Nazis
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I apologize in advance for invoking Godwin’s Law, but as always, Nazism is such the prime historical example of snowballing fascism it’s hard not to bring it up. So I’ll get it out of the way with a brief look at Martin Niemöller’s well known and probably over-quoted poem: First they came for the Socialists,…
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Sunday mornings are silent in Vienna, punctuated only by the dull hum of a tram or the chirping of birds in the hundreds of parks in the city. The wind coming out of the Danube valley rushes down the wide boulevards, amplifying their desolateness. I am in Burgengarten, looking at the backside of the Hofburg…
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Because I have Jewish heritage it is only natural for me to have been inundated from birth with stories of the Holocaust, and of course it is only natural for me to have heard of the crimes of the non-Jewish witnesses of this 20th century horror. As my family was at Auschwitz and most lost…
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I was reading recently about a peculiar custom in Israel of not performing Richard Wagner. Although the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that enforcement of this custom isn’t legal, it still continues to be an ongoing, rampant phenomenon in a country that has an established tradition of free speech. In recent years, Israeli musicians planning to…
brian mayer 