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The Skunk at the Party
Or he’ll say something like: “Let’s say the Holocaust happened. Why is it that in certain European countries—countries that claim to have invented the very concept of free speech—people can go to jail for questioning the orthodox history of the Holocaust.”
That, frankly, is good point.
Or he will confess, as he did in a letter to Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, that his confusion about the Holocaust comes from his refusal to accept that a nation as “civilized” as Germany could be capable of such monstrous acts, knowing full well that the German response will be, “Yes, we are monsters. We are history’s most monstrous villains!”
Checkmate.
As artless and callow as such statements may be, they are nevertheless an indication of how Ahmadinejad skillfully draws attention away from issues that actually matter—e.g., Iran’s economy or its human-rights violations—by focusing everyone’s attention on issues that may be emotive and visceral but which in fact have absolutely no bearing on the most urgent matters at hand.
There are those in the U.S. and in Israel who argue that Ahmadinejad’s views on the Holocaust are of utmost importance in understanding Iranian policy. I have heard more than one influential foreign-policy analyst argue that the Iranian president’s beliefs regarding the Holocaust are what drives Iran’s nuclear program, that Ahmadinejad wishes to finish what he refuses to believe the Nazis started.
This is absurd. First of all, Ahmadinejad has no say in Iran’s nuclear program. In fact, the security clearance of the president of Iran is not high enough to even look at the country’s nuclear dossier, let alone make decisions about it (that right rests in the hands of the Supreme National Security Council, of which Ahmadinejad is not a member).
But, more importantly, Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust comments must be understood as nothing more than the pandering of a politician (that is, pandering to the Arab street, not Iranians). It bears mentioning that every high-school student in Iran is taught about the events of World War II, including the Nazi extermination of Jews. In fact, I once asked an Iranian friend if he was embarrassed at Ahmadinejad’s ignorance of world events. He replied that he was no more embarrassed than I must be when President George W. Bush says that the world is 6,000 years old.
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 taking the bait and falling into the trap he always seems to set for us right before he steps on America’s shores.
No doubt there will be thousands of demonstrators waiting to greet the illegitimate president of Iran when he arrives at the United Nations on Thursday. Dozens of protests are being planned around the city, and indeed around the country. Posters and placards promoting Iranian democracy are being pasted all around the city. New York’s Helmsley Hotel has bowed to pressure and canceled Ahmadinejad’s scheduled speech in their banquet room; Gotham Hall has followed Helmsley’s example and also canceled a speech he was to give at their banquet hall. Pressure is now building on the Essex House, the replacement venue for Gotham, to also withdraw its invitation to Ahmadinejad.
This is all well and good, as far as I’m concerned. The less attention Ahmadinejad receives while he is in the U.S. the better. But if he is to receive the attention of the media and the citizens of this country, let’s make sure it’s for the damage he has caused to his own nation and to his own people, not for his silly and seemingly uninformed views on historical events.
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 inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at editorial@thedailybeast.com.
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Bryan Curtis is a senior editor at The Daily Beast. His story about his grandfather’s softball career is in The Best American Sports Writing of 2009.
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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.
Benjamin Sarlin is Washington correspondent for The Daily Beast. He previously covered New York City politics for The New York Sun and has worked for talkingpointsmemo.com.
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Reza Aslan is author of the international bestseller No god but God and How to Win a Cosmic War (published in paperback as Beyond Fundamentalism: Confronting Religious Extremism in a Globalized World). Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.
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mcmchugh99
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.
Jswift
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.
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BC2009
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?
Nuld001
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.
Garvagh
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.)
redspruce
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.
RawhideRex
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.
gunapie
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.
manifestogr
I m so happy Americans found their new pet hate
manifestogr
"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"
.
djanimaequeen
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.
whipmawhopma
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.
whipmawhopma
'have' should be 'had'
sophia5
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?
T1Brit
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.
manifestogr
"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
Phoenixlady
This character needs a serious makeover! Even if he wasn't such a hate filled idiot, his appearance negates his credibility.
djanimaequeen
BTW, as usual Aslan delivers consisely. TDB needs to fire that bald rethuglican idiot and give his salary to Aslan.
ThinkAgain
It's predominantly a party of skunks. What it needs is a fox... or whatever eats skunks.
whipmawhopma
Great Horned Owl
DocHumboldt
Republicans?
ThinkAgain
If it wasn't for Twitter and the video leaked out of Iran during their election, liberals would be defending this skunk.
whipmawhopma
ThinkAgain - Your assertion is based on what evidence?
crymeariver
It's part of their Hitler was a liberal re-write of history which many
Jews find just as offensive as Holocaust deniers.
mredder4
What kind of world leader expects to be taken seriously when he gives speeches wearing a Members Only jacket?
whipmawhopma
mredder4 - Ahmadinejad dresses plainly for his constituents. This is the style.
Winkle
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.
bigansaliani
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).
whipmawhopma
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.
crymeariver
This was reported on by TDB and all the news outlets in real time.
ceartas
Well, I missed it. Thanks to Whip for the link.
DocHumboldt
Every last person in the U.N. should walk out on his speech.
Thank you.
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