American Kristallnacht: Conservative Hatred Shatters The Peace

[NAO]

The first story I saw was local news: my representative, Gabrielle Giffords, had the window of her office smashed in hours after the House vote on HCR.

Everyone has heard about the slurs shouted at members of Congress.

There have been death threats, faxed pictures of nooses and various rabid scribblings.

Now someone has severed a propane gas line...

I found this item

American Kristallnacht: Conservative Hatred Shatters The Peace
http://newsjunkiepost.com/2010/03/24/american-kristallnacht-conservative-hatred-shatters-the-peace/

while reviewing the news of these events. Only time will tell if these are a few isolated incidents or part of a mass hysteria - the harbingers of the outbreak of a psychic epidemic. In the 1940's, the psychologist Carl Jung wrote:

"Indeed, it is becoming ever more obvious that it is not famine, not earthquakes, not microbes, not cancer but man himself who is man’s greatest danger to man, for the simple reason that there is no adequate protection against psychic epidemics, which are infinitely more devastating than the worst of natural catastrophes... The greatest danger of all comes from the masses, in whom the effects of the unconscious pile up cumulatively and the reasonableness of the conscious mind is stifled. Every mass organization is a latent danger just as much as a heap of dynamite is. It lets loose effects which no man wants and no man can stop. It is therefore in the highest degree desirable that a knowledge of psychology should spread so that men can understand the source of the supreme dangers that threaten them. Not by arming to the teeth, each for itself, can the nations defend themselves in the long run from frightful catastrophes... The heaping up of arms is itself a call to war. Rather must they recognize those psychic conditions under which the unconscious bursts the dykes of consciousness and overwhelms it."

Diagnosis: Psychic Epidemic
http://www.awakeninthedream.com/artis/DIAGNOSISPSYCHICEPIDEMICWEBSITE.htm

[Brickbat]

1. Frankly, I think calling it "Kristallnacht" is going overboard.

[rockymountaindem]

2. Yeah. For starters nobody died n/t

[Brickbat]

4. Yep. And no one was shipped off to a concentration camp.

I'm sure I'll be told I'm closing my eyes to the horrors that are approaching despite my denials.

[nebenaube]

5. didn't happen the night of the original either... n/t

[MadHound]

14. Bullshit,

On the real Kristalnacht, at least ninety one Jews died and thirty one thousand were taken to concentration camps. Some were released within a few days, many weren't.

Know you history so that you can appreciate the gravity of a statement, oh, and to stop yourself from looking foolish.

[ShockediSay]

6. If memory serves, Kristallnacht was the night shop windows were

smashed, and shops destroyed, in the night by a Brown Shirt inspired mob.

I don't believe there were killings that night nor persons shipped to concentration camps

although these steps did and will follow in the march toward Fascism.

Fascism = Right Wing + Corporate Wealth + deprivation of individual civil right,
in a march toward power.

[Brickbat]

12. It was a pogrom. About 90 Jews were killed. Tens of thousands were arrested and sent to camps.

Homes, businesses and synagogues were destroyed across Germany and Austria.

While some (and not the OP -- I realize it was a headline) like to throw around Nazi terms in an effort to make comparisons, this does not hold.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/kristallnacht.html

[MadHound]

15. Apparently they don't teach history anymore, you're the second one on this thread

Ninety one Jews died on Kristalnacht, approximately thirty one thousand were shipped to concentration camps. A few were released within days, for various reasons. Most weren't.

[cali]

17. memory doesn't serve you well.

not even close.

[Dreamer Tatum]

27. Yeah, it's an important historical event because windows were broken, and that was it

:eyes:

[Chef Eric]

8. You're closing your eyes to the horrors that are approaching despite your denials. nt

[Brickbat]

13. Whew, thanks!

I was worried there for a minute no one would help me out. :hi:

[cali]

19. you're engaging in hysteria. never an intelligent or useful reaction.

[lunatica]

18. Few (relatively) died in the first Kristallnacht either

The real horror was still down the road a ways. Kristallnacht was just the first round of government sanctioned terrorist acts. Kristallnacht showed the radical nature of Nazi policies toward the Jews. From this time forth Jews had no rights in the Third Reich, and those who did not escape, became victims of the Nazi Holocaust.

Jews having to sew the Star of David on their clothes came after that night. Kristallnacht happened in 1938 and the Jews were forced to wear the Star of David in 1939. Hitler invaded Austria in 1939. The start of the Holocaust is unofficially considered to be in 1941 although there was a lot of killing before that.

And Jews weren't the only ones, but the topic of this OP is Kristallnacht.

edited to correct some historical facts.

[cali]

20. 90 died. Sure, that's relatively few compared to the millions that subsequently were murdered

but imagine if 90 Muslims or 90 liberals or 90 of ANY group were murdered in mob violence in one frickin' night; would you still be saying how few people died? Do tell.

and by the way the codification of anti-semitic laws was perpetrated under the Nuremberg Laws- in 1935.

Please don't spread misinformation around.

[lunatica]

21. Crap! I was hoping you had me on ignore

I see you're still as mean and sanctimonious as ever. Please don't respond to my posts anymore, and I'll do you the same courtesy.

[cali]

24. I'll certainly respond to all of your misinformation..

don't like it? tough. put me on ignore and live in blissful ignorance.

[Brickbat]

26. I'm aware of all that.

Which is why I said the comparison of Kristallnacht to what's happening now is invalid.

[proteus_lives]

10. +1000

It spits in the eye of history.

Hysteria and overreaction.

I suggest the people calling it that crack a history book and read about the real Kristallnacht.

[leftstreet]

3. That's an offensive comparison

Not your OP - the author's title

[NAO]

11. I did not coin that phrase - and I included the hope that these were isolated

incidents.

Thanks for pointing out that the comparison was not mine, but quoted from another source. I found the article, and it was very chilling.

In regard to the appropriateness of the reference - as GW was fond of saying - "only history will be able to judge" whether or not the comparison was hyperbole or oracular.

Most likely it was hyyperbole. There is, after all, a lot of that going around these days.

[Canuckistanian]

7. Eh, not exactly an apt analogy

First off, the Teabaggers aren't in charge of ANYTHING.

Secondly, they couldn't organize lunch, let alone a good pogrom.

[nadinbrzezinski]

9. Not to the level of Kristalnacht

but people NEED to read on Kansas Little War... as in the early years...

[MadHound]

16. Sorry, but that is way over the top

This in no way compares to Kristalnacht. Nobody has died, nobody has been shipped to concentration camps, and very little damage has been done.

You can make your argument without resorting to over the top, inaccurate rhetoric.

[KittyWampus]

23. Using that term might even be considered somewhat offensive to survivors and their kin.

Might- I'm not saying it is.

[KittyWampus]

22. I would like to discuss Jung's concept of Mass Psychic Epidemics without alluding to Kristallnacht.

[GliderGuider]

25. How about 2012?

although Y2K might be a better example, since that prompted more behavioural changes like hoarding. I'm not clear on the dividing line between a powerful meme like 2012 on the one hand and a full-blown psychic pandemic like Nazism on the other (with Y2K somewhere in between). It seems to me they have some similar characteristics, but exist on a continuum of virulence depending on the behavioural changes they promote.

[NAO]

28. Jung's "Psychic Epidemic" concept is CERTAINLY a valid assessment

even if the Kristallnacht headline I found was not an appropriate comparison.