> Actually I think he's right (if not for the right
> reasons). The German Cult of Mitschuldigkeit is
> largely self-flaggelating ritual masochism. Given that
> most Germans weren't even alive at the time makes it
> even more lame. It's fake guiltCrippling for the
> national psyche actually.
>
[...]
>> BERLIN (Reuters) - Iran's President Mahmoud
>> Ahmadinejad told Germans they
>> should no longer allow themselves to be held
>> prisoner by a sense of guilt
>> over the Holocaust and reiterated doubts that the
>> Holocaust even happened.
=========================
Actually, Ahmadinejad is only partially right. He's right about the
dispossession and continuing oppression of the Palestinians by the Israelis,
and about the cynical exploitation of the Holocaust by the Zionists which
perpetuates that oppression (while simultaneously cheapening the Holocaust
and promoting a backlash against it). But I don't think it would be a good
idea for the left to join him in campaiging for a) an international panel to
weigh whether the Holocaust is a myth, or b) for the Hebrew-speaking
population in Israel to be "repatriated" back to Europe. As for the Germans,
I'm not a believer in "national psyches" and expect there are some among
them who engage in "self-flagglation ritual masochism" about the Holocaust,
some whose views would be closer to Ahmadinejad's, and probably many more
who understand it in context as do most of the rest of us. If poor
Ahmadinejad didn't seem so sincerely simple-minded about this issue, I'd
swear he was being somehow manipulated by the CIA and the Mossad into
making these statements.