from UChicago though she is Palestinian because she “made comments that could be seen as pro-Israel.” Nir Bakat was forced to end his speech early from SF State, simply because he is the mayor of Jerusalem. And so on.

If this issue is truly about safety, I want to point out my kids definitely did not feel safe on their campuses, but there was no venue to discuss this.

413

@cobrat Pius XII’s record is known and documented. He was lauded at the time by Jews and non-Jews alike. Fortunately history corrects personal opinion. Hitler’s direct opposition to the Catholic Church and leadership was quite clear. History has spoken on that as well. Exactly where, for instance, was Hitler attending mass and receiving the sacraments while he was supreme leader?

The big challenge for those out to prove some nefarious overlay would, of course, be to show how Catholic teaching supports Nazi beliefs and practices. Show me that, and then we can have a real discussion! (Though probably not on this thread).

414

@generations, there has been a meme circulating around the shadowy conservative underbelly of the internet - “Trump’s greatest victory so far is getting the NYT to care about anti semitism.” You are unfortunately correct that this is not exactly a new thing.

415

If attending Mass and receiving the sacraments were mandatory preconditions to being or continuing to be Catholic, the vast majority of Catholics in the US and in Western Europe…especially after WWII who consider themselves to be Catholic and classified as “Cafeteria Catholics” by traditionalist conservative Catholics wouldn’t be. Last I checked, only the most extreme conservative traditionalist Catholics believe that.

Many prominent Catholic leaders/theologians did encourage massive anti-semitic attacks during the medieval period such as the Catholic Spanish expulsions of Jews from Spain in 1492 and later, the Spanish religious authorities launching multiple waves of Inquisitions to ferret out “secret Jews” or those suspected as such and to torture them/publicly execute them in grisly fashion such as putting them to the torch:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-da-f%C3%A9

416

romanigypsieyes–
Although I agree that this behavior is despicable, one should never assume that something is “bad science” because it seems disagreeable or generates controversy. To be fair, lots of modern scientific knowledge, when it first appeared, was considered “bunk” by most scientists of the day. I’m sure there are scientific matters today considered “bunk” by many that will turn out to be obvious and accepted facts in the future. That’s one reason why speakers like this should be welcomed for debates. Even if I disagree with them, they may have some valid points that anyone can learn from. People’s ideas will never improve without challenge.

417

@generations I’ve heard the same thing from others.

General comment here –My impression has been that the rise in anti Semitism is tied both to the rise in recognition of Islam and criticism for Israel, both of which have been supported in large part by the Obama administration. Not saying any of that is legit or not legit – just making an observation on the correlation. Very curious that the press didn’t really cover this issue.

People might not be aware that Ivanka Trump and her husband- and presumably their kids- are all Jewish.

There has been an active reporting of hate incidents in the wake of Donald trumps election. There has also been an active investigation and finding that many of them – especially the most newsworthy – are fake.

418

^^^^ I wouldn’t call one of those stories fake. Inaccurate is probably a better term.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/05/us/brooklyn-jewish-cemetery-tombstones-overturned/

419

@cobrat most Catholics theologians would tell you that if you publicly pronounce sentiments – especially those followed up with actions – that are antithetical to the Catholic faith and you refuse to receive the sacraments Or attend mass you have excommunicated yourself from the Catholic Church. As to “cafeteria Catholics”, many prominent bishops as well as not a few popes! have spoken out on the necessity of sacramental life in the Catholic Church and I personally do not know of a single priest who would maintain that you are in communion with the church if you deliberately skip mass. In fact regular attendance is a precept of Catholic membership.

The Inquisition did its share of persecuting both Jews and Christians. Jews definitely experienced the brunt of it. But the Inquisition is not Catholic teaching. Failures resulting from the Inquisition are a misapplication of it. Catholic theology says that the church is a divine and human institution. It is absolutely the case that there is plenty of human feeling within the Catholic Church. As there is within any institution .

I appreciate your attempts to link mideival treatment of Jews with more modern day nazi philosophies but I actually think you’re mistaken on that. Naziism is a throwback to pagan and more modern philosophic sensibilities. It seems to skip the mideival period Altogether – although you are welcome to correct me on that.

I think the important thing to remember is that being Catholic may be correlated with certain ethnic identities but it is not in itself an ethnic identity. The word “Catholic” actually means universal. It is never supposed to be associated with an ethnic identity. Therefore, there will be many times where ethnic practices are in conflict with Christian teaching. Sometimes the Christian teaching wins and sometimes the ethnic practice wins. By the way, the Catholic Church is not the first religious institution to struggle with this. The Old Testament is filled with similar stories for the people of Israel.

420

So only “extremists” think being Catholic requires going to mass and taking communion? Pretty sure virtually every practicing Catholic would tell you you are supposed to take communion at least once a year. Do most Catholics think you are not a Catholic if you don’t go to church every week? No. But I guarantee that the vast majority would agree that you have to at the very least be a “C&E” (Christmas and Easter) church goer to be even nominally Catholic.