Reynolds has a link to a post this morning pointing out that, this time, nearly all of the financial and political support for the flotilla is coming from western Europe. (Even though Arabists are pulling the strings via the Turkish government, Europeans are doing all the work.) The article points out the absurdity of all this given the enormous problems western Europe is now facing with the failure of western Europe's blue-state model and the impending disintegration of the euro. Clearly, the western European elites are desperate to find absolutely anything to distract the public's attention from these problems. And so they've seized on the old western European bugaboo -- anti-Semitism.

The Left is placing the pieces on the chessboard for World War III as we speak.

BUT

A generation of young Germans had become accustomed to having the entire content of their lives delivered gratis, so to speak, by the public sphere, all the raw material for their deeper emotions…Now that these deliveries suddently ceased, people were left helpless, impoverished, robbed, and disappointed. They had never learned how to live from within themselves, how to make an ordinary private life great, beautiful and worth while, how to enjoy it and make it interesting. So they regarded the end of political tension and the return of private liberty not as a gift, but as a deprivation. They were bored, their minds strayed to silly thoughts, and they began to sulk.

AND

To be precise (the occasion demands precision, because in my opinion it provides the key to the contemporary period of history): it was not the entire generation of young Germans. Not every single individual reacted in this fashion. There were some who learned during this period, belatedly and a little clumsily, as it were, how to live. they began to enjoy their own lives, weaned themselves from the cheap intoxication of the sports of war and revolution, and started to develop their own personalities. It was at this time that, invisibly and unnoticed, the Germans divided into those who later became Nazis and those who would remain non-Nazis.

(Messed up previous attempt at this comment-sorry)

Sebastian Haffner, in his memoir of growing up in Germany between the wars, had some interesting observations about people who need to get their sense of meaning in life from political activism. When the economic and political climate began to stabilize in the mid-1920s, different people had very different reactions:

"The last ten years were forgotten like a bad dream. The Day of Judgment was remote again, and there was no demand for saviors or revolutionaries…There was an ample measure of freedom, peace, and order, everywhere the most well-meaning liberal-mindedness, good wages, good food and a little political boredom. everyone was cordially invited to concentrate on their personal lives, to arrange their affairs according to their own taste and to find their own paths to happiness."

BUT

"A generation of young Germans had become accustomed to having the entire content of their lives delivered gratis, so to speak, by the public sphere, all the raw material for their deeper emotions…Now that these deliveries suddently ceased, people were left helpless, impoverished, robbed, and disappointed. They had never learned how to live from within themselves, how to make an ordinary private life great, beautiful and worth while, how to enjoy it and make it interesting. So they regarded the end of political tension and the return of private liberty not as a gift, but as a deprivation. They were bored, their minds strayed to silly thoughts, and they began to sulk."

AND

"To be precise (the occasion demands precision, because in my opinion it provides the key to the contemporary period of history): it was not the entire generation of young Germans. Not every single individual reacted in this fashion. There were some who learned during this period, belatedly and a little clumsily, as it were, how to live. they began to enjoy their own lives, weaned themselves from the cheap intoxication of the sports of war and revolution, and started to develop their own personalities. It was at this time that, invisibly and unnoticed, the Germans divided into those who later became Nazis and those who would remain non-Nazis."

David, nice writeup. It's been interesting for me to watch, over the course of my life, the Left gradually wrap anti-Semitism into itself. And I can't say I'm particularly surprised. I've long suspected that the reason the Left hates Hitler is not for moral reasons; rather, they hate Hitler because Hitler nearly beat them at their own game.

I think this has been posted here before, but I'll post it again: "Who Goes Nazi?", a brilliant article written by Dorothy Thompson for Harper's. Although it was written in 1941, you could some minor tweaks to it and republish it and few people would realize that it wasn't written recently. She describes precisely some of the types of people who fit into what you're talking about. The weaning is about to begin anew, for the simple reason that the coddling can no longer be paid for. Watch what happens next.

Cousin Dave...in case you're interested, I reviewed Haffner's book here. He has some things to say about the relationship between Communists and Nazis, using the example of two of his acquaintances:

"They both came from the ‘youth movement’ and both thought in terms of leagues. They were both anti-bourgeois and anti-individualistic. Both had an ideal of ‘community’ and ‘community spirit’. For both, jazz music, fashion magazines…in other words the world of glamour and ‘easy come, easy go’, were a red rag. Both had a secret liking for terror, in a more humanistic garb for the one, more nationalistic for the other. As similar views make for similar faces, they both had a certain stiff, thin-lipped, humourless expression and, incidentally, the greatest respect for each other.”

The Dorothy Thompson piece is very interesting.

Cousin Dave:
the reason the Left hates Hitler
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Hitler WAS A SOCIALIST.

The Left has successfully brainwashed people into thinking that the Nazis were right-wing fascists. In fact they were socialists - "Nazi" is a nickname for "Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei"
which translates as "German National Socialist Labor Party".

The Nazis ran a centrally controlled economy, national healthcare system, etc.

Good coverage here, along with a great photo of the aging hippies involved:

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/07/04/michael-ross-witless-hamas-apologists-denounce-israel-from-sunny-greece/

They must have a lot of mortally embarrassed grandchildren.

Gefaellt mir, komm doch mal bei mir vorbei!