© demetrios vakras

 

The Nazi anti-Jewish phenomenon did not arise in Germany in an vacuum without precedent. Neither was it a manifestation limited solely to the German people. Rather, it arose from an underlying religious prejudice:
1/ a Christian belief that the Jewish people were to blame for the crucifixion of god (1 Thessalonians 2.13-16: “For you, brothers, became imitators of God’s churches in Judea, which are in Christ Jesus: You suffered from your own countrymen the same things those churches suffered from the jews, who killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets and also drove us out. They displease God and are hostile to all men in their effort to keep us from speaking to the Gentiles so that they may be saved. In this way they always heap up their sins to the limit. The wrath of God has come upon them at last.” );

2/ that those who deny Christ (as do Jews) are antiChrist and therefore evil (for example: 2 John 7  and 1 John 2 : 18-19).

There is scant acknowledgement that the most virulent anti-Jewish sentiments actually emanate from the intelligentsia. This essay is limited in its scope to the manifestation of anti-Jewish sentiments in the Australian art scene in the context of an exhibition of anti-Jewish propaganda “exhibited” as “art” by Azlan McLennan in Melbourne, and to censorship. This essay debunks claims made in defense of the “exhibit” in an article that appeared in Melbourne's Age newspaper. The most vigilant censors today are newspapers, like Melbourne's Age.  Censorship has succeeded when it is not known that it has occurred as the the censored piece is never seen....

In 1939 an exhibition of modern art was held at the Melbourne Town Hall which included works by Picasso, Leger, & Dali (amongst others). It was violently attacked by the cultural intelligentsia:

"Lionel Lindsay, whose prejudices had not mellowed with age, flew into a hysterical anti-Semitic fit and wrote a book about modern painting, based on the show, entitled Addled Art. In it, he set out to prove that Picasso, Matisse and the surrealists were pawns in a vast Jewish conspiracy." p. 142, The Art of Australia Robert Hughes.

Lindsay's position merely echoed statements made just over a decade earlier...:

"Art Bolshevism is the only possible cultural form and spiritual expression of Bolshevism as a whole... the morbid excrescences of insane and degenerate men, with which, since the turn of the century, we have become familiar under the collective concepts of cubism and dadaism... Sixty years ago an exhibition of so-called dadaistic 'experiences' would have seemed simply impossible and its organisers would have ended up in the madhouse, while today they preside over art associations."  This was written by one Adolf Hitler in his Mein Kampf (2). And, according to Hitler, Bolshevism was a grand Jewish conspiracy.

The appeal of Hitler lay in his articulating a pseudo-scientific basis for the cultural  and religious prejudices which underlay European civilization.

Sixty five years later and virulent histrionic anti-Jewish sentiment has not abated. What was learnt when the concentration camps were exposed for what they were has been forgotten and Nazi racism is again expressed as a secular and reasonable concern with respect to contemporary political happenings. It is this kind of 'secular' appeal that made Hitler's statements acceptable to Germans over half a century ago, which so appeals to contemporary commentators oblivious to the source of their concerns. The scene is again Melbourne. This time a window with only sign-written statements painted on the glass, with the Star of David painted on the wall behind the window, is declared to be "art". The consequence is outrage by much of the community. The Melbourne City Council which sponsored the "art" has the sign-writing removed and the Star of David painted over.

It is the backlash to the removal of the self-declared art that is astonishing. Already a mythology is being invented by the intelligentsia. The Melbourne newspaper The Age published an article on 14/5/2004 by journalist Gabriella Coslovich in which she claims that the "art" was an "installation".  Not constrained by the truth, Coslovich invents a description of the display intended to give credence to her claim that it was an installation: "McLennan's installation - featuring an Israeli flag and debatable statistics..." I took photographs of the window in question prior to the display being removed - there was no flag and it therefore cannot be referred to as an "installation". The Star of David was accompanied with statistics of purported "crimes" committed since 1948. Essentially it is an attack on the Jewish people. It is signwriting - not art.

According to Coslovich's article all art is "political". Thus defined, political propaganda becomes art - therefore the removal of the piece becomes an act of censorship by the state...

At this point it is instructive to refer to Hitler's Mein Kampf:

"The function of propaganda... [is] that everyone will be convinced that the fact is real, the process necessary, the necessity correct, etc." "All propaganda must be popular and its intellectual level must be adjusted to. Consequently, the greater the mass it is intended to reach, the lower the purely intellectual level will have to be."(3) "Its task is not to make an objective study of the truth... its task is to serve our own right, always and unflinchingly."(4) "...concentration on a few points, constant repetition of the same, self-assured and self-reliant framing of the text in the forms of an apodictic statement..."(5)

The signwriting-cum-art fulfils the propaganda criteria of Mein Kampf: it is neither objective or truthful and serves only by way of "apodictic statements" to vilify its target.

"For while the Zionists try to make the rest of the world believe that the national consciousness of the Jew finds its satisfaction in the creation of a Palestinian state, [what] they want is a central organisation for their international world swindle, endowed with its own sovereign rights and removed from the intervention of other states." Mein Kampf(6) "With every means he tries to destroy the racial foundations of the people he has set out to subjugate." Mein Kampf(7)
 "...the ultimate aims of the Jewish struggle, which are not exhausted in the mere economic conquest of the world, but also demand its political subjugation..." Mein Kampf(8)

The signwritten propaganda displayed as art was no more than a restatement of Hitlerian sentiment intended to demonstrate Hitlerian prophecy as coming true. What Coslovich's article insists we accept as art is nothing other than an affirmation of the message of the Mein Kampf.

That the propaganda was removed is unremarkable. For Coslovich though, that removal was a case of state censorship. The letters pages of both Melbourne's newspapers, The Herald Sun and The Age ran letters by readers condemning what was claimed by the writers to be an overly influential Jewish lobby.

Hitler's views are again instructive: "Any man who is not attacked in the Jewish newspapers, not slandered and vilified, is no decent German... the Jew and his newspapers always lie... Every Jewish slander and every Jewish lie is a scar of honour on the body of our warriors." Mein Kampf (9)

It is no coincidence that this "art" provoked a reaction - it was constructed in accordance to the method and purpose articulated by Hitler. Consistent with Hitler's theories, its removal  established the creator's bona fides!

Coslovich writes:
"Artists have a habit of offending people, of tackling explosive political issues, of defying authority and challenging the mainstream. From Picasso's Guernica, one of history's great anti-war protests...art has shocked, provoked and riled governments across the political spectrum." Thus Coslovich claims the signwriting to be an "anti-war" piece in defiance of the government position!

Firstly, the only way that the window in question can be deemed "anti-war" is to accept that the propaganda is true, which therefore means the Jewish people are the cause of violence, which means that being anti-Jewish is really being anti-war!

Secondly, the painting that came to be called Guernica had been commissioned by the Republicans as anti-Nationalist propaganda. The air bombing of Guernica by Hitler's airforce happened after Picasso was commissioned. Had he not been commissioned Picasso may have painted something, but it would not have been Guernica. More importantly, Picasso never defied his government, he produced his piece on behalf of his government! Coslovich merely parrots the accepted dogma of her educators. If an example is required of sincerely anti-war art, then  The War by Otto Dix, (1929-32, Triptych, oil on wood, Staatliche Kunstammlungen, Dresden) should serve as an example. However, that would entail independent thinking.

Censorship. Contemporary western European civilization (of which Australia is a part) has 'cultivated' a religious laity, that is, a population which largely disclaims religion, whilst practising it. The manifestation of Nazi pseudosophy in the the 1930s was underpinned by Christian prejudices, despite vociferous claims to the contrary:

"The greatness of every mighty organisation embodying an idea in this world lies in the religious fanaticism and intolerance with which, fanatically convinced of its own right, it intolerantly imposes its will against all others... The greatness of Christianity did not lie in attempted negotiations for compromise with any similar philosophical opinions in the ancient world, but its inexorable fanaticism in preaching and fighting for its own doctrine." (10) Mein Kampf
"...there is only one holiest human right... to see to it that the blood [race] is preserved pure... by raising marriage from the level of a continuous defilement of the race... to produce images of the Lord and not monstrosities between man and ape." (11) Mein Kampf

Today's understanding of Hitler's Mein Kampf as a manifestation of irreligious amoral evil merely indulges a delusion. It is forgotten how Hitler was presented outside Germany. His Mien Kampf, when it first appeared in English, was "considerably abridged". "The abridgement was... an attempt to 'bowdlerise the book and to 'whitewash' the author." (p. xv Introduction to the translation of Mein Kampf by D. C. Watt)

Similar "abridgement" occurs in today's media when criticising any religion other than Christianity. Criticism of religion is censored by the state apparatus and news media which seem impelled to guard the chastity of the society they serve.  The religious laity would rather attribute blame for anything discomforting to anything other than religion, and have thus been perverting open discussion for fear of appearing to be intolerant of creeds other than their own.

McLennan ignores the role of the religion of Islam. He ignores the suicide murderers who are entirely Muslim, who declare their actions as a religious “martyrdom”, in which thier dying in the process of killing unbelievers gains them immediate entry to paradise. There is a reason why they hold a copy of the Koran: the Koran demands that they kill.

The Cow 2: 216 "Fighting is obligatory for you, much as you dislike it. But you  may hate a thing although it is good for you...", Mohammed 47:5-6: "As for those who are slain in the cause of Allah, He will not allow their works to perish...He will admit them to the Paradise He has made known to them." Koran

The 'secularist' fantasy survives only because attribution to religion as a causal agent is censored and the acts of suicide murder are instead attributed to a secular desperation, a reaction to the state of Israel. Hitler's idioms are adopted, adapted and restated to furnish a secular cause. In the context of Mein Kampf, McLennan's window uses art that Hitler described as a Jewish conspiracy against the Jews.

 A religious text (the Koran) is not lesser an evil than a secular text (Mein Kampf) solely because it is sacred. The idea that a secular text can be criticised and yet a sacred text cannot is utterly without foundation. The Koran inculcates with histrionic repetition the need to commit violence against non-believers as a demonstration of fidelity to that religion. It demands the killing of unbelievers on pain of divine punishment:

Repentance 9:38: "Believers, why is it that when it is said to you: 'March in the cause of Allah,' you linger slothfully in the land? Are you content with this life in preference to the life to come? Few indeed are the blessings of this life compared to those of the life to come. If you do not fight He will punish you sternly and replace you by other men.  Allah has power over all things."[“Are you waiting for anything to befall us except victory or martyrdom?” 9.51]

Whereas in the Torah/Old Testament the Jews are God's chosen people, in the Koran the Jews are cursed by God:

The Table 5:11 "Allah made a covenant with the Israelites ... But because they broke their covenant We laid on them Our curse ...They have perverted the words of the Scriptures...You will find them deceitful except for a few of them." (Refer also: Kneeling 45 : 16)

The Table 5: 82 "You will find that the most implacable of men in their enmity of the faithful are the Jews and the pagans, and that the nearest in affection to them are those who say: 'We are Christians.'"

On the second anniversary of the day of Islam's infamy, 11 September 2001, the Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard said in parliament:
"It is obscene to say that these acts of terrorism were done in the name of Islam. They prostitute and degrade the name of Islam." 11/9/2003

The Koran incontrovertibly contradicts the Prime Minister. The Koranic passages that demand violence are censored by the newspapers. The censorship goes unnoticed. And McLennan, in the Coslovich article, is simply attempting to counter the Liberal Party pro-Israeli bias!

This finally brings us to Marcel Duchamp. Duchamp the dadaist was disgusted with the culture that led to the First World War. He attempted to ridicule that culture by exhibiting "anti-art". Non-art objects were exhibited as art as a way of expressing his contempt for the culture which had created so many dead.  As conventional art theory recounts it, he failed because "his" objects (they were created by others) were eventually accepted by the culture he had contempt for. It is a mantra which lacks logic. Duchamp has to be approached entirely differently.  His first attempt in demonstrating that the culture that led to war was bankrupt, was itself a failure. When submitted to the New York Armoury Show, his urinal was rejected. Indeed it was only when his urinal was accepted as art and exhibited as such that he actually succeeded in demonstrating that the culture was utterly debased and worthy only of ridicule. In the context of the nonsensical hype surrounding McLennan's propaganda, Duchamp's contempt for culture was well founded. McLennan, if anything, shows that the cultural bankruptcy is almost absolute.

Azlan McLennan is the same person, who as art, employed a security guard in which the unsuspecting guard unwittingly became a performance piece, the artwork, because he was employed simply to be humiliated. To its credit, the Herald Sun reported this (6/5/2004) - the Age  avoided mention of this. Mention of this is absent in Coslovich's apologia. Furthermore, McLennan was also part of a collaboration which thought it a good idea to decapitate an animal and film the act of decapitating it, as art. This too is absent from Coslovich's apologia. Thus a self-serving attention seeker with no greater cause to pursue other than the rise of his own star is celebrated as a noble embodiment of the selfless cause for free-speech...!

demetrios vakras
atheist, anti-theist, artist, non-Jew, and a Melbourne City Council resident / ratepayer.
 

Appendix/ references/ notes
(2) p. 235. Chapter 10 Causes of the Collapse, Book One, Mein Kampf.
(3) p. 164. Chapter 6 War Propaganda, Book One, A Reckoning, Mein Kampf.
(4) p. 166. Chapter 6 War Propaganda, Book One, A Reckoning, Mein Kampf.
(5) p. 332. Chapter 12 The First Period of Development of The National Socialist German Workers' Party, Book One, A Reckoning, Mein Kampf.
(6) p. 294. Nation and Race, Book One, A Reckoning, Mien Kampf.
(7) p. 295. Nation and Race, Book One, A Reckoning, Mien Kampf.
(8) p. 291. Nation and Race, Book One, A Reckoning, Mien Kampf.
(9) p. 319. Chapter 12 The First Period of Development of The National Socialist German Workers' Party, Book One, A Reckoning, Mein Kampf.
(10) p. 318 Chapter 12 The First Period of Development of The National Socialist German Workers' Party, Book One, A Reckoning, Mein Kampf.
(11) pp. 335-66 Chapter 2 The State, Book Two, The National Socialist Movement, Mein Kampf
Notes:
Mein Kampf, translated by Ralph Manheim. Publisher Hutchinson ISBN 0-09-112431-X
Koran, translated by N. J. Dawood. Publisher Penguin ISBN 0 14 044.052 6
In Dawood's translation of the Koran he includes a "Chronological table of the Main events in the life of Mohammed". One of these events is: "627 [AD] The Jewish tribe of Qurayza raided by Mohammed; some 800 men beheaded (only one Jew abjuring his religion to save his life) and all the women and children sold as slaves." Any reading of the Koran demonstrates inconsistencies with Jewish and Christian scripture in the retelling of "Biblical" stories. Unsurprisingly the Jews who could demonstrate that their scriptures predated Mohammed's very birth refused to accept him as a prophet and refused to convert to his religion. This has fuelled an ineffable hatred of Jews which is expressed in unambiguous language in the Koran. The inconsistency between the Koran and pre-existing Jewish/ Christian stories is explained by Muslims thus: that although  texts of the Jews and Christians existed well before Mohammed was born, the Koran is older because it is the exact word of an eternal God and has always existed. The Jewish and Christian texts are not eternal, are the imperfect work of men and therefore a corrupt rendition of God's message. The Koran pretty much says as much... It must also be emphasised that whereas Buddhists emulate Sidarta, Christians emulate the acts of Jesus (theoretically), & Muslims emulate the deeds of Mohammed.

The scope of the above essay is limited to addressing anti-Jewish propaganda disguised as legitimate criticism of the state of Israel. The dishonesty of western leftist intelligentsia invents the myth of Arabs oppressed to the point of abject desperation in which their only option is to commit mass murders of Jews. Therefore, this essay exposes one point that western commentators deliberately omit:

100% of the suicide murderers of Israelis are followers of Mohammed, Muslims, whose objective is to kill Jews and so go to heaven as their Koran insists they will.

Consequently, this essays shows that it is western anti-Jewish sentiment, of the same kind that guided Hitler, which fuels the west's strident criticisms of the state of Israel. It was outside the scope of this essay therefore, to address the Mohammedan view on Christianity. But I suspect that for some of the closet Christians feigning secular concern, the anti-Jewish sentiments in the Koran might reinforce their anti-Jewish prejudices, rather than cause them embarrassment.

So, what does the Koran say on Christians?:

" You will find that the most implacable of men in their enmity of the faithful are the Jews and the pagans, and that the nearest in affection to them are those who say: 'We are Christians.' “ The Table 5.82 ;

"The unbelievers among the People of the Book [Jews & Christians] and the pagans shall burn for ever in the fire of Hell. They are the vilest of all creatures." The Proof 98.6

"Those who say: 'The Lord of Mercy has begotten a son,' preach a monstrous falsehood, at which the very heavens might crack, the earth break asunder, and the mountains crumble to dust."  Mary 19.88

" ...admonish those who say that Allah has begotten a son... a monstrous blasphemy is that which they utter. They preach nothing but falsehoods." The Cave 18.2-5

"Unbelievers are those that say: 'Allah is the Messiah, the son of Mary.' ...Unbelievers are those that say: 'Allah is one of three.' There is but one God. If they do not desist from so saying, those of them that disbelieve shall be sternly punished." The Table 5.66 -74

© demetrios vakras
 

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