Hello!
I don't really see what is funny about saying that discrimination is not to be tolerated. "Discrimination" as I understand it means actually oppressing people, denying them basic rights, causing harm to them. If you have prejudices, that is your right and I have to tolerate that - but if you act upon those prejudices then tolerance has to end in my opinion.
While you are reading those history books, why not check out a few other things. As far as I remember, the German Jews who got murdered were also Germans and if I am not completely mistaken, in the Weimar Republic they did have the right to vote. While I am not absolutely sure about the latter, the former is already something people tend to forget. Those were Germans who spoke German as they mother tongue and who had lived in Germany for generations.
It is true that they were facing serious prejudice and some level of discrimination, but the real exclusion from society came only after Hitler came into power. After all, how could the big Kaufhof department store chain be owned by a Jew at that time if they didn't have at least somewhat normal citizen rights? (It is one example I remember of major Jewish businesses that got stolen by the Nazi government).
As for Jews in other places than Israel, there are many more Jews outside of Israel than in Israel. A large portion probably was happy to live in the nations their grandparents and parents have lived - and these are not Israel or Palestine. Another portion are intellectuals who moved to Israel, got disillusioned by the state of affairs there, and moved back to some country not constantly at war.
Because of that, I actually get personally annoyed by people equating Israel with Jews, as any mistakes Israel might make would then be blamed also on Jews who never visited the place.
As for the nationalist party back in the days of Hitler, you have to put this into context. Nationalism got its reputation seriously tainted by the conduct of the Hitler regime. Before that, nationalism was more of a neutral term and actually also referred to the fact that Germany for instance was a very young "nation" having finally reached a unity of the small dukedoms that originally divided its territory. Nationalism was more linked to bringing people together in a single nation rather than spreading hate against others.
Of course, nationalism as Hitler understood it was clearly the hateful type and both Germans and the international community should have actually known about that as he never made a secret of this.
In fact, much of his electoral success was based on his simple formula of blaming all bad things on minorities or ill-understood groups, thus gathering the support of the majority by simply telling them that they are the poor victims of some conspiracy.
As for theocracies, it sounds rather abstruse that putting in place a government claiming that "Our God is the only real God" will lead to tolerance and understanding... It is hard to believe that that government would not have a bias to their own religion leading to discrimination of the other religions.
Therefore, the secular democracy seems at an advantage as it puts the state as such as a religious neutral abiter (at least in theory) which would not consider one religion superior to another and thus not discriminate. And a secular democracy does not mean that the individuals are not allowed to follow their own religions as they please. On the contrary.
Deathworks
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Topic: Criticism of a nation is equal to criticism of a ethnic group within that nation (Read 27537 times)