85 years after Adolf Hitler wrote his signature Big Lie in his autobiography, Mein Kampf, Hitler’s Big Lie is more widespread in the US today than it was in Nazi Germany. This essay explores the reasons behind the Big Lie epidemic in the US.
Al Qaeda is not the only organization that calls for and seeks the violent destruction of the United States of America. While we fight Al Qaeda abroad, there is a homegrown group which has woven itself into the religious, media and governmental fabric of our nation. That group is Cornerstone, headed by Pastor John Hagee. What Al Qaeda and Cornerstone share in common besides hoping for, working toward and actively encouraging a thermonuclear third world war is that both are faithful followers of Adolf Hitler’s Big Lie ideology.
John Hagee is a rabid extremist who has made claims such as:
• Adolf Hitler was born from a lineage of “accursed, genocidally murderous half-breed Jews”
• The Catholic Church is the “Great Whore of Babylon”
• God sent Hurricane Katrina because “New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and they were the recipients of the judgment of God for that.”
Yet, of all the billions of people on the planet, the Anti-Defamation League, a highly-regarded human rights organization, picked Pastor John Hagee – the poster child for pro-Hitler Big Lie extremists – to bestow its Humanitarian Award upon. Even George Orwell would blush.
But why would the ADL bestow its Humanitarian Award on a doctrinaire Hitlerite who makes his living precisely by defaming the innocent, the helpless and the suffering? There’s more to the story. Pastor Hagee preaches End-Times eschatology…the belief that the Antichrist will arrive immediately following the Battle of Armageddon. Hagee and his Fundamentalist menace plot to precipitate a worldwide war and nuclear conflagration with billions of people frying in that conflict. Hagee-the Pied Piper for Hitler’s Big Lie Ideology- plans to lead his naïve toadies over the precipice and into the abyss of that final holocaust, which he hopes and prays will bring about the rule of the Antichrist.
John Hagee is a madman with a plan. He believes Hitlerism’s core tenet, Hitler’s Big Lie, is the most effective and lethal means to provoke World War III; so he and his fellow connivers goad the Extremist Settler Movement to stand their ground and hold onto the Occupied Territories at any cost. In the last few years, in large part because of Pastor John Hagee and his ilk, Hitler’s Big Lie has become the Extremist Settler Movement’s rallying cry for keeping the Occupied Territories. Hagee’s vision is that this will then set the stage for intractable self-righteous foes to go after each other and damn the consequences. And simpletons such as Abe Foxman, the misdirector of the ADL, are baited and duped into believing this racist fiend is a friend of Israel and aid him in his quest.
Not since the U.N. voted to establish the State of Israel in 1947 has there been such a vehement campaign to delegitimize and destabilize the country as there is today. What makes this undertaking so especially odious is that it is being conducted by Armageddon mongers masquerading as Zionists under the guise of a Judeo-Christian alliance. While portraying themselves as philo-Semites, these imposters have an ulterior motive. They have discovered that there is no more effective way for otherwise undistinguished individuals to enrich themselves than by using a network of bogus Christian organizations ripping off U.S. taxpayers through their tax-exempt status. And we American citizens end up subsidizing the likes of Hagee while he makes a mockery of tax exemption for non-profits.
By proferring the argument that Hitler’s Big Lie be the rationale for the retention of the Occupied Territories by Israel, Hagee calls into question the whole moral enterprise of the State of Israel itself.* Hagee knows that nothing delegitimizes Israel more than the attempt to legitimize the conquest of the Occupied Territories by claiming that Hitlerism and Hitlerism’s core tenet (Hitler’s Big Lie) are morally justified and ideologically valid. In fact, Pastor John Hagee argues that Hitler’s Big Lie is not a lie at all but actually true, and that Hitler was right all along about Jewish Identity. So just what is Hitler’s Big Lie and what exactly did Hitler claim?
Adolf Hitler wrote in chapter ten of his autobiography, Mein Kampf [1925], that Jewish Europeans were not real, authentic Europeans since their ancestors were alien Semites who had come to Europe from the Middle East. Hitler condemned Jewish Europeans for pretending to be merely members of a religion because, in Hitler’s mind, they were a distinct and separate ethnicity. That claim is commonly known as “Hitler’s Big Lie”. Quoting from Mein Kampf: “their whole existence is based on one single Big Lie, to wit, they’re a religious community while actually they are a race, a people.”
Hitler’s Big Lie is the cornerstone, the lifeblood and the lynchpin of all Nazi ideology. Hitler’s Big Lie is Nazism’s Big Lie. All else is built upon that single false contention about Jews. Although there exists no basis in reality whatsoever for Hitler’s claims, in recent years there’s been a revival of those who hail and subscribe to Hitlerism’s core doctrine, principally through the cover of Evangelical and Pentecostal cults.
Hitler’s Big Lie ideology thrives today due primarily to two dovetailing deceptions. First, the trivialization of Hitler’s Big Lie into the calculated construct “Jewish people” moniker, and second, the simultaneous pretension that Hitler’s signature Big Lie is something murky and ambiguous, merely a cliché denoting some universal generality for any “big lie.” The hypothesis “Jewish people” is precisely Hitler’s Big Lie in disguise. Nothing more, nothing less. It is Hitler Lite, if you will. There is no more a Jewish people than a Christian people or a Moslem people. There are simply Jews, Christians and Moslems. And all became Jews, Christians and Moslems respectively, the same old-fashioned way: by conversion. No one insinuates that Christian Europeans are descendants of Christians from the Holy Land. To make that same insinuation about Jewish Europeans is classic, historical anti-Semitism. To summarize, there is not one scintilla, not one scrap, not one shred of evidence supporting Adolf Hitler’s version of history. There was never any migration of Jews from the Middle East to Europe except in Hitler’s deranged mind.
All archeological, genetic, biological, historical, ethnographic and linguistic evidence affirms that Jewish Europeans are Europeans who converted to Judaism, albeit a long, long time ago. But they are still Europeans, ethnically and culturally, and not Middle Easterners. Conversely, all archeological, genealogical, historical, ethnographic and linguistic evidence affirms Middle Eastern Jews living in the Holy Land had converted to Christianity by the sixth century A.D. In fact, so few unconverted Jews remained in the land of Israel (Roman Palestine) by the fifth century A.D. that their head Patriarch himself converted to Christianity. In short, there is absolutely zero evidence to support Adolf Hitler’s Jewish migration theory.
Yet, the false believers persist. Every few years, like clockwork, the pro-Hitler Big Lie lobby comes up with a new “proof” that Hitler’s Big Lie is not a lie but actually truthful and that Hitler was right all along about Jewish identity…Tay-Sachs racial exclusivity, Cohen Modal Haplotype, mitochondrial DNA as a Semitic indicator. And each time, the Big Find is glowingly published with great fanfare by the mainstream media. But the debunking - whether the “Find” is later found to be a mistake at best or an outright hoax at worst - is never retracted nor corrected by those same outlets, leaving the misimpression that it is still valid.
The latest “scientific” attempt [2010] by Hitler’s believers to perpetuate the Big Lie, i.e., the existence of an ethnically distinct Jewish people, is a classic case study in misleading or junk science. Their “proof” consists of comparing the genetic markers of two white Jewish European groups (Ashkenazi and Sephardic) with one another and then contrasting them with people chosen at random off the streets of New York City. Let’s get this straight. You can’t make this stuff up. Their scientific method consists of first excluding African Jews and Asian Jews (i.e., non-white Jews) from their Jewish sampling; and then, comparing the remaining (white) Jewish European groups with one another; and finally, contrasting those white Jewish Europeans with people chosen at random off the streets of New York City.
There’s only one problem: the majority of the population of New York City is non-European and non-white. So, to “prove” Hitler’s Big Lie is not a lie but actually truthful and that Adolf Hitler was right all along about Jewish identity “that members of any Jewish community are related to one another (is) higher than the relationship between two people chosen at random off the streets of New York City,” their rigged study excludes non-white Jews from the “any Jewish community” category but includes non-whites in the “any New Yorker” category. What a farce! What clear nonsense! A complete fraud. This “scientific study” falls within the “damned lies” category of statistics and is just another in a long line of fake finds. But, more importantly, it begs the question: why would the New York Times wade into and print this claptrap (“Jews in Europe and Mideast Share Genes, Studies Show” by Nicholas Wade) as some new revelation? Despite the fact that all evidence refutes Hitler’s claims, his true believers continue to deny that Hitler’s Big Lie is a lie. It is their underlying article of faith. For 85 years now, they’ve been trying and failing to verify Hitlerism’s Big Lie. Hitler’s Big Lie is irresistible to charlatans like Pastor John Hagee.
So why does the New York Times allow these fakes and flatterers into its “Letters to the Editor” section to justify, glamorize and glorify Hitler’s Big Lie? Why would the New York Times allow them to perpetrate this hate crime that has brutalized so many generations of people? And why should the New York Times permit them to peddle this outright fraud on a whole new generation of Americans to buy into? Why is Hitler’s Big Lie given a free pass by the press? Hitler’s Big Lie survives because of pride and prejudice, not evidence. The history of Jewish Europeans is rich enough, fascinating enough and troubling enough to not need embellishment by validation with Hitler’s baseless Big Lie. To do so is obscene. Adolf Hitler’s Big Lie is doomed. It’s only a matter of time.
Lastly, there’s all kinds of unfair crap in the world. There are lots of lies and injustices out there… so why embroil ourselves in this one? Because this particular grievance is the only one with consequences so universally grave and the only one in which our politicians in Congress actively embrace the liars who are inflicting the injustice. The only question remaining is whether you want to stand on the wrong or the right side of history, morality and decency.
*For those readers interested in historical backgrounds, an asterisk is in order. Zionists first arrived in Palestine during the Age of Colonialism [1880s]. But because of unforeseen world events, they weren’t able to secure their “national independence” from the native population until after the Age of Colonialism was dying, if not already dead [1948-1949]. Nothing wrong with that. Better late than never, they say. But in the 1950s - in a post-Hitler world - nations and politicians were embarrassed by, or, more accurately, nations and politicians were expected to be embarrassed by their genocidal pasts.
So they dealt with it generally in one of three ways. First way: sheepishly admit it and then sweep it under the rug, all the while celebrating the leaders of their respective genocides. For example, Andrew Jackson, the efficient architect of the Trail of Tears genocide of Native Americans, is still lionized by the Democratic Party’s annual gala dinner fete and his image is still “gracing” our twenty dollar bill.
Second way: deny it ever took place…such as Turkey’s genocide of 2,000,000 Armenian Christians.
Third way: invent a whole new mythology. Under Apartheid, South African children were taught that when the first white Europeans arrived in southern Africa from Europe, black Africans hadn’t yet migrated that far south on the continent…an outlandish and ludicrous claim easily refuted by archeology. By the same token, the Extremist Settler Movement claims that the early Zionists were not really settlers nor colonists from Europe but direct descendants of Holy Land Jews from the time of Christ merely reclaiming their birthright/homeland…equally preposterous and even more easily refuted than the South African Apartheid claim.
So what’s wrong with saying the Zionists who came from Europe to Palestine in the nineteenth century were colonists? Nothing. It was the Age of Colonialism after all. The U.S. was founded as a colony and we non-natives drove the natives off their land by any means necessary. Likewise, as bad as Israel’s admitting to its colonial past might be, it’s far preferable to hijacking and adopting Hitler’s fables as facts. And it’s far, far better than allowing John Hagee and his fellow yahoos to threaten us with worldwide incineration.