Friday, January 11, 2013

How Totalitarian Government Snuck Up On Freud (and resulted in 4 of his sisters dying in Nazi gas chambers)

Government is always more dangerous than most anticipate. Sigmund Freud fled Austria because he thought he might be at risk, because he was a public figure (and Jewish). The founder of psychoanalysis never imagined how crazed the Nazis really were. He left his sisters behind.

The Daily Beast reports:
Little known fact: four of Sigmund Freud’s five younger sisters died in the Nazi gas chambers, and he could have saved them. But he didn’t.

Of course, he didn’t know what he wasn’t saving them from. In 1938, with the Anschluss in place and Austrian Jews in keen danger from a maniac German dictator, Freud’s powerful friends finagled a way for him to leave Vienna. He was permitted to make a list of people he wanted to bring with him. Among the 20 names he submitted were those of his two housekeepers, his personal doctor and the doctor’s family, and his small dog. His sisters were not on the list. There was no real reason to leave Austria, Freud believed, so why uproot the entire family? Freud escaped to London, where he died of cancer the following year. His sisters were deported to the death camps in 1942.
Bottom line: Remember The Freud Law, governments will do worse things that you are likely to expect.

10 comments:

  1. According to Salon, we shouldn't be taken in by the "Hitler gun control myth":

    Unfortunately for LaPierre et al., the notion that Hitler confiscated everyone’s guns is mostly bogus. And the ancillary claim that Jews could have stopped the Holocaust with more guns doesn’t make any sense at all if you think about it for more than a minute.

    University of Chicago law professor Bernard Harcourt explored this myth in depth in a 2004 article published in the Fordham Law Review. As it turns out, the Weimar Republic, the German government that immediately preceded Hitler’s, actually had tougher gun laws than the Nazi regime. After its defeat in World War I, and agreeing to the harsh surrender terms laid out in the Treaty of Versailles, the German legislature in 1919 passed a law that effectively banned all private firearm possession, leading the government to confiscate guns already in circulation. In 1928, the Reichstag relaxed the regulation a bit, but put in place a strict registration regime that required citizens to acquire separate permits to own guns, sell them or carry them.

    The 1938 law signed by Hitler that LaPierre mentions in his book basically does the opposite of what he says it did. “The 1938 revisions completely deregulated the acquisition and transfer of rifles and shotguns, as well as ammunition,” Harcourt wrote. Meanwhile, many more categories of people, including Nazi party members, were exempted from gun ownership regulations altogether, while the legal age of purchase was lowered from 20 to 18, and permit lengths were extended from one year to three years.

    The law did prohibit Jews and other persecuted classes from owning guns, but this should not be an indictment of gun control in general. Does the fact that Nazis forced Jews into horrendous ghettos indict urban planning? Should we eliminate all police officers because the Nazis used police officers to oppress and kill the Jews? What about public works — Hitler loved public works projects? Of course not. These are merely implements that can be used for good or ill, much as gun advocates like to argue about guns themselves. If guns don’t kill people, then neither does gun control cause genocide (genocidal regimes cause genocide).


    http://www.salon.com/2013/01/11/stop_talking_about_hitler/?source=newsletter

    So, apparently the Germans (but not the Jews) were mostly allowed to have their guns. And didn't Hitler basically not murder great masses of average Germans as Stalin did murder great masses of average Russians in the USSR? Just a coincidence, I suppose.

    Also, I would emphasize the "sneaking up" part of the genocidal state. They disarm you first, then start killing you. There would have been no sneaking up on an entire populations of eastern European Jews armed with "assault weapons".

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    1. I love how leftists gloss over the fact that Jews weren't allowed to own firearms as if that is some sort of minor fact! Or that it wouldn't have been as easy to exterminate them if they didn't have guns, ha ha! If that was the case, why did Hitler make sure they were not allowed to own them? Why did Nazi POW soldiers cower in fear the few times Jews overpowered them and armed themselves?

      Also, the point isn't that Hitler took away gun rights - just as in the rest of the places where genocide took place, the (modern day form of the word) liberal governments did that job for them. This made

      I also like how they do mention registration, "sporting purposes," etc in passing, and don't make the connection at all.

      They bring up other acts of govt intervention as if they also aren't evil like "public works" and other projects, but what about assassinating citizen by executive decree? What about indefinite detention? What about spying on "enemies of the state" without warrant? What about aggressive acts of war against other nation states by executive decree?

      Yes, liberals, you who endorse the current proposed gun laws, and who also endorse the Obama admin, are outright fascists whether you like it or not.

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    2. To me this shows the liberal types who love to call others fascist are really upset that this card is being (correctly) played against them, and it clearly had a political impact judging by the way liberal AP reporters keep attacking Drudge for running the photo of stalin and hitler all day on the headline portion.

      To me this shows this is the most effective argument of all, and puts them on the defensive and exposes them for what they are. Whenever they want to talk about 20 children killed, we can point out tens of millions killed after disarmament. If this wasn't effective with regular american types, then there would not be an orchestrated attack against it by the media and various fascist apologists.

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  2. And don't forget that economic regulation requires the evisceration of the protections provided by private property and self ownership. All to solve problems that don't exist.

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  3. http://www.amazon.com/Gun-Control-Gateway-Tyranny-Weapons/dp/0964230410/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1357946620&sr=1-1&keywords=gun+control+gateway+to+tyranny

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  4. The events documented in the movie "Blackhawk Down" are a great example of the power of an armed population.

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  5. "The law did prohibit Jews and other persecuted classes from owning guns, but this should not be an indictment of gun control in general."

    Wha? That invalidates their whole argument. Are they that stupid?

    "Does the fact that Nazis forced Jews into horrendous ghettos indict urban planning?"

    Yes!

    "Should we eliminate all police officers because the Nazis used police officers to oppress and kill the Jews?"

    Yes!

    In America our state and federal constitutions prohibit standing government armies. That means no cops with guns. If you enforce gun control against the government, then you free the Jews and everyone else.

    "What about public works — Hitler loved public works projects?"

    I have an idea. If the Salon guy loves "public" works projects as much as Hitler, maybe he can think of a way to fund them without government guns.

    "Of course not. These are merely implements that can be used for good or ill,"

    Nope, the Salon guy's favorite implement of shooting people with government guns is inherently evil. It can only be used for ill.

    ***

    "didn't Hitler basically not murder great masses of average Germans as Stalin did murder great masses of average Russians in the USSR?"

    When it comes to murdering 100s of thousands the fastest, Hitler and Stalin (H&S) have nothing on Truman, Roosevelt, and Churchill (TR&C). Sure H&S had impressive lifetime totals. They could pile up the skulls by the millions over several seasons. But at Dresden, Berlin, Tokyo, Hiroshima, & Nagasaki, TR&C incinerated them by the 100s of thousands in just a few days or seconds.

    The only thing that could have stopped the TR&C mass murders would have been if U.S. taxpayers had used their guns to stop TR&C from stealing their money to pay for it. Just because they didn't do it, doesn't invalidate the principle.

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    1. Thank you. I thought almost all of these things- why do we need public works, etc.

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    2. Well said!
      Thanx!

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  6. First it is this:

    "Unfortunately for LaPierre et al., the notion that Hitler confiscated everyone’s guns is mostly bogus."

    then it is this:

    "The law did prohibit Jews and other persecuted classes from owning guns"

    Which is it? And yeah, how did that whole Jews being unable to own guns thing work out again?

    LOL

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