Posted on 03/19/2012 5:13:39 AM PDT by Kaslin
Dear Mr. Friedman:
I am deeply disappointed by your refusal to speak with me personally about some remarks you make to my editors at TownHall.com. I have given you ample time to respond to my phone calls. Now, I’m responding to you in this open letter. I really have no other choice given your unwillingness to speak directly to the people you target with your misguided condescension. I’ll respond to your irresponsible remarks one paragraph at a time. Here goes:
Mike Adams is not the first person to draw an analogy between the Holocaust and abortion, but we wish he would be the last one. (Aborting Hitler, Mike Adams, January 30th).
In my column, I correctly referred to the Nazi Holocaust as a Holocaust. I correctly referred to the feminist Holocaust as a Holocaust. I did not deny or in any way minimize any Holocaust. I simply spoke of two instead of speaking of one. If you are anti-Holocaust, then why are you morally superior for talking about one less Holocaust than I do? I just don’t understand your basic premise. Unfortunately, you will not pick up the phone to explain it to me when I call your office.
Referring to abortion as the "American Holocaust", makes for a catchy headline but it also undermines the historical truth of Nazi Germany, and Adams ought to know better. The Holocaust was the systematic industrialized murder of millions and should never translate into 2012 political analogies.
(Author’s Note: The headline was “Aborting Hitler” not “American Holocaust.” Friedman is undermining the historical truth of what I have written. He ought to know better).
Now, I am even more confused. When I assert the truth of one Holocaust, how do I “undermine the historical truth” of another? Why can’t both assertions be true – particularly when I back those assertions with evidence? Furthermore, are you at all concerned that some of the unborn murdered in the womb are little Jewish children who cannot defend themselves? Have you no concern that Planned Parenthood is engaged in industrialized murder? Are you also denying the “historical truth” that the founder of Planned Parenthood was a eugenicist who subscribed to Nazi ideology? Can you not see the connection between the two? Or are you trying to re-write history like the Holocaust deniers you claim to oppose? These are all great questions you could answer if you would just pick the phone.
Adams is entitled to his views on abortion, but his attempt to assert a moral equivalency between abortion, and the murder of millions of people at the hands of Nazis, is not only offensive but is indicative of a lack of understanding about the Holocaust.
Now, I think I understand your position. You don’t think the unborn are “people.” Well, what are they? Are you even prepared to offer an explanation of when a living fetus becomes a “person”?
Here’s where I can help. There are exactly four reasons routinely given for denying the personhood of the unborn. They follow in no particular order of importance:
1. Size – the unborn are smaller and therefore not persons;
2. Level of development – the unborn are less developed and therefore not persons;
3. Environment – the unborn are not persons because they are still in the womb;
4. Degree of dependency – the unborn are not persons because they must depend on others for survival.
I have rebuttals to all of these argument but you do not seem interested in them. Nor did you seem to understand the basic premise of “Aborting Hitler,” which was to assert that the denial of personhood is the motivating force behind Holocausts in general. Because you didn’t get it, now you’re doing it. Do you get it now?
Sincerely,
David C. Friedman
Regional Director, Washington DC Regional Office
Anti-Defamation League
Finally, I must take exception to your decision to sign off using the word “sincerely.” You aren’t sincere. If you were sincere, you would take seriously the argument that the unborn are persons. Then, once you arrived at that conclusion, you would also conclude that abortion is a Holocaust. Abortion provides a clear example of the “systematic industrialized murder of millions.”
Unfortunately, you have become nothing more than a Holocaust denier. The fact that you work for ADL makes you a shameless hypocrite, as well. Of course, you are entitled to lecture someone who sees through your intellectual poverty and moral bankruptcy. But you ought to know better.
Author’s Note: For more on the parallels between the Holocaust and abortion see Ray Comfort’s brilliant film “180.” Click here to view it now. Unfortunately, the film has not been approved by the ADL. It never will be.
My only (mild) confusion now is the term for the abortion disaster. As you have pointed out, "holocaust" is a Greek word. And if people refrained from using "The Holocaust" as an alternate term for Shoah, then I guess I don't see why Jewish people would take much interest in how anyone else uses a particular Greek word.
I feel that "a holocaust" is a long-standing term to describe widespread, horrific killing. I believe that it is in common usage in just that way.
On what grounds would Jewish people oppose describing abortion as a holocaust? I could perhaps see why if the Jews wanted Holocaust to be a specific term for what the Nazis did, but you are telling me that Holocaust is not an appropriate term for what the Nazis did. On that basis, I would think that "holocaust" becomes an available term to describe what America is doing today.
I think I've been fairly clear about this. The Orthodox Jewish people do not like the term "holocaust;" they prefer Shoah for the reasons I discussed. After the atrocities they suffered, I respect their wishes on that. Wouldn't you?
Whether or not a crime is "worse" has nothing to do with whether or not we have terms for describing particular crimes. The Shoah was an attempted genocide against the Jewish people in particular, as opposed to the other NAZI crimes against various peoples.
Moreover, the motives within the NAZIS varied by group. For example, the communists were reviled because they were competitors, as they both derived from very similar ideologies. In fact, early NAZI propaganda swore almost perfect alignment with Leninism. So much of the bile directed against Poles and communists was to justify what they were going to do anyway, although they did have a beef against a Polish Jewess in the person of Rosa Luxembourg while Poland was a center of Reform Jewish communist ideology as derived from the Bund der Gerechten. Remember too that "Poles" then controlled much of what had been Prussian territory. There was bad blood over that. Similarly, the flamings against "Gypsies" were directed against those who controlled what had been a corner of pre-WWI Germany.
The commonality for the mass-killing of many of these ethnic groups is that of using the justification of grievance. The ironic (and hypocritical) part is that the Jewish very bankers who financed the early NAZI Party went untouched during the Shoah. Personally, I think there is truth to the quite reasonably established hypothesis that Hitler was the illegitimate scion of a Rothschild.
1. Jews are an ethnic group, not a race.
2. Various criteria have been used throughout time to individuate groups targeted for deliberate slaughter. These include, without limitation, ethnicity, class, religion, ideology, race, location, birth order, and economic cost/inconvenience (e.g. as when the Nazis used “life unworthy of life” as a basis for murdering the old, infirm, handicapped, etc. and the feminists targeted unborn babies). In every case, there is collective intent. In the case of abortion it has gone one step further: the murder is now conducted on a commercial basis and the “businesses” engaged in the slaughter get to advertise for victims. This, I believe, is unprecedented. Of course, the commercialization of this form of mass murder has only been able to proceed because of “collective intent” (Note that “collective intent” can’t mean “unanimity”. Nevertheless, I don’t know of an instance of mass murder that has been more extensively or energetically promoted legally and publicly than abortion.).
3. In the 20th Century alone the list of peoples or groups deliberately murdered is depressingly long.
4. The “Shoah” was indeed a disaster and a horror. The fact that it was not a unique moral/hisorical event doesn’t diminish the utter evil of what the Nazis did to Jews.
5. Attempting to claim that different moral significance attaches to the various rationales for mass murder is senseless. It does not matter morally if people are murdered merely because they are kulaks, Armenians, Jews, class “enemies”, Hutus, “intellectuals”, not first-born, or handicapped or otherwise “inconvenient”. For example, claiming that murdering someone merely for being Armenian is “different” from murdering someone merely because he is a kulak is a distinction without a moral difference.
6. To the extent this thread is degenerating into a bizarre discussion of the alleged moral merits of the use of “holocaust”, “Shoah”, and “genocide” it is becoming absurd.
That's a good point technically, but in practice I can see why the Friedmans of this world get tweaked by the usage.
I feel that "a holocaust" is a long-standing term to describe widespread, horrific killing. I believe that it is in common usage in just that way.
Absolutely true. I was merely reporting on what might be the source of Mr. Friedman's contention of which Mr. Adams was clearly ignorant.
On what grounds would Jewish people oppose describing abortion as a holocaust?
They think it cheapens the horror of their years of suffering, abuse, starvation, disease, and final "solution." I tend to agree with them in that the pro-life movement would have been well advised to pick a different term.
We both know that Jewish Marxists like Mr. Friedman are among the most strident backers of abortion, and IMO for reasons more sinister than you might suppose (sorry, I'm not going into that today).
On that basis, I would think that "holocaust" becomes an available term to describe what America is doing today.
While I am certain you can justify the rationale, I am advising against it. The reason is this: The pro-life movement is using the term precisely because it is associated with the horrors of the detention camps. There is no such apparent horror in an abortion clinic. There is no arrest in the middle of the night; the mother arrives to kill her baby of her own volition. There is no train stinking of feces and disease; she drives her car. There is no internment camp of slave labor, horrid food, minimal clothing, bad beds full of lice, mud, disease, etc. all of which go on and on...
It's different. It's deliberately inflammatory. To the families of the victims, it is potentially offensive. I suggest using a different term for the mass killing of babies by their mothers.
Thanks for your response.
“We both know that Jewish Marxists like Mr. Friedman are among the most strident backers of abortion, and IMO for reasons more sinister than you might suppose (sorry, I’m not going into that today)”
OK. I’ll bite: what is the sinister reason? It is just that leftists generally continue to share a variation on Sanger’s views? Or is it something else?
As a former New Yorker, I would speculate that it is that liberals “love minorities” but just wish that there were fewer of them. I think many libereals actually see abortion as the corrective for the “excess breeding” that their welfare state p[olicies make possible.
“... this thread is degenerating into a bizarre discussion...”
Yes it is. The Holocaust vs. the holocaust. After reading carefully, it sounds to me like some people just want to sound like they are smartest person in the room.
Use of “Shoah” by orthodox jews is an interesting footnote, but has nothing to do with the current, common, acceptable usage of the word holocaust to refer to events outside of The Holocaust. The fact that everybody reading this will understand this distinction proves this point.
As you point out, drawing moral distinctions between holocausts is pointless and not a little bit silly to me as well.
Adams should have called feti “untermenschen”, subhumans, to get the point across to Friedman. Noting that Sanger was decorated by Hitler would have also been useful.
The goal of many pro-abortion people is to kill undesireables, especially non-whites. This has been true from Margaret Sanger until today.
If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
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” Would I be justified in using the term “Shoah” for this disaster?”
Yes.
I think what they are doing with the term is inflating their cause at others' expense, which by this kind of resistance is seen easily recognizable as effectively inflating their sense of self-righteousness, hardly the humility and repentance G_d expects of all of us.
Just DAMN! Awesomely said!!!
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