[lbo-talk] What Does It Matter Who Is Speaking?

[Shane Mage]

Justin wrote:
>
>...or "It's I
>  > who decides who's a Jew" -
>
>As I've said here before, this is from the antiSemitic
>Mayor of Vienna around the fin de siecle: Auf Deutsch:
>"Wer ein Jude ist, ich bestimme."
>
>
>  both attributed to
>>  Hermann Goering even though
>  > they were actually said by someone else....
>
>...If Goering quoted the statement, he was (a) wrong, as
>unlike in fin de siecle Vienna there were elaborate
>Nazi laws (part of the Nuremberg Laws) and
>administrative regulations determining who in Nazi
Germany was a Jew -- and for Germans that's a very serious matter...

When Goering quoted (or adapted--my recollection is that he
said "*Ich* sage wer Jude ist") that phrase, he spoke in earnest.
Fanatical Nazis had demanded the dismissal of one of his most capable
lieutenants, Air Marshal Ernst Milch, because of his Jewish ancestry.
Goering, of course, a Prussian aristocrat, had only contempt for
the plebian apostles of the "Socialism of Idiots," as well as for
bureaucrats in general.  Moreover, he was not "wrong" to
disregard the Law when (as most of the time) he felt like it.  The
Fuehrer was explicitly placed above the Law and, as the second
ranking Nazi, the Reischsmarschall had every claim to a similar privilege.

Shane Mage

"Thunderbolt steers all things...It consents and does not
consent to be called 
Zeus."                                                         

Herakleitos of Ephesos