Antisemitism, Inglourious Basterds, and Hate Crimes

Honestly, I don’t like Thanksgiving, I know, sacrilege but the holiday has always seemed so hard on my patients and frankly it isn't a blast for me, either, sitting around the table for hours.  Tough on the back. And I eat more and more and more, which I realize is the point, but still.  

This one was wonderful. in fact I don’t remember a better one in decades. FD and I enjoyed it pretty much because we hadn’t seen this branch of the tree in six months, which is a long time not to see your kids and grandkids if you have a relatively functional family. I know that during Covid folks have had it worse. 

In Chicago few people mask anymore, I don't, yet I sported an ugly white N-95 in the airport and on the plane to avoid the triple threat, Covid, flu, and RSD. As predicted the airport was MOBBED Sunday night, crazy full of over-stuffed humans ready-to-get-home. Exhausted, wide-eyed, very well behaved children pointed to puppies in purses. 

 

Over the weekend my son brought up the movie Inglourious Basterds, which I had never seen but found on Delta’s entertainment interface. Too long to finish, but still worth the time, Christoph Waltz is absolutely chilling as a Jew hunter colonel in France doing his Nazi thing, eliminating Jews from Europe, seeking out those hiding places. I believe that here in America there may be like-minded people, still, like the fictional colonel's, adults who want to do this, rid the world of the people who brought you all of the following and much, much more. 

Brought to you by Jews--a very, very, very short list:   

the polio vaccine, antibiotics, first Big Bang Theory and quantum physics, gasoline fueled cars (Sigfried Marcus), the cardiac pacemaker, ballpoint pens, fertilizer, color photography, the film industry, condoms (yes, condoms), the first reactors for NASA rockets, remote control pacemakers, the first laser, LED technology, Duracells, videotape, no, most of us don’t use that anymore but we did play the first videogames on the first Jewish conceived/developed game consoles, USB memory (an Israeli company, ScanDisk), microprocessors to prevent our computers from overheating, Facebook, WhatsApp, GettyImages, Nivea cream (that one is important), Heineken’s beer yeast formula, Mattel and Toys “R” Us, Sears, Macy’s, Marks & Spenser, the first Mercedes-Benz cars, Estee Lauder, Revlon, Faberge, Helen Rubinstein, Ralph Lauren, Haagen Dazs, Dunkin’ Donuts, Proust, Kafka, Joseph Roth, Arthur Miller, Saul Bellow, Billy Wilder, Fritz Lang, Kubrick, Spielberg, the Coen brothers and hundreds more, Mahler, Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Lou Reed, Mark Knofler, Jascha Heifetz, Yehudi Menuhin, Amy Winehouse, Billy Joel, hundreds of Nobel prizes, the creation of the Pulitzer Prize, UNICEF, the NBA, the AHL (American Hockey League), the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 written by Rene Cassin, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and of course, Marvel. 

Feel free to add contributions in the comments. 

I didn't scratch the surface when we talk about the Yiddin. But enough about stuff we take for granted, i.e, all the good that most everyone gives and wants to give, let's get back to hate and violence. 

 

Inglourious Basterds  (spelling intentional) is arguably Quentin Tarantino’s most popular film. Apropos of something, perhaps, Mr. Tarantino is not Jewish but did marry in and lives in Israel. His popular 2009 film is a fictional alternative to historically correct events in World War II. Many of the main characters in the film are based upon real people. Not Brad Pitt, who leads an American squadron of scalping (literally) Nazi hunters. His band of basterds terrify Hitler, the Germans. 

A lovely scene, that..

Brad Pitt as a Nazi hunter

 

It is a violent film which means I covered my eyes during violent scenes making it hard to read closed captions. But that behavior, trauma avoidance, is worth 20 of exposure therapy when you're me. (Although I spend a good chunk of my life teaching exposure therapy). But not to have bloody flashbacks, that is the key for me watching film. And really, who doesn’t love a good war movie? I do. 

 

The story behind Tarantino's alternative script, the true one, is that there did exist vigilante Jewish volunteers during the war, men who sought out Nazis to torture and kill them. A secret British intelligence unit, X-Troop (like X-Men, hmm, which came first?) organized D-Day. Volunteers for X-Troop had already experienced the horrors of antisemitism in Europe and they didn't intend to let the Nazis win the war.  X-Troop soldiers did not glorify themselves with nicknames like Bear Jew in the movie, Bear Jew is memorable for mercilessly beating a Nazi to death with a bat (I only saw the first blow and still I think about it. In the war, not the alternative, fighters with no claim to fame at all did request to be dropped over enemy lines from airplanes to carry out their missions of vengeance. 

Tarantino had plenty of history to draw upon. The movie took 10 years to make.  (Read Quinn Hough at ScreenRant for more).

 

Which brings me to why I am writing about this now, other than I saw the film on an 8" x 6" screen on an airplane, a perk of Delta. Yay Delta for finding good films.  

The date November 9-10, 1938 marks a stepping up of the regime of terror against the Jews, Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass. In those terrifying, horrifying 24-hours the Nazis smashed storefronts of Jewish owners, violently stormed Jewish homes, and ransacked synagogues. We call this a POGROM in my parts.

The day to commemorate that, a German pogrom, a day set aside to never forget it, always precedes Thanksgiving. 

Kristallnacht pogrom, the Aron Kodesh

Kristallnacht pogrom a terrorist attack

The world watched, certainly heard, about how what the Nazis did, how they planned extermination of an entire people. The world said nothing. We didn’t have Twitter. 

 

FAST FORWARD: 

From the Anti-defamation League: 

In 2021, ADL counted a total of 2,717 antisemitic incidents across the U.S. This represents a 34 percent increase from the 2,026 incidents recorded in 2020 and is the highest number on record since ADL began tracking antisemitic incidents in 1979. 

 

Not in every neighborhood, not in every city, not yet, but antisemitism is revving up in many a Jewish local. We want to think that it is the squeaky wheel that gets the press and that this is a very tiny group of Ungrateful Idiots, but it isn’t so small, and negative attitudes freely expressed on campuses across the nation about Israel on campus have added to anti-Jewish sentiment in America. (I am not good at debate so when anyone tells me that Israel should be more open to Palestinians freely living/visiting Israel proper, I tell them that in Gaza, where they chose to live, which they destroyed to create a military zone instead of the thriving agricultural economy it was when they 'occupied' it as their own (I was there. Gaza was gorgeous and rich, lush with vegetation, thriving), children are taught that the only good Jew is a dead Jew. This sounds so familiar. Never forget. Children are taught this message in school, earlier even. It is in the mothers milk, we say. Do we grant visas to seekers who say that the only good American is a dead American? I don't know, actually, but think not.

 

This blog is not about politics but it is about the seeds of fear and appropriate caution versus panic. When we hear stories like I'm about to tell you, true stories, Jews grieve immediately and some of us panic. We have children in Israel. We have children in the army. But this is life in Israel. In the back of the mind there is anticipatory anxiety, rational, the mind waiting for the next explosion, 

(1) November 23, 2022, terrorists exploded bombs (nails in a backpack I think I read). Two buses at two different bus stops in Jerusalem killed at least one teen, Aryeh Schupak, 16 years old, of Canadian-Israeli citizenship, leaving 22 injured. 

Aryeh Schupak

Soldiers in Jerusalem following a terrorist attack

And 

(2) Yesterday: A female IDF soldier in her 20s was struck by a car at the Migron-Kochav Yaakov intersection in the West Bank in a terror attack on Tuesday morning.  The alleged attacker: identified as 45-year-old Rani Mamoun Faiz Abu Ali from Beitounia. Married and the father of five children, he had an Israeli work permit and was employed at the Rami Levy supermarket at the Sha’ar Binyamin industrial zone.

 

So we have that to put a damper on our happiness, the relentless hatred of cousins. 

But back to antisemitism in America, the home of freedom and free speech, and a good deal of hate, too. Psychologically people who are down, depressed, desperate and hopeless find that hate feels okay, The negative thinking summons the negativity emotion to leave the brain, come out of the mouth. Look, look what I am doing. Thoughts in my brain, a bit on the negative side, coming out of my mouth via my keyboard. Do I feel better? A little. I want antisemitism to be out of the closet. I want people to know that there are haters and these people have to be stopped, put behind bars when they commit hate crimes. That is the purpose of this post. Writing, like this is not a crime. Swastikas on synagogues are a whole other level.

But back to hate. Hating others, hating the self, is a sign of a negative affective state. We talk in therapy about hate and how it doesn’t change anything, only makes the hater feel worse, ultimately because it is not a positive identity, being a hater. Unfortunately, those who are spewing antisemitism so they can bring themselves up by putting other people down, are not getting psych consults. They are just out there creatively spewing hate just like the Nazis did in the twentieth century.

 

Camaraderie in depression, camaraderie in failure, violent goal-oriented behavior directed towards a target that has everything they do not.  

 

Will there be a time—in my lifetime— I can’t help but wonder— when strong, young, Jewish men, men who already have weapons (what do you think, Jews don’t carry?) will see the need to use them here in America? Will we be forming cells like Inglorious Basterds, like those we see in the movies? 

 

Because Never Again really does mean Never Again. 

 

therapydoc

White Nationalists at Charlottesville: Scaredy Cats

Christian Picciolini, ex-skinhead

Jews will not replace us!

It is a white nationalist chant heard at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville on Saturday.

What does that even mean?

The crowd with the rally permit directs its anger, uniting its right to hate Jews. The other minorities, Blacks, Hispanics, all other persons of color, get a pass for awhile.

What is at the core of a personality that drives someone to drive or fly  across the country, even don a white sheet, take a torch, or bare-faced, nonchalantly trash talk millions of people he doesn't know to a television reporter?

James Alex Fields, Jr, white nationalist

We can assume most people saw Schindler's List, know about the atrocities of the Holocaust, and that most people feel compassion. But no. Not everyone is made of compassion, and some people have this odd gift, a way of detaching from other people, dehumanizing humans. My skin's better than your skin. My genetics are better than yours.

To those who work with mental illness, who understand the whats and wherefores, how people become who they are, being racist is a manifestation of fear. The media likes to use the word hate. Crimes like this one fall under the very worst hate crimes. But hate is, at its core, fear.

I fear spiders; I hate spiders. (Spoken with real emphasis, conviction).
I fear mosquitoes, they bite; I hate mosquitoes. (Ditto).
I fear snakes; they bite, too; I hate snakes.
I fear Jews (unconsciously, for that would be a sign of vulnerability); they seem so successful, they are everywhere (they are 2% of the US population); I hate Jews.

Thought follows a emotion, although it can go both ways. Not so complicated.

Add another CBT tautology, another emotion, jealousy. Fear is at the heart of jealousy, and jealousy loads heavy into this equation, too. Fear, add jealousy, equals hate.

For example: I might be  fearful that a particular person is trying to steal my husband. I'm jealous if my husband pays attention to her. I tell my friends: I hate her.

In Charlottesville, James Alex Fields, Jr., rammed his car into a group of counter-protesters, people who took offense to the white supremacist display of hatred towards minority groups. Because in the end, white nationalists didn't only come because they hate Jews, they hate anyone whose potential success and power scares them. Heather Heyer, only 32,  murdered because a man feels he has to make a statement, flex a muscle (foot to pedal), get some respect from the gang.

Fields thought the Nazis were really cool, he once told his history teacher.

Some of Fields' classmates at the school recalled a trip to Europe after graduation in 2015, when they visited the Dachau concentration camp. Two of the students on the trip said (that) when they arrived at the concentration camp, Fields said, "This is is where the magic happened."

Weimer (Alex's history teacher) noted that Randall K. Cooper High School is not particularly diverse, and said that as a result, he didn't have many opportunities to see Fields interact with many non-whites or Jewish people.

So that's a reason to hate people, lacking personal exposure, ignorance. We know this, that if we put Palestinians and Israelis together to talk and get to know one another as people, there is understanding, friendship, detente. But Field's friends weren't exposed to Jewish people either, and we don't hear about them coming to Charlottesville.

A better explanation, beyond the theory about fear, is that Fields is a sociopath, based upon his comments to his history teacher. He has an idol, Hitler, and thinks that murdering Jews in Europe was a great idea; the Holocaust, a time of history magnificent, brilliant. The idea gets him high. Sociopathy, law-breaking (murder is universally taboo) feels good to a sociopath, really good, especially if you can justify it, benefit. Having this diagnosis one need not even have the need to dehumanize the victim, or blame him for something, it just feels good. No guilt.

But he did look nervous in the videos taking him off to prison.

The larger lesson of the rally in Charlottesville, and the probable reason for the crime, assuming Fields has no other big or little crimes under his belt, signs of sociopathy, lies in the very same reason that most other white nationalists also came to town, passively encouraging Fields to do his thing. We're back to fear.

The chant about being replaced, WE WILL NOT BE REPLACED has its genesis in the fear of being replaced, replaced at the top of the social pecking order in this country. The business about he statues is just a good excuse for a meeting, exposure.

Their psychology is that if people of color are given opportunities, they will excel, reach the "top", take what is not rightfully theirs.  If ethnic and racial minorities are accepted in this country (and even the sexual minorities, gays and lesbians, transgendered, etc., are accepted now so anything can happen) their talents and drive for education, gumption and initiative, will likely push those who have fewer talents, less drive or imagination, down the economic-social-political ladder. People of color (and Jews) who make block-buster movies, earn high salaries in television and music, find executive positions in business, finance, are stealing them and must go. And we cannot have any more of this. We have too much of it already, in the form of the Jew.

This rant goes on, sorry, but there is so much to say to stop now.

Last night I heard a white nationalist express genuine disgust that the beautiful daughter of the president married a Jew (what he must think of her conversion to Judaism, we can only imagine),  Jared Kushner.

Kushner has what this man certainly wants, a beautiful woman, who is now the president's daughter. So Jared has money, power, and a woman who is not rightfully his, according to this logic. He's not deserving. The white nationalist is surely jealous, would love to take Mr. Kushner's place. Feels replaced. Jealousy is at the core of his hatred. He is afraid that he will never make it in this world as long as there are people like the Kushner's taking his place.

It is irrational. This is a big, wide, plentiful nation, and with any interest, anyone can get higher education, jobs, status, success. There is room for everyone in this country to succeed, no cap on how much talent and brain power the society can sustain.

How un-American to think any other way.

If I personally could interview the men carrying torches, Uniting the Right, brazenly hating, I would ask different questions.

Do you think you got enough love as a child? Was there laughter in your home? Did you, as a family, enjoy relative harmony? Was there music? Did you sing? Did your parents welcome others to their table? Did you feel understood? Do you think you had quality time with your parents? Did they sit and read to you, hold you, tell you to love others, to give to others, and that you would be happier in life if your worldview came from a place of love, cooperation, with all people, even people unlike yourself? Especially with people unlike yourself? Did they tell you that we are 98% alike, when it comes right down to our DNA, and that most people are lonely and could use you as a friend?

Or was it more like child abuse and neglect, lots of beer, drugs, whiskey, sexism and all the other isms, domestic violence, blame, scapegoating others for problems? There will always be others to blame, if you look for them, and minorities are traditional favorites as scapegoats.

We can only hope this will change.

Christian Picciolini

Christian Picciolini describes himself as having been lost and lonely, recruited to become a white nationalist in Chicago. He rose in the organization, became the leader of the Chicago Area Skinheads. Now, at 22, reformed (fatherhood changed him), he cofounded a group called Life After Hate and has written a book,
Romantic Violence: Memoirs of an American Skinhead.

Mr. Picciolini, in an interview with NPR:

I think ultimately people become extremists not necessarily because of the ideology. I think that the ideology is simply a vehicle to be violent. I believe that people become radicalized, or extremist, because they're searching for three very fundamental human needs: identity, community and a sense of purpose.

This makes all the sense in the world to me. Preaching hate and violence is the language of bullies, and bullies are people on the hunt. They need to displace negative feelings like self-doubt, loneliness, poor self-esteem. They identify with the aggressor, often a parent, sibling, neighborhood gang members, to feel better about themselves. Better to be the one on the top, than on the bottom, in the scuffle.

It is a need for power, strength, community, a need Mr. Picciolini felt before he became a skinhead, a neo-Nazi.

About negative self-comparisons to others, therapists ask: Why would you do that? You're special. You are you. You are important. You don't have to be anyone else.

A person only has to watch the movie The Help to key in on on these words, to remember why they are important. We never have to compare ourselves to others, we only have to be our best selves. That is all we have to be, ultimately, to have it all.

therapydoc

P.S. One more thing.

It is easy to see why the Jewish people get under the skin of the skinheads and their like. So stinking driven, achievement oriented, personable, and smart. Just a few things that Jews are responsible for:

From Kathryn Bernheimer’s presentation on why Jews have been innovators in disproportionate numbers at “Smashing the Idols: A Teach-in and Launch of MoVeRs”:

. . .Jeans, Lipstick, the Ballpoint Pen, Contraceptives, Instant Coffee, Television Remote Control, Traffic Lights, Scotchguard, the Flexistraw . . . God, Genetic Engineering, the Nuclear Chain Reactor, Virtual Reality. . . .Hollywood, the Sit-Com, the Long Playing Record, Woodstock, Sound Movies, Videotape, Color Television, Instant Photography, Holography, Monotheism, Psychoanalysis, the Theory of Relativity, the Weekend (Shabbat), Capitalism, Communism, Circumcision, Cheesecake, Cafeterias, Discount Stores, Pawn Shops, the Shopping Cart and the Ready-to-Wear Clothing Industry, Prozac, Valium, The Polio Vaccine, Radiation, Chemotherapy, the Artificial Kidney Dialysis machine, the Defibrillator, the Cardiac Pacemaker, Vaccination against the deadly “Hepatitis B” virus, the Vaccinating Needle, Laser Technology, Google, the Wire Transmission Facsimilie (FAX) , the Microphone, the Gramophone, the Microprocessing Chip, Optical Fiber Cable,  Laser, Cellular Technology, the Videotape Recorder. . .Drip Irrigation, Scale Model Electric Trains, the Pager,  the Walkie-talkie,  Refrigerated Railroad Car, High-vacuum Electron Tubes, the Incandescent Lamp, Kodachrome Film, the Blimp, the Adding Machine,  Stainless Steel, Tapered Roller Bearings.

And worse yet, they keep getting Nobel prizes.

At least 178 Jews have been awarded the Nobel Prize, accounting for 23% of all individual recipients worldwide between 1901 and 2008, and constituting 37% of all US recipients during the same period.  In the scientific research fields of Chemistry, Economics, Medicine and Physics, the corresponding world and US percentages are 27% and 40%, respectively.  (Jews currently make up approximately 0.25% of the world’s population and 2% of the US population).

Man, I hate 'em.