Blogs and Stories
The Skunk at the Party
)
Vahid Salemi / AP Photo
Iran's president addresses the General Assembly tonight, on the heels of his latest vile rhetoric on the Holocaust. Delegates should ignore that—and focus on what a lousy leader he is.
Iran’s presumptive president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, heads to New York today to once again address the United Nations General Assembly. And once again, he has prefaced his address to the world body with yet another jibe at Holocaust history.
Last Friday, during Iran’s annual Jerusalem Day festivities—an occasion for Iranians to show solidarity with Palestinians—Ahmadinejad told an assembled crowd at the University of Tehran that “the pretext for establishing the Zionist regime is a lie ... a lie which relies on an unreliable claim.”
Whether or not Ahmadinejad actually believes what he says about the Holocaust is irrelevant. What matters is that the world must not be goaded into falling into the trap he is setting for us.
“The occupation of Palestine has nothing to do with the Holocaust,” Ahmadinejad continued. “The very existence of this regime is an insult to the dignity of the people, but it won't last long. The Israeli regime’s days are numbered and it is on its way to collapse. This regime is dying. Fighting it is a national and religious duty. The West has launched the myth of the Holocaust but it’s a lie.”
Right on cue, the U.S. media went into hysterics—“Ahmadinejad Denies Holocaust… Again!” was the headline at The Daily Beast—just as Ahmadinejad hoped they would.
Do not let the rumpled suit and unkempt beard fool you: This is a man who knows how to manipulate the media and has done so brilliantly time and again. It is no coincidence that prior to every single visit to the United States he has made some outlandish comment about the Holocaust. Ahmadinejad knows that once he arrives in the States, the press will ask him about nothing else except for his Holocaust statements. In fact, he banks on it. Better to have a 20-minute conversation about the vagaries of 20th-century history than about, say, Iran’s crumbling economy and his disastrous stewardship of it, or the continuing demonstrations of an emboldened protest movement, or the nearly wholesale rejection of his regime by the clerical class and the denunciation of almost all the grand ayatollahs in Iran, or the dissolution of his conservative coalition, which has fractured in the wake of widespread accusations about the rape and torture of political prisoners, etc.
No, let’s talk about the Holocaust instead.
The truth is that Ahmadinejad has never actually denied that the Holocaust took place. He is far too wily a politician for that. Instead he does something far more insidious and sinister. He challenges what he calls the “mythology” (and I use that term deliberately to mean “a set of stories, traditions, or beliefs associated with a particular event, arising either naturally or deliberately fostered”) that surrounds the very real, historical facts of the Holocaust.
Ahmadinejad never comes right out and says the Holocaust didn’t happen. Instead he will say something to the effect of: “If the Holocaust happened, why must the Palestinians suffer the consequences of Europe’s crimes? Why not give half of Germany to the Jews.”
That is how he panders to the Arab street.
The Right Dumps Carrie
Jacob Bernstein is a senior reporter at The Daily Beast. Previously, he was a features writer at WWD and W Magazine. He has also written for New York magazine, Paper, and The Huffington Post.
What's Joe's Problem?
Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
Geithner's Stock Plummeting
Jeff Madrick is a contributor to the New York Review of Books and a former economics columnist for the New York Times. He is editor of Challenge Magazine, visiting professor of humanities at Cooper Union, and senior fellow at the New School's Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis. He is the author of Taking America, The End of Affluence (Random House) and The Case for Big Government.
Stiffing the Revolutionaries
Reza Aslan, a contributor to the Daily Beast, is assistant professor of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside and senior fellow at the Orfalea Center on Global and International Studies at UC Santa Barbara. He is the author of the bestseller No god but God and How to Win a Cosmic War.
Naive Obama Gets Iran Results
Reza Aslan, a contributor to the Daily Beast, is assistant professor of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside and senior fellow at the Orfalea Center on Global and International Studies at UC Santa Barbara. He is the author of the bestseller No god but God and How to Win a Cosmic War.
Obama's Last Iran Option
Reza Aslan, a contributor to the Daily Beast, is assistant professor of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside and senior fellow at the Orfalea Center on Global and International Studies at UC Santa Barbara. He is the author of the bestseller No god but God and How to Win a Cosmic War.
For me, anything he says just goes in one ear and out the other. Ditto for his Supreme Fuhrer.
Anyone who says at this point that the Nazis didn't commit genocide might as well be saying that the sun goes around the earth or something like that.
All the Nazis on trial after World War II admitted that it had happened. They weren't deniers. How could they be, since they'd all been caught red-handed? Instead, most of them said that they'd just been following orders, or that they did what they had to do and couldn't have stopped it if the wanted to. Adolf Eichmann and people like that never denied what they'd done, and in his case, he was even proud of it.
If I were Landslide Mahmoud, I'd be more worried about my own people overthrowing me that what happened sixty years ago or what the Jews were doing now. I can only hope that Iranian regime is overthrown in due course, which is probably the only way we will ever have better relations with that country.
Jeez mchugh, didn't you get the memo? The jews used all their jew money to pay off the massive reparations Germany received for its role in WWI. In exchange they worked together in faking the Holocaust. All those trials were staged and the actors played their parts. You can see the actor who played Adolf Eichmann in a number of Hollywood movies because the same jews who orchestrated all this also ran all of show business...and the banks...and the government...and a quaint little mom and pops general store.
Anyway, I digress. Praise be to Allah for sending Mahmoud to speak the truth we all can see but refuse to talk about.
This user is no longer registered.
Jswift's comment is total unadulaterated crap. Why bother even putting this nonsense on the site? Hey Jswift, so what do you have to say about I'mADinnerJacket's Jewish name? Or is that just another Jewish plot?
Well written, Mr. Aslan. The lackey Mahmoud plays "talk to the hand" when it's convenient for him and his regime and everyone jumps. His time is numbered. He and his paranoid handler masters will be gone. We should all be helpful and give them a push.
I agree Mr. Aslan makes good points. It should be noted that Ahmadinejad has in fact stated on the record that the Holocaust took place, but he argued then, and now, that the Palestinians should not be punished for crimes committed by others on a different continent. The Ayatollah Khamenei is not "paranoid" and the Iranian president will serve out his term of office, having been re-elected in a vote most Iranians accept. (Ditto in Afghanistan, with Karzai.)
Reza is so right, we must censor Landslide Mahmoud in America, and make laws like Germany making it a crime to deny the Holocaust. As he notes, this is the way to ignore what the Jews (call it a Holocaust) are doing now to the Palestinians.
I dont agree with everything that Isreal is doing to the Palestinians. But know your history. Most of the Arab countries now coming to the defense of Palestinians regarded them as second class people in the first place. They are using them to further their own agendas.
And it might be noted that the Persains kicked the Jews out of that part of the world way back when.
BOTH sides are wrong.
All my Iranian friends hate his guy. Personally, I think he is an interesting fellow. I hate what he is doing to the Iranian people, but on the other hand he does stand up for Palestine. We needed such a odd fellow to stand up for the Jews in 1939!
P.S. He pushes the buttons of idiots. No thinking person would take him seriously in his play of words about 5 million killed by Nazi hands. He knows it happened! He just likes to drive Israel supporters crazy for the fun of it. Maybe they deserve some disrespect and verbal abuse.
I m so happy Americans found their new pet hate
"If the Holocaust happened, why must the Palestinians suffer the consequences of Europe's crimes? Why not give half of Germany to the Jews."
this is a perfectly sane question
not something "insidious and sinister"
.
I happen to agree with that. Germany committed these acts but Palestine has to give up half it's land? As much as I dislike Ahmadinejad, he has a point. He is a terrible leader this much is true but the heart of the matter lies in that very question. Germans should give up their land not Palestinians.
Not just Germany. You can lump in Vichy France, which had it's own concentration camps, though I don't think they have death camps per se.
Austria was a part of Germany at the time and many Austrians participated in the Holocaust, as did some of the peoples of what had been Poland, the Baltic states, and the Ukraine, plus Romania organized its own private Holocaust, then the Hungarians went along at gunpoint, Fascist Italy, and many individuals from other places.
'have' should be 'had'
This Numb Nuts has repeatedly said
he wants to wipe Israel off the Map.
Why bother inviting this madman ?
Or does Obama think he's like the old
crazy "uncle" in the back of the room?
Because they didn't want half of Germany - they wanted to go back to the land they had lived in since ancient times. The allies gave them what they wanted because they felt a sense of guilt at the shameful way that many in the democracies had supported and admired Hitler despite knowing full well how disgusting and insane his policies were going to be - and then failed
utterly to do a damned thing about the murder of the European Jews until it was too late.
By the way - the Arabs were firmly on the side of the NAZIs too, so the British and Americans probably felt little guilt about shoving them to one side.
Let us not forget how bitter and desperate the struggle to defeat the NAZI monsters was - and how close we came to defeat on many occasions.
It is done - and Israel is a better place to live than ANYWHERE else in the entire region - the Arabs and Persians have nothing to offer the Palestinians except bullshit and blood money.
If I were a Palestinian I would swap sides.
"The allies gave them what they wanted" but not what the allies owned ... that means they gave them a country that did not belong to the allies
some way to overcome the guilt
This character needs a serious makeover! Even if he wasn't such a hate filled idiot, his appearance negates his credibility.
BTW, as usual Aslan delivers consisely. TDB needs to fire that bald rethuglican idiot and give his salary to Aslan.
It's predominantly a party of skunks. What it needs is a fox... or whatever eats skunks.
Great Horned Owl
Republicans?
If it wasn't for Twitter and the video leaked out of Iran during their election, liberals would be defending this skunk.
ThinkAgain - Your assertion is based on what evidence?
It's part of their Hitler was a liberal re-write of history which many
Jews find just as offensive as Holocaust deniers.
What kind of world leader expects to be taken seriously when he gives speeches wearing a Members Only jacket?
mredder4 - Ahmadinejad dresses plainly for his constituents. This is the style.
Big continuing congratulations to Reza Aslan. This time we applaud the man for sharing his profundities on the evils that the suggestions of mythology can wreak. We need a stand up fiercely adroit thinker on the Daily Beast who can always assure us that the religious edifice erected by God's chosen people in Palestine is not the greatest moral joke of the last hundred years and that Israel is in fact not the Ugly Head of Semitism. It is all myth. Any percolating thoughts to the contrary all serve myth, myth, myth. Who cannot know that the direct orders for the massacres of Palestinians never ever happened; that the claim of ethic scrubbings and occupations of Palestinian lands is just a big, big, big lie. The words of that artless 'skunk' Ahmadinejad are bad bad bad. The orthodoxy that the Jewish State blessedly plopped in Palestine is good, good, good. To argue otherwise is silly and presents seemingly uninformed views on historical events. Keep doing god's good work. L'Chaim.
FYI Mr. Aslan
Article 177 of Islamic Republic of Iran constitution says the president is a member of THE SUPREME NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL.
The members of the SNSC consists of:
* Heads of the three Powers (Executive, Legislative and Judiciary)
* Chief of the Supreme Command Council of the Armed Forces (SCCAF)
* The official in charge of the Plan an Budget Organization (PBO)
* Two representatives nominated by the Leader
* Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister of the Interior, and Minister of Information (Intelligence)
* A minister concerned with the subject, and the highest authorities of the Army and the Islamic Revolution's Guards Corps (IRGC).
This week's issue of The Economist had this interesting little tidbit in an article on Jerusalem Day in Iran.
http://www.economist.com/world/middleeast-africa/displayStory.cfm?story_ id=14488274
From the article -> "But this year, the day was co-opted by the opposition. The rallies did not draw the hundreds of thousands who poured onto the streets after June's elections, but the crowds were different from the usual small groups of pro-government supporters who fill the streets to protest against Israel and the West. On Friday cries of "Death to Russia" and "Death to China" replaced the usual chants against Israel and America, in response to warming attitudes by those countries to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's regime. Shouts of "not Gaza, not Lebanon, I'll only give my life for Iran" showed that the Iranian government's hope that the day only celebrated solidarity with the Palestinians was in vain."
Hugo's new BFF in Iran has some serious problems at home that he is neglecting.
This was reported on by TDB and all the news outlets in real time.
Well, I missed it. Thanks to Whip for the link.
Every last person in the U.N. should walk out on his speech.
i can't get all hyped up over these people protesting that iranian person after all just seeing the signs it reminds me that some of them were the same people that was in the streets last month protesting my president with worst signs then those and a lot of them come from somewhere else i say if you don't like it here and don't like my president get out the streets and go over there and protest
My favorite part of this article is when Aslan calls reporters (and, in turn, people) stupid. Love it.
You mean this is just another "I am Oz, the great and powerful - pay no attention to that man behind the curtain" moment?
"THE SKUNK AT THE PARTY"?!!! Mr. Aslan, above all YOU NEED TO LEARN SOME MANNERS! You are indeed talking about the leader of 70,000,000 people. Despite the circus show that the medias (controlled by Jewish Lobby) played here about the Iranian elections, AHMADINEJAD IS INDEED VERY POPULAR IN IRAN, and HE DID GET THE MAJORITY OF THE VOTE! A couple of thousand taking to the street DO NOT SPEAK FOR THE WILL & DESIRE OF 70,000,000. I think they should move UN to a more hospitable and more open minded country, where leaders and countries are greeted with respect, and can indeed air their opinions and their grievences openly and not feel a necessity for sensorship. Specifically, New York is the house of Jewish Lobby, that will shut every single dialogue about every single subject that they consider offensive, which is every thing critical of Israel! And the media in US is also RUDE! They call every single leader who criticises US and Israel, as "RAMBLING"! And the RUDE and classless circus shows that the yelling and screaming and manipulating Jewish Lobby plays in New York, is beyond hypocritical. They call Ahmadinejad a "Dictator", a "War Monger" a "Terrorist", well with all due respects, IRAN DOES NOT GET INTO A WAR EVERY OTHER YEAR AND KILL 1400 PEOPLE! They have not invaded other countries for the last 500 years, AND IS A MEMBER OF NPT, as opposed to Israel WHO POSESSES 30 NUCLEAR BOMBS, AND IS NOT A MEMBER OF NPT! But unfortunately you can keep saying a lie, so many times that indeed you believe it yourselves, but a lie is a lie is a lie!
mamyirani, I think I speak for the rousing majority when I say: We would phucking love, the honor of headquartering the UN, going away. But we are probably the only place in the world where a little shabby Iranian president feels safe.
Ahmadinejad is a snakie dude and very astute at politics. I mean how did he get the election to go his way with 0% counted? Screw diplomacy when he spews venom.
Thank you.
As a first time user, your comment has been submitted for review. It can take anywhere from a few hours to a day or two for your comment to be reviewed, depending on the time of week and the volume of comments we receive.
Please log in to leave comments.