In Pakistan, jihadists are folk heroes. And so is Adolf Hitler, for largely the same reasons: genocidal Jew-hatred, militarism, etc. Yet the execrable libelblogger Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs had the mendacious temerity to smear anti-jihadists as neo-Nazis. "The Führer Cult: Germans Cringe at Hitler's Popularity in Pakistan," by Hasnain Kazim in Spiegel, March 17 (thanks to C. Cantoni):
Germans are popular in India and Pakistan, but not always for the right reasons. Many in South Asia have nothing but admiration for Adolf Hitler and still associate Germany with the Third Reich. Everyday encounters with the love of all things Nazi makes German visitors cringe.Pakistan is the opposite of Germany. The mountains are in the north, the sea is in the south, the economic problems are in the west and the east is doing well. It's not hard for a German living in Pakistan to get used to these differences, but one contrast is hard to stomach: Most people like Hitler.
I was recently at the hairdresser, an elderly man who doesn't resort to electric clippers. All he has is creaky pair of scissors, a comb, an aerosol with water. He did a neat job but I wasn't entirely happy.
I said: "I look like Hitler."
He looked at me in the mirror, gave a satisfied smile and said: "Yes, yes, very nice." [...]
Sometimes it's better to keep quiet about one's German origins. It's embarrassing because people here think they're doing you a favor by expressing their admiration for the Nazi leader. I suspect most Indians and Pakistanis have no idea what this man did. They see him as the bold Führer who took on the British and Americans.
More likely, they love him because he murdered Jews, the worst enemies of the Muslims (cf. Qur'an 5:82).
In the Islamic world, not just in Pakistan but right across from Iran to northern Africa, anti-Semitic sentiment of course plays a role. Conversations with German visitors rapidly turn to the injustice being suffered by the Palestinians who were robbed of their land. [...]A few days ago a white Mercedes built in the 1970s was driving ahead of me in the center of Islamabad carrying a family of seven. On the back was a sticker bearing a black swastika in a white circle. Underneath it read: "I like Nazi." [...]
English editions of Hitler's "Mein Kampf" can be found in bookshops even in the most remote parts of India. And Indian schoolbooks have been known to celebrate Hitler as a great leader.
Once my wife and I visited the cafe in the beautiful Hotel Imperial in New Delhi. It has a garden lined with palms, excellent tea and friendly waiters in uniforms that recall the colonial era. A young man served us. The name tag on his uniform attracted my interest so I asked him why he had this rather unusual name for an Indian man. "Oh, my parents named me after a great historic person," he explained.
The name, in black letters on a golden plate, read: Adolf.
Mohammed and Muslims made Hitler and Nazis look mild by comparison.
We've always said if you wear a "Hitler was Great" t-shirt anywhere in the Muslim world, one would be treated like royalty - receiving free food/shelter/gifts, etc.
Hitler vs. Mohammed - Side by side comparisons
Hasnain Kazim wrote, "They see him [Hitler] as the bold Führer who took on the British and Americans."
What an unbelievable comment. By that logic, they should love Kaiser Wilhelm II as well!
English editions of Hitler's "Mein Kampf" can be found in bookshops even in the most remote parts of India. And Indian schoolbooks have been known to celebrate Hitler as a great leader.
The name tag on his uniform attracted my interest so I asked him why he had this rather unusual name for an Indian man. "Oh, my parents named me after a great historic person," he explained.
The name, in black letters on a golden plate, read: Adolf.
It seems unlikely that the non-Muslims in India would revere Hitler. I would bet that the Indians who do are Muslim. Too bad the author of the article, likely a Muslim himself from his name, does not elaborate.
It helps when lovers have something in common.
Explanation.Blissful ignorance.
No, it's not just Muslims relying on the usual anti-Semitic Islam. Look into the nature of Nazi-ism and see it as an occultist/pagan remake of the universal, and there you will see a poligion close to Islam; but it's not the same. Hindus, no friends of Islam, are, sometimes, Nazi-ists all of their own accord. And if it's not an exact fit, neither is the so-called New Age paganism of our Left dhimmi fascism. But the origins, the and the genealogy, is the same in all fascisms. For some brief introduction to Hindu Nazi-ism, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savitri_Devi
Consider the source.
In fact, there seem to be neo-Nazi organizations all over the world. It is a mystery why the figure of Hitler is so attractive to extreme nationalists, as if the various peoples of the world don't have their own historical figures to turn into symbols.
Hitler's significance is not that he may have been a nationalist or an extraordinary leader, but that he was the most extreme antisemite and one of the cruelest mass murderers in world history. Evidently there is something in this which is of universal appeal.
I suppose the situation is slightly more complicated in India because of the Indian nationalist hero, Subhas Chandra Bose throwing in his lot with the axis powers. Before eventually founding the Indian National Army, in co-operation with the Japanese, he had spent some time hanging around in Berlin. Most Indians, I imagine would justify this on the grounds of Realpolitick rather than out of any sympathy for fascism. The swastika, however, is not the scary symbol in Hindu culture that it is in ours. Perhaps the best way to persuade Pakistanis not to approve of the it, is to point out that it is a symbol widely used in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism.
Everyone, please understand that the following comes from someone who sees Israel as a very legitimate nation and who believes to the bottom of his soul that Adolf Hitler was a fiend of Hell loosed on earth.
These Asian (I'm thinking of the non-Pakistani thoughts mentioned) are a case of how cross-cultural communication, while possible, can get pretty garbled.
I am not surprised at the news and comments on this thread. A lot of Asian nationalists had and even have a sometimes sneaky, sometimes open admiration for Hitler. I have heard Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait speak well of him. In the 1960's, Viet Nam's Nguyen Cao Ky shocked his American allies by speaking well of Hitler. Don't forget Subhas Chandra Bhose, who was as Hindu as they come. Hitler is often seen as a man who rallied a deeply humiliated nation to stand up to its oppressors. His racism is often not completely understood in Asia. Often, it appears to Asians as a European complement to Asia's own sense of pride in its antiquity.
Also, by selling Israel as the refuge for the survivors of Hitler's atrocities rather than as the majority-Mizrahi nation that it is, Israel's friends seem to be saying, at least to a lot of Asia, that European colonialism of non-European lands is still a legitimate enterprise. To many Asians, the Jews are as obscure a tribe as the Zhuang of Guangxi and the Yi of Yunnan are to us--even though both of these Chinese minorities are more numerous than the Tibetans.
Asians sometime suppose that Hitler's persecution of that exotic little Western tribe was little more than the imposition of petty humiliations to which any colonized people might be subject. If, for example, we were to bring up the imposition of the magen David bearing the legend "Jude" as an example of anti-Jewish persecution, many might wonder why the fuss, since Asians are accustomed to minorities wearing their ethnic markers anyway--and distinctive dress for Dhimmi is a fine old tradition if those Asians are Muslim. There are nationalistic Han Chinese, for example, old enough to remember grandfathers who celebrated the cutting off of the queue as ridding themselves of an imposition forced on China by an at least semi-alien Manchu conquering race.
It is often a very large revelation to people from "East of Suez" that the Shoah was a premeditated program of mass murder carried out with all the administrative and technological skill that an advanced state could muster. Hence, when they hear of the survivors of Hitler's persecution building a state in the Middle East, their reaction is, "Why couldn't those people just be glad they've been rescued, restored to citizenship, and go back to their normal lives?"--without much recognition that the normal lives of "those people"--including friends, families, communities, status, and all--were swept away.
In fairness, such people grow thoughtful when exposed to the occasional Western friend who lost kin in the Shoah. But, what should the mass of their countrymen think when they are as incurious about exotic Western minorities as the average resident of the Missouri Ozarks is about the Uighur or the Zhuang, and who have not been told about the Shoah in the little school history they had? Further, what if you were raised in a China where Israel was, and to some extent still is, demonized as a "Neo-colonialist running dog of American imperial hegemony", and where "Poles", "Soviet citizens" and suchlike were massacred during WWII--if Hitler's atrocities are mentioned at all in your history books? And, re Hindu India, what should you feel when your own country is bothered by uppity minorities in Mizoram, Manipur, and Nagaland who insist on either separation or a full citizenship that does not first go through the Untouchable Caste stage?
Also, India's feelings--whether Muslim or Hindu--are very, very complex. India had (and maybe still has) a large Brittanophile element in its military class; but most of the rest of the country, especially the political class, was educated to see perfidious Albion as the impoverisher and rapist of Mai Hind. Hence, someone who gave the Pukka Sahibs a run for their money can't be all bad--especially if he fought for the glory of sacred Aryan Blood!
We err if we suppose that Asian peoples in their homelands necessarily identify with the sufferings of the Jews in the nominally Christian Europe of the past--or with the sufferings of blacks in America--and immediately cheer the West's sackcloth-and-ashes repentence from its former racism. Many Asian peoples have a strong sense of security in their own ethnic and cultural identities, to say nothing of a strong sense of pride in who they are. The racism of the British, Dutch, French, or American colonial master of yesteryear was bad, to be sure--but that's only because it was directed against "We, the people of ________, who are naturally superior to those smelly, Redhair Barbarians!" Worse yet, the proverbial "little knowledge" of Occidentalia that trickles down in Asia can react to Alex Haley's _Roots_ with a smug, "well, the White people had a culture to protect". And, worst of all, it can morph into an attitude Ze'ev Suffott found among Chinese Communists that blamed Jewish "foreign friends" for the fanaticism that eclipsed the "humanity" of Chinese Communism (as if Mao Zeodong's real name was Sigmund Murmeltier and he was born in Austria-Hungary rather than Hunan!)
Please take this blurb as being at the same time both sympathetic and critical towards my Asian kinsmen. While I abhor PeeCee cultural relativism, I still believe that there's much to be said for mutual understanding between different cultures (Paul said there's neither Jew nor Greek in Christ). But, after a bit of time in Asia and knowledge of a few of its religions and languages, I think I understand, even if I cannot approve, why an Indian might name his son Adolf and expect a child of Federal Germany to feel kinship because of it.
"With the American invasion of Iraq and continued U.S. aggression against Muslims, I could not reconcile between living in the U.S and being a Muslim, and I eventually came to the conclusion that jihad against America is binding upon myself just as it is binding on every other Muslim," he says in the recording that runs more than 12 minutes.
I think he has it backwards. It seems to me that Islam has declared war on the civilized world. Unfortunately, most of the world has not accepted the notion.
It's awful, but in some cases -- not those of Muslims, especially Arab Muslims, cheerfully congratulating German backpackers on the great job they did with the Jews -- it may also be based, as a poster above suggests, partly on great ignorance and misunderstanding. In Kerala State, where there are plenty of Communists, one fashioinable first name used to be "Stalin." I don't think the parents meant it as an endorsement of Vorkyta and Magadan, and the means used to build the White Sea Canal.
Errata Sheet:
For "Vorkyta"
Read "Vorkuta"
I wrongly retained the Russian "y" in English; the correct transliteration would yield "u." My visual overwhelmed my aural apprehension. Sorry. I'm sure I'll make that mistake again.
Winston Churchill on Page 50 of 'From War To War', the first part of the first volume of his six-part 'Second World War' proclaimed Hitler's Mein Kampf to be:
"...the new Koran of faith and war: turgid, verbose, shapeless, but pregnant with its message."
Wilders referenced this recently in his speech to the British parliament.
Is it really any surprise why Hitler is so beloved in the Islamic world? Of course not. But that won't stop imbeciles screeching that the problem is all about Israel "occupying" "Palestinian" land.
The day the world knows the Koran and what Islam is really all about, the end of Islam will come.
HEADS UP
The bolded paragraph above no longer appears on the Der Spiegel website.
Cleanup job?