Erdogan wants more powerful presidency, cites Hitler.

[Cocoa Beware]

Then you have no idea on hundreds of years of Western, specifically European literature. (Actually goes far back) Where do you live again? Just the standard curriculum of a high school contains the highlights of how Jews have been charaterised and presented. We do not have to go to the now forgotten pieces. I have studied them in high school.

You're right to point that out, as I have no standard by which to qualify that claim.

You're also right to point out that Jews were demonized for hundreds of years in Europe.

However I feel the need to point out there is a vast difference in how such works are generally percieved, now and then, including Mein Kampf. This is a very important distinction.

It means people who espouse Jew paranoia in the West are people most of us don't take seriously.

This is the basic logic of the short man with the funny moustache. His hatred against Jews starts with seeing the tenacity, the survival strength of a culture that was forecd out of anything for a long time, but managed to become very successful at putting their hands into anything curicial in the society that has a future. He saw them holding the biggest potential of "Controling the world". (Today still this is a very common opinion on Jews in the USA and Europe among people) Adolf thought he'd beat them to it via a short cut by naked agression as many like him thought before for many people, not just Jews. He became an icon and the poster monster of genocide of the modern world and allthough there have been dictators that would make Hitler a kid playing in a kindergarten who has never been even accused of their crimes, he'll always be the epitome of the 'evil'. Because the Western culture built a history and coded a culture on it.

That opinion on Jews is no doubt very common, but the difference in the West is if you identify with that lot publicly your reputation will be blighted, if not destroyed. For a public figure to attempt it is often tantamount to committing career suicide.

It's yet far from ideal, but its a lot better then say, Palestine where its perfectly alright to encourage kids to kill Jews on television. I don't see much of a case for a double standard if that's what you're driving at.

And how on Earth is Hitler benign compared to anyone, given the scale and methods by which the slaughter was conducted? There are a few comparables, but do you mean to say some have dwarfed his efforts?

The society he is addressing in that speech has no collective memory or culture of WWII. Most of them have no sense of history of a world 'saved' by USA in WWII. His voters do not need to feel extra belligerent against Jews more than what in general Jews and Christians feel for them; two groups of people they neither care, nor know about, esp. a war between two remote cultures 70 years ago. They know nothing about.

It wasn't very hard to guess Erdogan's message was for a specific audience.

And honestly, why would anyone have difficulty understanding there is a vast gulf in perspective? I mean consider the difference in Japan's account of WW2 compared to China's, or the disparity surrounding the Armenian genocide.

This applies to Hitler as well. To the West he is generally infamous, but others seem to identify with the man quite well.

Like Christians or Jews and Israelis do not know, nor care one thing about muslims and their world.

I have no idea whether the West cares in a collective sense, I speak for no one, but they have allowed millions of Muslims to live in their countries.

As for me I'm definitely concerned about the Muslim world.

Its a very problematic religion. It seems the closer you adhere to it, the more human suffering results.

The Sunni/Shia engage in mindless bloodshed, and you have the appalling treatment of women, homosexuals, apostates and atheists, among others.

This is why consider ex-Muslims to be among the bravest people on the planet. You're allowed to murder your own family for apostasy.

Unless secularism is... eventually... adopted, our outlook as a species is that much more grim. I am against irrational and destructive beliefs, not people.

[drunkenshoe]

Everybody is concerned with the Muslim World. Including the large majority of Muslims, doesn't matter how difficult is for you or many others to comprehend or even begin to understand it.

The main issue with the majority of Western people and secular-westernised Muslims is the collective deliberate demonisation of Muslims producing a hate culture and projecting every fucking failure of its own, including its very domestic issues onto one group of people by the reasoning that they are a homogeneous group working in solidarity with religious motives to annihilate them.

-Unemployement
-Economical crisis (Esp. walfare)
-Demography (West is not breeding, muslims do)
-Failing of Western individualism
-Violent actions of armed professional groups supported by main world powers

Problems of Muslim world have existed forever. Somehow they have suddenly become a problem after 9/11.  Due to some mystery, that one special act of terrorism in one country far far away, revealed the great truth how it was actually on the verge of being overthrown by an illeterate mass with no power.


---You are confusing two very different things. (Also, I think you are not aware of the scale of the inherent Anti-Semism in Eurepoan written culture; a culture which it owes all its distinctive traits to developing just that; a written culture.)

Prohibiting racism-discrimination and creating a fear of reflexive media sanctions (work for public figures an cases with recorded events with overwhelming evidence) do not exempt a culture and its people from acting the way in their lives and cultures which is inherent in it for the better part of its existence. Esp. in Europe and considering the international policies of Israel.

Europe is NOT the USA. They are two very different Wests in many aspects.

First of all, there is no some special Israel propaganda in Europe, because they do not have the benefit -profit relationship with Israel like US do. Also, while in general European culture is far more based on traditional division of social classes, you cannot impose censorhip on European media overall to a point of absolute propaganda filtering what you like people to think or not.

People in Europe are not watching certain media feeds selected for them in every channel concrening Israel-Palestinan conflict. They are watching whatever can be gathered more or less and see MORE. Also, people are not isolated from general world culture as Americans 'carefully' are and they also practise 'free speech' rather than just talk about how much they have it without fearing to be bashed.   

The political concepts, ideologies are percieved completely different in Europe. They are NOT black and white. What American people understand form Left, Marxism, Socilaism, Religion is jsut political propaganda of the two fighting Right Wings in the country. Europe is has been leaning right, but has real opposition. There is no real opposition in USA.

--Just alone the the history of US international politics and wars in the last 70 years is enough to dwarf Hitler. The method? Gas chambers, death camps and the unspeakable torture and executions? You mean it doesn't count if you can manage mass annihilation and destruction without horrific scenes and if it is not done with some method that would make a normal person vomit? Not really. This is why I said Hitler is poster monster.

If you are not informed, try the series of Untold History of USA series some time or Gladio operations. Let's check how Hitler looks in that scale of proffessional mass destruction and annihilation. My favourite is Lyndon Johnson episode. I'm curious if that would make you 'concerned' about anything other than the Muslim World OR how the world ended up in this mess as the general world politics 101 goes.

[josephpalazzo]

Jews were demonized for hundreds of years in Europe.

There are many reasons why this took place in Europe but two of them stand out.

(1) When Christianity was made the official religion of the Roman empire, it was a political move on the part of the Christian leaders to blame the Jews for the crucifixion of Jesus. In the early days of Christianity, the Romans had been the villains in the traditional story about Jesus being put on a cross.

(2) In early Christianity, Christians were forbidden to borrow/lend money. It was called "simony" (today it just means "the sin of buying or selling sacred things"). So what often happened in the Medieval Age is that governments would go into deficits and needed to borrow (your local baron, duke or Lord had tendencies to spend lavishly). So where to turn to borrow but to the Jews, who were apt at these things. Of course, when the debt couldn't be paid, what else, it was easy to blame the Jews, hence the scores of Jewish persecutions/pogroms that took placed across Europe. So by the early 20th century, the hate for Jews was so ingrained into European culture, that the atrocities that took placed in Nazy Germany was an act waiting to happen. All that was needed was a demagogue like Hitler to make it happen.

[drunkenshoe]

Christianity is made by councils hundreds of years after the time of the myth that has been told. In early years of Christianity, crucifixion is not a part of the story. Neither a virgin mother and a son of god begotten through the virgin. (Crucifixion is highly likely an adaptation of a more ancient -and more violent- form of a religious sacrifice which was done by bending down a tree -details are disgusting- and then started to be used as common way of punishment.)

The whole story blaming jews for killing a jew is the product of a political construct, NOT a part of the immediate creed or the myth. Added later.

[Baruch]

PS - in pre-modern Europe it was a clever idea for the rulers to use Jews as tax collectors.  I think this was mostly in E Europe.

[josephpalazzo]

PS - in pre-modern Europe it was a clever idea for the rulers to use Jews as tax collectors.  I think this was mostly in E Europe.

In many places, Jews were restricted to only certain profession - tax collectors being one. Also many were bankers on account of simony, that Christians were forbidden to lend/borrow money. In the intervening years, because of persecutions, Jews often invested their wealth into jewelry, art collections - things they could carry away if political times spelled trouble. So they earned the canard that they were wealthy, greedy and stingy - propaganda that was used by the authorities to blame the Jews for their financial difficulties.

[Baruch]

Not the only ones.  The Knights Templar were destroyed by the king of France, because he owned them money and couldn't pay them back.  He tried to get onto their "board of directors" but they refused him.  The Knights Templar, in their day, had a good international network of people who were reliable (see Jewish population).

So it is unusual that in modern times bankers are protected, rather than thrown to the angry peasants.  The real culprits, except in the French and Russian revolutions, got clean away.  Not to say that bankers aren't dishonest ... just that governments/royalty/Vatican are their greatest debtors.

[Sylar]

Oh I am sure it has many translations through out the Islam world. First of all, I am talking about Turkish language and culture and then 'Mein Kampf' being translated as 'My Jihad' to sell to muslim through out the world.

[Jihad is a word used as 'holy war for Islam'. And the word 'harb' (harp) is also just 'war' in old ottoman turkish. It's used for any war. World war, civil war. Mukaddes is an old female name and not a word used in daily language, niether the word harb. Kutsal is used for 'holy'. Jihad is Cihat and it also a male name. Struggle is 'mücadele' in Turkish. (There are some others like 'çabalama' 'cebelleşme'..etc.). The usual word for war is 'savaş'. There are many words in arabic means holy. Islam has different cultures. ]

So when someone uses the word 'cihat', nobody understands ant 'struggle' or 'striving' but just a 'holy war', it is a special religious term, doesn't mean what it means in arabic. When someone uses the word 'Satan', nobody understands it in a 'pure linguistic' sense (what ever that means; the expression of 'pure' lingusitic sense' is against all linguistic principles; languages, their usages and esp. the words 'invented' for certain religious, political constructs constantly change over and over again to adapt) which is just 'opposer' and nothing more. It's become a term for a supernatural entity. So it really doesn't matter what it means in Hebrew.


However, all that aside, the problem here is translating 'Mein Kampf' as 'My Jihad' as it was claimed -which was the purpose of the conversation- and sell it to muslims to brainwash masses to serve Islamic terrorism.

If the term is being sold as 'holy war', that doesn't mean it's the proper use of the word. Scholars dispute its meaning as such especially that jihad doesn't necessarily refer to armed struggle. In other words, jihad is an umbrella of actions to be taken by Muslims to maintain their religion, one of which is war or armed struggle.

[glauck56]

Turkey is a country with a strange secularism,  I don't like Erdogan, i hope in a kurdish state.

[drunkenshoe]

If the term is being sold as 'holy war', that doesn't mean it's the proper use of the word. Scholars dispute its meaning as such especially that jihad doesn't necessarily refer to armed struggle.

I really do not care what 'scholars' think on the subject. Theologians are not scholars. I'm talking about how people percieve it and that is the 'proper' use of it. If you know the first ting about linguistics-society-culture, you should be able to understand this.

In other words, jihad is an umbrella of actions to be taken by Muslims to maintain their religion, one of which is war or armed struggle.

What bullshit. The great majority of the muslims do not give a fuck about 'jihad' or islamic terrorism or what shit is buggering people around the world. Exactly like westerners, atheist or christan alike.

[stromboli]

I really do not care what 'scholars' think on the subject. Theologians are not scholars. I'm talking about how people percieve it and that is the 'proper' use of it. If you know the first ting about linguistics-society-culture, you should be able to understand this.

What bullshit. The great majority of the muslims do not give a fuck about 'jihad' or islamic terrorism or what shit is buggering people around the world. Exactly like westerners, atheist or christan alike.

My limited experience with religion and people in general is that the masses of them are people merely seeking a balance, a status quo in their lives. Bin Laden and others' set purpose is to polarize and destabilize Islam to keep it from becoming complacent. The large percentage of people in any religion, the core believers are moderate conservatives. The goal of extremists is to shift their stance from moderate to more conservative and to act on their beliefs in the form of terrorism and speaking out on behalf of terrorism. People are sheep and will follow where they are led.

You can go all the way back to before World War 1 and see a pattern of how the Western powers have sought to exploit the Middle East for oil, and with their heavy handed tactics- like overthrowing a democratically elected government in Iran and replacing it with a puppet Shah to work for the West in 1953.

And all the promises made by T. E. Lawrence to incite the Arab world against Germany were not kept. Puppet leaders like Faisal were installed and the masses of Islam were turned to mistrust by our actions. Blame can be laid at the feet of the Western governments for what is happening now. And the people who exploit those mistakes have a fertile field of very angry masses to recruit from.

[drunkenshoe]

My limited experience with religion and people in general is that the masses of them are people merely seeking a balance, a status quo in their lives. Bin Laden and others' set purpose is to polarize and destabilize Islam to keep it from becoming complacent. The large percentage of people in any religion, the core believers are moderate conservatives. The goal of extremists is to shift their stance from moderate to more conservative and to act on their beliefs in the form of terrorism and speaking out on behalf of terrorism. People are sheep and will follow where they are led.

You can go all the way back to before World War 1 and see a pattern of how the Western powers have sought to exploit the Middle East for oil, and with their heavy handed tactics- like overthrowing a democratically elected government in Iran and replacing it with a puppet Shah to work for the West in 1953.

And all the promises made by T. E. Lawrence to incite the Arab world against Germany were not kept. Puppet leaders like Faisal were installed and the masses of Islam were turned to mistrust by our actions. Blame can be laid at the feet of the Western governments for what is happening now. And the people who exploit those mistakes have a fertile field of very angry masses to recruit from.

Yes, strom. This is a result.

However, that picture is two dimensional in Western side. Like I said before, everyone is talking about a group called muslims as if these beings are living on the world, but not in it.

Doesn't matter whatever is going on or happened before, these countries have their own problems. They are much bigger and serious problems than the world's islamic terrorism issue for these masses. This is what I mean.

People keep loading meanings to certain terms or events according to their personal beliefs, visions, political ideas or ideologies, but they seem to forget that these are just people in the end. They have families to take care of. Jobs, a traffic they need to put up with everyday. Morgages, credit cards debts to pay. They want to buy a better house. A better car. A better phone. They get upset when their spouses sulk because of something or can't buy what their wives or children want. They have the same kind of sayings about politicians and politics, about men and women. They complain about how stupid is the tv programs. They hate commercial periods in movies on tv.

They are not one mass abgry about the same thing. People like to think of them that way, because it is much easier. Short cut. However, short cuts are just to make it short, this one arrives another destination altogether. They are hundreds of millions of people angry at a lot of things in their lives. They are not even interested in what is going in the Western World, apart from a football match (soccer) or the movies that gets on big screen.

Oddly enough, they are not as angry as Americans.

[stromboli]

Yes, strom. This is a result.

However, that picture is two dimensional in Western side. Like I said before, everyone is talking about a group called muslims as if these beings are living on the world, but not in it.

Doesn't matter whatever is going on or happened before, these countries have their own problems. They are much bigger and serious problems than the world's islamic terrorism issue for these masses. This is what I mean.

People keep loading meanings to certain terms or events according to their personal beliefs, visions, political ideas or ideologies, but they seem to forget that these are just people in the end. They have families to take care of. Jobs, a traffic they need to put up with everyday. Morgages, credit cards debts to pay. They want to buy a better house. A better car. A better phone. They get upset when their spouses sulk because of something or can't buy what their wives or children want. They have the same kind of sayings about politicians and politics, about men and women. They complain about how stupid is the tv programs. They hate commercial periods in movies on tv.

They are not one mass abgry about the same thing. People like to think of them that way, because it is much easier. Short cut. However, short cuts are just to make it short, this one arrives another destination altogether. They are hundreds of millions of people angry at a lot of things in their lives. They are not even interested in what is going in the Western World, apart from a football match (soccer) or the movies that gets on big screen.

Oddly enough, they are not as angry as Americans.

Yes, the picture we have is two dimensional for many reasons, not the least of which is the media over here. I hope that my western bias on issues or my viewpoint is tempered by the realization that what I see is what I'm fed, and other cultures by nature are foreign to my understanding. One thing I've never done is try to be judgmental about issues and people without knowing as much of the story as I can.

The takeover of the wildlife station in Oregon, for example, I can draw conclusions on because I grew up with the same type of people that are there and I understand their mindset. You might say I'm steeped in their culture. Not so with Turkey, Islam or all the different aspects of your lifestyle. So all I can do is judge based on what I see and what I glean from the media.

This, by the way, is why your presence here is a good thing, because you provide an intelligent and different viewpoint to learn from, and that is positive.

[Sylar]

I really do not care what 'scholars' think on the subject. Theologians are not scholars. I'm talking about how people percieve it and that is the 'proper' use of it. If you know the first ting about linguistics-society-culture, you should be able to understand this.

Faulty perception is a slippery slope, a tragedy waiting to happen. If you do not correct mass media perversion of the term, then you in essence perpetuate their use of it and consequently embolden the end result of this use -- sort of like what's happening in the US today with Trump & co, except that this fearmongering could be much worse and have been throughout history.

What bullshit. The great majority of the muslims do not give a fuck about 'jihad' or islamic terrorism or what shit is buggering people around the world. Exactly like westerners, atheist or christan alike.

We all have our fair share of daily problems -- that is a given. The difference is, religion is not a cornerstone in the West as Islam is in Islamic or Islamic-majority countries, so a comparison of two entirely different cultures having daily problems is simplistic at best.