Modern taboo

 Distilling this book’s message to a succinct, perhaps provocative statement would produce something like this:

Today’s Germany is a dictatorship where some ten to twenty thousand criminal investigations are launched every year for mere expressions of opinions, and where hundreds of political prisoners are locked up for the sole reason of having expressed in a peaceful way their peaceful views which those in power don’t like.

Of course that’s nonsense, the average person will say, because everyone knows that Germany grants civil rights to its citizens and has a well-maintained legal system that is highly regarded. 

I have written the present book exactly in order to burst that delusory bubble with a heavy load of evidence.

In order to understand the discrepancy between self-image and reality of today’s German society, one has to deal with Germany’s taboos which prevent Germans from perceiving that which our wishful thinking does not want to be true. In order to deal with a taboo, one has first to violate it. 

Hence, please permit me to violate right in this introduction Germany’s most-strictly enforced taboo, which is at once also the strongest taboo of all the other societies of the cultural western hemisphere. By doing this, we put ourselves in a position where we can then analyze the effects of that taboo.

What is a taboo? Read the motto again that I’ve put at the very top of the first page of this introduction. A truly effective taboo prohibits that one dare call it a taboo in the first place, because taboos are something archaic, something that an enlightened, tolerant society shouldn’t have. Hence, to call a taboo just that amounts to an indictment of that very regime that enforces it, accusing it of being primitive, unenlightened, oppressive. In the end, calling a taboo by its name amounts already to violating it, an act which the regime imposing this taboo will punish. 

So, what exactly is this taboo of western societies in general and Germany in particular? As an enlightened citizen, about which topic don’t you dare talk publicly in a manner not conforming with the expectations of your society? There may be some topics that come to your mind. But I’m not talking about just any topic.

Well, it is actually quite easy to find the answer to this question, and by this I don’t even mean reading the present book, which deals almost exclusively with that taboo and the impact its violation had for me. Actually, the answer is in plain sight for all who are willing to see it. Just ask yourself what events in your society have turned once-prominent personalities into social lepers overnight, making them lose jobs and positions and in some countries getting them even prosecuted and jailed?

One instance of Germany’s taboo was that of the German member of parliament Martin Hohmann, who in 2003 mused during a presentation whether Jews were not merely victims but also perpetrators at some points in modern European history.1 And there’s the snag: The topic JEW and all that is connected to it is the taboo.

Already when writing this sentence, when violating this taboo, my hackles still get up, even after years of dealing with this taboo, and I am sure the average reader will feel mightily uncomfortable when reading these lines. Had I used any other word than JEW, nobody would mind.

Have you ever asked yourself what kind of subliminal conditioning you were subjected to in order to develop such strong emotions which are aroused, just because I have written this unspeakable word?

Or do you think this is no taboo at all? Well, on December 1, 2016, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed a bill in a related matter. Even though that bill lapsed in the House due to the end of the session – it probably will be reintroduced in 2017 in some form – this bill still reveals the sentiments of evidently all leading politicians of the U.S. The intention behind that bill was to amend the flawed Civil Rights Act of 1964. That act merely prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin, but not of religion. The above bill wanted to change that.

Unfortunately, however, it did not do this for all religions, but only for Jews, as it merely aimed at banning discrimination by anti-Semitism.2 The way anti-Semitism was defined in it is revealing. In the “Fact Sheet” on this, it says, for instance, and I quote only some of what I find troubling:3

“– Making […] stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as a collective—especially but not exclusively, the myth about […] Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions. […]
– Accusing […] Israel as a state, of […] exaggerating the Holocaust.
– Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel […] than to the interest of their own nations. […]
– Using the symbols and images associated with classic anti-Semitism to characterize Israel or Israelis – Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Na-zis […]
– Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, and denying Israel the right to exist.” Of course, everyone should be against judging by stereotype, and for most people, all the other statements sound nice, too, but here are some tough questions:

– Who defines what is an unjustified stereotype and what is actually true?

– How can we inquire whether the State of Israel has contributed to exaggerating claims of the Holocaust, if the (negative) answer has been pre-scribed by law?

– If Jews are members of a people rather than a religion, as the last sentence of the above quote clearly suggests, then they inevitably must have a conflict of interest when living amongst the people of other nations. If so, then why is questioning their primary loyalty outlawed?

– And why is the use of the symbols and images in cartoons associated with classic anti-Islamism to characterize Muslims or Muslim countries, or classic anti-Germanism to characterize Germans or Germany fine (you can add many more examples here), but banned when the shoe is on a Chosen foot?

– Moreover, comparing something does not mean equating it. Historical comparisons can be a very powerful revelatory tool, so why ban them?

– Finally, Israel is not any other country. It came into existence by brutal-ly denying the original inhabitants of its land their right to self-determi-nation, and by ethnically cleansing many of them from that land. That policy of denial and ethnic cleansing has been maintained ever since Is-rael was incepted. So, either you deny the Palestinians their right to self-determination, and deny their country the right to exist, or you do this for the Jews and Israel. Either way, unless an all-encompassing so-lution can be found where both Jews and non-Jews can live with equal rights peacefully side by side, you are a denier one way or the other.

But only one form of denial is outlawed. Again: why?

– Who has the power over the minds of the members of Congress, and in extension to all who applaud this act, to make them so blind to this unwarranted “special treatment” of Jews and Israel?

– Once this act will have become the law of the land, how is one to criticize Jews and Israel, if any such criticism can be construed as unlawful discriminatory anti-Semitism?

If you want to know who rules a country, find out whom you are not allowed to criticize. Under a law like this, of course, that statement alone would already be called discriminatory anti-Semitism, because it is a “stereotypical allegations about […] the power of Jews as a collective.”

Welcome to the New World Order!
(Swap the N with a J, if you want to get in trouble) 

Having said all this, would you dare talk publicly in a critical way about the political influence that Jews have in the U.S., in Germany and many other countries, and why you dislike it – if you dislike it? The topic is a taboo, for it leads to certain social death for everyone touching this “third rail.” If you violate that taboo anyway, you might find yourself in trouble faster than you think, or even get prosecuted and jailed in many western countries. It’s as simple as that.

Well, the United States of America and its offspring the Federal Republic of Germany guarantee basic civil rights, right?

Of course, there is a reasoning behind all that, I know. After all that has happened, Jews may not be attacked, be it physically or verbally. But you may of course criticize the influence of any other group, correct? So, for a change, it’s not Jews that are being persecuted by the State, but “only” those who criticize Jews. Serves them right… And it immunizes Jews from any effective criticism. Serves them well, I’m sure.

But don’t worry; I will not elaborate any further on this topic in the present book. It is present merely between the lines, for this book deals with an issue which is one of the most important reasons why the topic JEW has become such a strong taboo to begin with: The dogma that Jews are the victims per se; that they are the personification of good; that anyone attack-ing or criticizing them must automatically be evil. What is this dogma?

To understand this, let’s delve deeper into this taboo, into a deeper, more “wicked” layer of the “Jew taboo.” What we are dealing with here may be explained by way of an exemplary victim of this taboo. It concerns a former official of the former German protest party Die Piraten (The Pirates), Bodo Thiesen. In May 2008 he wrote the following momentous sentences in an email to the party’s mailing list:4

“Well, until a few months ago, I believed as well that those ‘denying Auschwitz’ are mere adolescent cranks. Back then, however, I had not yet read Germar Rudolf. Sorry, but the book leaves a mark – at least if one approaches it objectively.”

That was the end of Thiesen’s political career. During the aftershocks of this “scandal”, which was rehashed by the German media in early 2012, the Pirate Party adopted a resolution during its membership convention with 1499 Yeas and only one abstention which reads as follows:5

“The Holocaust is an undeniable part of history. It is against the party’s principles to deny or relativize it under the cover of freedom of expression.”

If the members of any other German party left of the radical right had been asked to vote on a similar resolution, the results would have been the same, and that’s probably true for almost all political parties in all western coun-tries, some radical right parties on the fringe excepted. This is so in spite of the fact that many of these western countries have no legal enforcement of such policies. Such almost universal compliance with this taboo is nowa-days achieved with much more refined methods than Hitler or any other dictator in history could ever have dreamed of: by way of 70+ years of brainwashing an entire cultural hemisphere.

How else could it be explained that almost everyone is outraged as soon as someone merely hints at disregarding this übertaboo, the HOLO-CAUST? Anyone can express any kind of controversial opinion about any other subject of history without causing excessive reactions.
The Holocaust is that event by which the Jews became the victims par excellence. As the victims of evil incarnate, of the ultimate evil, they were themselves promoted to the epitome of the morally Good. Hence, the Jew taboo is a derivative taboo of the Holocaust taboo.

To this you may respond that the Holocaust is no taboo at all, because there is no other historical topic which is as omnipresent as this one. Even though it is true that no other historical event gains more attention than this one, that does not prove it’s not a taboo. Jews as such aren’t a taboo either, merely criticizing them in a manner that is considered unfair or anti-Semi-tic, which seems synonymous. The same is true for the Holocaust. While it is still possible to criticize Jews to some degree without getting in deep trouble, try even mildly criticizing the orthodox Holocaust narrative. You can doubt whether all is always kosher with the Jews or at least certain Jews, but try the same with the Holocaust or merely certain aspects of it:

Get up in a public place and give a speech expressing any doubt of the accuracy of the orthodox Holocaust narrative. I’m sure you’d find out fast where the limits are of what is accepted in your community. In some coun-tries, if you still insist on your human right to doubt and to express those doubts publicly, you sooner or later breathe filtered air (within a prison cell), as they say in Germany. There is no compromise and no mercy in this regard.

However, isn’t the foremost lesson to learn from the horrors of the Holocaust that everything needs to be done to prevent a repetition, for which eternal commemoration is the most important prerequisite, and denying it is the first step toward a repetition?

I know how difficult it is to free yourself from the psychological fetters with which we all were raised in our respective societies – or put differently: we were brainwashed. I want to offer some assistance here to achieve this act of liberation.

Imagine you are an alien arriving in a spaceship from a different planet.

You study the various human societies. You determine that western societies have high ideals about civil rights, but realize that there is one excep-tion with regards to one minority and one historical event involving this minority.

The earthlings justify this to the aliens as follows: In order to prevent that books are again burned, dissidents are again imprisoned, and minorities are again persecuted, this time some other books have to be burned, some other dissidents have to be imprisoned, and some other minority persecuted.

How would you justify this evidently paradoxical situation to the alien?

The objective answer lies in research done by individuals who can detach themselves from their society, think outside the box. I quote here the German professor of sociology Dr. Robert Hepp, who has done some research and experiments on the issue of the taboos of “primitive” as well as “progressive” societies in order to be able to compare the two. Here is the summary of what he has found out:6

“Occasional experiments that I have conducted in my seminars convince me that ‘Auschwitz’ [the most well-known site of the Holocaust] is strictly ethnologically speaking one of the few taboo topics that our ‘taboo-free society’ still preserves […]. While they did not react at all to other stimulants, ‘enlightened’ central European students who refused to accept any taboos at all, would react to a confrontation with ‘revisionist’ [denialist] texts’ about the gas chambers at Auschwitz in just as ‘elemental’ a way (including the comparable physiological symptoms) as members of primitive Polynesian tribes would react to an infringement of one of their taboos. The students were literally beside themselves and were neither prepared nor capable of soberly discussing the presented theses. For the sociologist, this is a very important point because a society’s taboos reveal what it holds sacred. Taboos also reveal what the community fears […].
Basically, a ‘modern’ society does not react differently to violations of taboos than does a ‘primitive’ society. Violating a taboo is generally perceived as ‘outrageous’ and ‘atrocious’ and produces spontaneous ‘revulsion’ and ‘horror.’ In the end the perpetrator is isolated, excluded from society, and himself ‘tabooed.’”

That’s the explanation you should to give to your alien visitor: minorities have to be persecuted and their books burned because they have violated a taboo. This does not require any further justification. As a result, the alien would probably consider human societies to be primitive, and rightly so, as Prof. Hepp’s research results have clearly revealed.

How exactly does one taboo a minority in a “modern” society to such a degree that merely mentioning them triggers revulsion, horror and disgust?

How do you get to the point in a “modern” country like Germany where almost everybody agrees that such a minority has to be persecuted, cen-sored and thrown into the dungeons? 

Very easily. During medieval times, you called such persons witches, and all the rest followed automatically. That persons so stigmatized were no witches at all was not revealed, because the topic was taboo, the victims tabooed.

Today we call persons “Nazis”, and exactly the same psychological mechanisms of automatic and generally accepted ostracism and persecution kick in.

Now you may ask, am I against punishing Nazis?
In turn, I ask you: Are you against punishing witches?

What I am trying to point out with this question is the fact that you are asking the wrong question. Nobody deserves being persecuted or punished because some stereotype has been attached to them.

The issue is not whether I am opposed to punishing people who have committed crimes. Whether the ideological background of that crime, if there is any, was witchcraft, black magic, devil worship or National Socialism does not matter at all. The issue is whether someone called a “witch” or a “Nazi” has committed any crime to begin with.

Today’s western societies, and the German society leading among them, have reached a point where curtailing civil rights is justified for the sole reason that this infringement is directed against “Nazis” (or anti-Semites, for that matter). If that is the justification, the public at large is quick to accept that infringement. No one asks anymore whether the individuals who have been slandered, ostracized and cast to the wolves in this way, have done anything to deserve such a punishment.

That’s what my book is about. It shows the many facets of the mechanism which turns innocent people into social pariahs, muzzles them, defames them, drags them into courts of law, sentences them in show trials, punishes them, incarcerates them, ruins their professional existence and turns them into social lepers, with the mass media standing by applauding, and the society at large gawking with satisfaction that once more a dangerous sorcerer (or “Nazi”) has been hunted down successfully.

I wonder whether even a single politician will ever grasp upon which dangerous, monstrous path their society is moving.

In the name of the more than a quarter million Germans who had to suffer criminal investigations for peaceful expressions of their opinions since 1994 – evidence for this can be found in this book – I will not give up hope that one of these days light will shine once more in a country that has, with many other countries, slipped back into the dark Middle Ages*.

Germar Rudolf Red Lion, December 2016

* Middle Ages were as "dark" as Germar Rudolf is "evil Nazi". But since at that time Jews were considered as an alien element, potentially dangerous Middle Ages presently are stigmatized.
We should wish to slipp back into the Middle Ages.