In the collective shock, horror, pain and soul searching that swept Europe and indeed the globe in the immediate years after World War Two and the Holocaust, one phrase rose to summarize the resolve of the world to never forget and never let our guard down.
“Never Again”
It felt good, it was easy to say, it was easy to work into speeches, memorials and seemed profoundly impactful in it’s simplicity. For 77 years we’ve pretended to honor it, despite active instances of genocide happening. I won’t list them here,we all know what they are, where and who is doing them. All genocides, ethnocide, mass murders, etc share common elements: Hate of “them”, definitions of “them”, justifications for what is done to “them”. However in most cases it can be argued the actions are indeed isolated as part of a civil war, or rogue military campaigns, etc...few have carefully laid out planned justifications, logistics, socio-economic and logistical plans, political support systems and an elaborately coordinated media push.
Of course the first instance that might come to mind for many is the two decades of increasingly complex and pervasive propaganda against Jews and other groups leading up the WW2 and the death camps. German and German-aligned propagandists spent years creating an image of the Jewish population as dangerous, untrustworthy, and Nazi efforts were focused on turning the German people themselves against fellow Germans.
On April 3rd, 2022, RIA News Agency published what can only be described fairly as a 21st century rendition of Kurt Hilmar Eitzen’s 1936 talking points summary entitled “Ten Responses to Jewish Lackeys” (Zehn Knüppel wider die Judenknechte). For this diary I am going to compare the similar language, ideas and implications between Eitzens (here forward abv KE) piece and Timofy Sergeytsev’s (TS) “What should Russia do with Ukraine?”, the RIA piece in question. My commentary is italicized
KE: Argument 1: “You say that religion is a private matter. But you fight against the Jewish religion!” Counterargument: “Actually, the Jewish religion is nothing other than a doctrine to preserve the Jewish race.” (Adolf Hitler). “In resisting all government attempts to nationalize them, the Jews build a state within the state (Count Helmuth von Moltke). “To call this state a ‘religion’ was one of the cleverest tricks ever invented.” (Adolf Hitler). “From this first lie that Jewry is a religion, not a race, further lies inevitably follow.” (Adolf Hitler).
This speaks to the reframing of Jews not as a religion but instead as an orchestrated attempt by a group of people, using religion as a cover, to subvert and destroy Germany. Instantly the argument shifts from religious liberty to being one of state security. It’s not a question of hating a religion, because the religion is false you see, it’s a fake, it’s a fraud. “Jewry” is not a religion, you see..it’s a deception!
TS: “Ukrainism is an artificial anti-Russian construction that does not have its own civilizational content, a subordinate element of an alien and alien civilization. Debanderization by itself will not be enough for denazification - the Bandera element is only a performer and a screen, a disguise for the European project of Nazi Ukraine, therefore the denazification of Ukraine is also its inevitable de-Europeanization.”
Likewise we see Sergeytsev’s reframing of this as being an assault on Ukraine because in reality..Ukraine is a front! It’s a shell, created out of nothing and is merely a vessel to produce an Anti-Russia, a subversion, and like the Jewish talking points above, this shifts from a question of destroying Ukrainians for being Ukrainian to being one of a security question for the Russian state. Ukraine has never really existed, it’s an illegitmate state that is merely a tool of the West to destroy Russia.
KE: Argument 2: “There are decent Jews, after all!” — Counterargument: “This little phrase ‘after all’ proves that they are rare exceptions of no significance to our battle against Jewry as a whole. But Martin Luther saw four hundred years ago that this “decency,” proven by charitable deeds done in as public a manner as possible, is nothing but a hidden cost of business, to repaid a thousand times by uneducated Germans. “Know, dear Christian, and have no doubts about it, that next to the Devil you have no more bitter, poisonous and determined enemy than a genuine Jew. . . If they do something good for you, it is not because they love you, but because they need room to live with us, so they have to do something. But their heart remains as I have said!”
Here we see the explanation that the “good Jew” is so small in number that it is not worthy of time and effort to try and sift the good Jew from the bad Jew, so it is best to not even try. The Jew was entirely perfidious and only self serving, it was their very character to do this, therefore there is no truly good Jew. There was an appeal to a shared historical event to try and cement the idea strongly with religion.
TS:” Denazification will inevitably also be a de-Ukrainization - a rejection of the large-scale artificial inflation of the ethnic component of self-identification of the population of the territories of historical Little Russia and New Russia, begun by the Soviet authorities. Being an instrument of the communist superpower, after its fall, artificial ethnocentrism did not remain ownerless. In this official capacity, he passed under the authority of another superpower (the power standing over the states) — the superpower of the West. It must be returned to its natural boundaries and deprived of political functionality. “
Likewise, we see a dispelling of the attempt at creating a “Good Ukraine”..it’s impossible, so don’t bother trying. Ukraine will only lead to Nazisim. Ukraine cannot exist because it will always become Nazi, it’s inevitable. Therefore, Ukraine must be eliminated, there can be no Ukraine and no such thing as a Ukrainian.
KE: Argument 4: “There are also ‘white Jews’ [i.e., Gentiles who are as bad as Jews]. — Counterargument: “That speaks against the Jews, not for them! The fact that one calls the crooks among us ‘white Jews’ is proof that being a Jew implies something bad. Otherwise, one would call crooked Jews ‘yellow Christians.’ The fact that there are so many ‘white Jews’ among us proves that the destructive Jewish spirit has already infected wide circles of our population. It is a warning to us that we have to take up the battle against the Jewish world plague everywhere.” (Joseph Goebbels). That is why Point 24 of our party program states: “The party battles the Jewish-materialistic spirit within and outside of us.”
For the Nazis being a Jew was not just a question of religion (it was fake, afterall) or about ethnicity..it was an ideal, a spirit, and thus easy to assign to anything and everything they wanted. Want a new nice car? Thats a Jewish spirit, purge yourself of it! Again this is why they shifted the focus instead of a question of religion to something more..metaphysical.
TS: “The peculiarity of modern nazified Ukraine is in amorphousness and ambivalence, which make it possible to disguise Nazism as a desire for "independence" and a "European" (Western, pro-American) path of "development" (in reality - to degradation), to assert that in Ukraine "there is no Nazism , only private individual excesses". After all, there is no main Nazi party, no Fuhrer, no full-fledged racial laws (only their truncated version in the form of repressions against the Russian language). As a result, there is no opposition and resistance to the regime.”
Being European, a desire for independence from Russia makes you a Nazi. It’s the Spirit of Nazism. The desire to have an open and free democratic society is Nazism. Being Pro-American is Nazism. Anything the Russians want to fit into being “Nazi” can be defined that way because anything that is not of Russia is Nazi.
KE: Argument 5: “Mr. Levi is not a Jew, since he has been baptized!” — Counterargument: As we have already shown, Jewry is not a religion. The Führer pointed that out in a sarcastic manner during the period of struggle [1919-1933] when he said that it was a peculiar sort of religion when one could smell its adherents from a great distance! No, a Jew always remains a Jew. Chaim Herz Bückeberg, better known as “Heinrich Heine,” joked: “Are these long noses a kind of uniform that allows the God King Jehovah to recognize his old body guard, even if they have deserted?” “I have no desire to convert the Jews,” Martin Luther wrote, “since that is impossible.” A Jew remains a Jew. “In case of need, a dose of baptismal water saves both business and Jewry at the same time!” (Adolf Hitler).
A Jew will always be a Jew. A Jew who converts to Christianity is a Jew. A Jew who is an Atheist is a Jew. A Jew who is a Pagan is a Jew. You can never not be a Jew, therefore you will always be a target, you must be eliminated because you will never stop being a Jew. Why bother converting a Jew when they will always be a Jew, therefore don’t bother, it’s a waste of time, best get rid of them, right?
TS: “Any organizations that have associated themselves with the practice of Nazism have been liquidated and banned. However, in addition to the top, a significant part of the masses, which are passive Nazis, accomplices of Nazism, are also guilty. They supported and indulged Nazi power. The just punishment of this part of the population is possible only as bearing the inevitable hardships of a just war against the Nazi system.”
Anyone who didn’t resist, IE join the LNR and DNR, is a passive Nazi. You cannot stop being a Nazi, therefore...you must be *liquidated*. If you were a pro-democracy group? You’re a passive Nazi. Supporter of the EU? Passive Nazi. Member of Zelenskyy’s government? Both active and passive Nazi. You need to be liquidated and you’re not redeemable.
We told ourselves “Never Again”. It’s happening again. Right now. In Ukraine.
We told ourselves that we would see it if it happened again, that we could do something.
That time is now.
Russia is preparing their people for the horrors and atrocities to come. They’re using the same words, the same ideas, the same systems, the same tricks, the same distortions.
Never Again is Right Now.
Text of “Ten Responses” located below
research.calvin.edu/...