When Propaganda Masquerades as News

https://www.amazon.com/Hitler-NEWSWEEK-SPECIAL-2016-can-defeated/dp/B01GC8Q89U

In July of this year Newsweek came out with a 98-page glossy special edition with the words “Hitler: Can his evil legacy ever be defeated?” printed on the cover. The contents page is titled: “An Enduring Evil.” Three subsections are “Origins of Evil”, “Reign of Terror” and “Fighting his Legacy”.

We thought words like “evil” and “terror” were arrived at as personal conclusions by the readers of news magazines, rendered from the facts presented by the source. “Evil” is not a fact; neither is “terror”. For a news source to draw these conclusions, rather than to leave that to the readers, seems to be a violation of basic news reporting. What’s going on? Are the proponents of the standard narrative of the events of World War II running scared? Even as the Michigan Legislature passes into law the mandatory teaching of the Holocaust to high school students, this historical event morphs ever so slowly into religious dogma. Ditto the timely release of the Hollywood movie “Denial.” Again, what’s going on?

Additionally, we wonder to whom is the last chapter dedicated: “The United States of Extremism; How the world’s oldest and strongest democracy is ripe for the rise of a homegrown autocrat”. Can you say “Donald Trump”? We knew you could …

We leave this critique with some good news for our readers, especially our Jewish ones. Nowhere in these 98 glossy pages is the term “gas chamber” used. Those friends brought up with the stories of their relatives being led into homicidal gas chambers built by National Socialists in an effort to exterminate (also a word not used in this propaganda piece) Europe’s Jews can now breathe a sigh of release; apparently even the propagators of Nazi “evil” and “terror” have dropped this claim into the same bucket as bars of soap and lampshades. What, we wonder, will be next?

Christopher Bollyn Speaks in Dearborn, Michigan

Four members of Witness for Peace attended a 90-minute presentation by author Christopher Bollyn, who addressed a small audience as a preview for a revisit later in the month. Christopher implicates Israel and its many supporters in the attacks on the World Trade Centers on 9/11 in his 2012 book, Solving 9-11; the deception that changed the world. Well received in Michigan, Christopher was labeled “Jew-Hater” (he overnighted at this writer’s home) by Daily Beast writer Jacob Siegel and Daniel Sieradski, publisher of Jewschool in Brooklyn, New York, “the most Jewish borough in America’s most Jewish city”. Both writers must know, from reading their Hasbara Handbook, how to utilize Name Calling (p. 22) when you cannot defeat your opponent using fact and reason.

Comments?

Henry Herskovitz
Witness for Peace
Sept 3: six vigilers
Sept. 10: five vigilers