another lie collapses. has this establishment uttered a single word of truth about that conflict, the outcome of which still decides our miserable fate?
It would be interesting to update it for the 21st century: First they came for the Pro-lifers.... Christians.... Small business owners.... farmers, etc.
If you go to the Marcuse treatise, it only slightly supports what Simon is saying. Niemoller said many things over quite a long life, and often honed his speeches to chime with the sensibilities and interests of his various audiences. A more poetic version of the more prosaic initial version seems to have appeared in his speaking tours, and yes various followers and editors have tinkered with it. Over the decades, Social Democrats, Catholics, Jews, Communists, Jehovah's Witnesses and Socialists have all had their moments in the sun, and then vanished, only to re-emerge later. So I am not persuaded that the poem is in any sense a 'myth', though it has had, it seems, a somewhat laboured birth.
This goes on to show how history can be manipulated several times until it fits the contemporary narrative. Many things that are taken today as uncontendable and illegal-to-question "truths" were carefully stitched up to make it look in like it always existed and is factually accurate.
Martin Niemöller together with Dietrich Bonhöffer (Lutheran pastor involved with the groups from which the plotters of the failed July 20 1944 assault on Hitler would come) are basically the only examples people can come up with as examples of Christian/ecclesiastical resistance in Germany to Hitler and the Nazi's (save for those known to hyperspecialists on the matter). A sobering thought...?
Thank's for this exposé of Niemöller. Sources frequently misrepresent him and his supposed poem, it turns out, such as The Penguin Dictionary of the Third Reich.
Another great iconoclastic expose Simon.
Thank you!
another lie collapses. has this establishment uttered a single word of truth about that conflict, the outcome of which still decides our miserable fate?
The most repulsive element in the obscuring of the truth of the sermon-statement is the insertion of 'Social Democrat'.
No-one ever goes after 'Social Democrats' for when a breeze or wind start blowing they disappear into the ether.
This is very true! It is not like being a Catholic or Jew.
It would be interesting to update it for the 21st century: First they came for the Pro-lifers.... Christians.... Small business owners.... farmers, etc.
If you go to the Marcuse treatise, it only slightly supports what Simon is saying. Niemoller said many things over quite a long life, and often honed his speeches to chime with the sensibilities and interests of his various audiences. A more poetic version of the more prosaic initial version seems to have appeared in his speaking tours, and yes various followers and editors have tinkered with it. Over the decades, Social Democrats, Catholics, Jews, Communists, Jehovah's Witnesses and Socialists have all had their moments in the sun, and then vanished, only to re-emerge later. So I am not persuaded that the poem is in any sense a 'myth', though it has had, it seems, a somewhat laboured birth.
This goes on to show how history can be manipulated several times until it fits the contemporary narrative. Many things that are taken today as uncontendable and illegal-to-question "truths" were carefully stitched up to make it look in like it always existed and is factually accurate.
Martin Niemöller together with Dietrich Bonhöffer (Lutheran pastor involved with the groups from which the plotters of the failed July 20 1944 assault on Hitler would come) are basically the only examples people can come up with as examples of Christian/ecclesiastical resistance in Germany to Hitler and the Nazi's (save for those known to hyperspecialists on the matter). A sobering thought...?
Thank's for this exposé of Niemöller. Sources frequently misrepresent him and his supposed poem, it turns out, such as The Penguin Dictionary of the Third Reich.