Newsgroup: it.cultura.ebraica
Titolo: Fritz Stern: il pericolo dei Cristiani di destra

Per il moderatore: sě, lo so.
Ma l'inglese essendo widely spoken e io avendo poco tempo.....
Lo so, mi detesti, lo so.
Perdonami, se puoi.....
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The New York Times
Warning From a Student of Democracy's Collapse
By CHRIS HEDGES
Published: January 6, 2005
PRINCETON, N.J.
FRITZ STERN, a refugee from Hitler's Germany and a leading scholar of
European history, startled several of his listeners when he warned in a
speech about the danger posed in this country by the rise of the Christian
right. In his address in November, just after he received a prize presented
by the German foreign minister, he told his audience that Hitler saw himself
as "the instrument of providence" and fused his "racial dogma with a
Germanic Christianity."
"Some people recognized the moral perils of mixing religion and politics,"
he said of prewar Germany, "but many more were seduced by it. It was the
pseudo-religious transfiguration of politics that largely ensured his
success, notably in Protestant areas."
Dr. Stern's speech, given during a ceremony at which he got the prize from
the Leo Baeck Institute, a center focused on German Jewish history, was
certainly provocative. The fascism of Nazi Germany belongs to a world so
horrendous it often seems to defy the possibility of repetition or analogy.
But Dr. Stern, 78, the author of books like "The Politics of Cultural
Despair: A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology" and university
professor emeritus at Columbia University, has devoted a lifetime to
analyzing how the Nazi barbarity became possible. He stops short of calling
the Christian right fascist but his decision to draw parallels, especially
in the uses of propaganda, was controversial.
"When I saw the speech my eyes lit up," said John R. MacArthur, whose book
"Second Front" examines wartime propaganda. "The comparison between the
propagandistic manipulation and uses of Christianity, then and now, is
hidden in plain sight. No one will talk about it. No one wants to look at
it."
Dr. Stern was a schoolboy in 1933 when Hitler was appointed the German
chancellor. He ran home from school that January afternoon clutching a
special edition of the newspaper to deliver to his father, a prominent
physician.
"I was young," he said, "but I knew it was very bad news."
The street fighting in his native Breslau (now Wroclaw in Poland) between
Communists and Nazis, the collapse of German democracy and the ruthless
suppression of all opposition marked his childhood, and were images and
experiences that would propel him forward as a scholar.
"I saw one of the last public demonstrations against Hitler," he said. "Men,
women and children walked through the street and chanted 'Hunger! Hunger!
Hunger!' "
His paternal grandparents had converted to Christianity. His parents were
baptized at birth, as were Mr. Stern and his older sister. But this did not
save the Sterns from persecution. Nazi racial laws still classified them as
Jews.
"It was only Nazi anti-Semitism that made me conscious of my Jewish
heritage," he said. "I had been brought up in a secular Christian fashion,
celebrating Christmas and Easter. My father had to explain it to me."
His schoolmates were swiftly recruited into Hitler youth groups and he and
other Jews were taunted and excluded from some activities.
"Many of my classmates found the organized party experience, which included
a heavy dose of flag waving and talk of national strength, very
exhilarating," said Dr. Stern, who lost an aunt and an uncle in the
Holocaust. "It was something I never forgot."
His family fled to New York in 1938 when he was 12. He eventually went to
Columbia University intending to study medicine. But his passion for the
past, along with questions about what happened to his homeland, caused him
to switch his focus to history. He wanted to grasp how democracies
disintegrate. He wanted to uncover the warning signs other democracies
should heed. He wanted to write about the seductiveness of authoritarian
movements, which he once described in an essay, "National Socialism as
Temptation."
"There was a longing in Europe for fascism before the name was ever
invented," he said. "There was a longing for a new authoritarianism with
some kind of religious orientation and above all a greater communal
belongingness. There are some similarities in the mood then and the mood
now, although also significant differences."
HE warns of the danger in an open society of "mass manipulation of public
opinion, often mixed with mendacity and forms of intimidation." He is a
passionate defender of liberalism as "manifested in the spirit of the
Enlightenment and the early years of the American republic."
"The radical right and the radical left see liberalism's appeal to reason
and tolerance as the denial of their uniform ideology," he said. "Every
democracy needs a liberal fundament, a Bill of Rights enshrined in law and
spirit, for this alone gives democracy the chance for self-correction and
reform. Without it, the survival of democracy is at risk. Every genuine
conservative knows this."
Dr. Stern, who has two children from a previous marriage, is married to
Elizabeth Sifton, a book publisher. They live in New York. He is writing a
book called "Five Germanys I Have Known," a combination of memoirs and
reflections that looks at Weimar, Nazi Germany, the Federal Republic of
Germany, East Germany and unified Germany. He is widely read in Germany and
has won its highest literary prize.
"The Jews in Central Europe welcomed the Russian Revolution," he said, "but
it ended badly for them. The tacit alliance between the neo-cons and the
Christian right is less easily understood. I can imagine a similarly
disillusioning outcome."
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 Warning From a Student of Democracy's Collapse
moderatoreeeeeeeee  <g>
ipazia 
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 moderatoreeeeeeeee  <g>
copiona.
ho gią fatto ampie scuse al moderatore.
(sta leggendo un libro sulla storia della Lazio, non ha visto nulla....)
A
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