Well at least it came timed to the month of the 125th anniversary of the 1881 pogroms. (More on this to come.)

Tsk tsk Andrew.

About the same time he notes he got the "French intefada" stuff badly wrong, whanking on about Muslims.

Andrew Sullivan's a flake.

What I mean by that is that he talks about a lot of things that he doesn't know anything about yet he acts like he does.

I'm sure he knows plenty about South Park and AIDs as he seems to talk about those things a lot. The problem lies in when he leaves those areas.

Just another case of Americans being dazzled by some unprofound British writer.

Well, Shamil, that makes him the perfect blogger as far as I can tell: re "he talks about a lot of things that he doesn't know anything about yet he acts like he does."

Actually, there has been an upsurge of nazism in Russia lately. God knows why, I can't figure out that one. The Soviet Union lost 26 million people fighting the Nazis, so what on earth is a nazi nationalist in Russia? A Christian Lion? My brain hurts.

http://www.mosnews.com/news/2005/01/21/neonazi.shtml

Can I just say how odd it feels for me to read comments written by a living, online person named Shamil?

On a connected topic notice how those journalists who talk about a "new anti-semiism" almost never mention the situation in Russia and Ukraine for that matter.

Anyone says anything about Israel and they hit the ceiling but actual physical attacks against jews (by non-muslims) apparently doesn't count as anti-semitism.

There was an attempt by some Duma members to ban all jewish organizations a while back but nothing was heard about this from the usual suspects.

Yet a couple of academics write a paper on Israel and look at the reaction. I think that says a lot.

Indeed it does.

Creating a narrative.

It's an odd thing, actually. the Eastern block, as it used to be called, is mostly known for organised crime, sex trafficking and porn starlets in the West and little else. (Western) Europeans talk constantly about USA and the Middle East, but anything east of Poland is just off the radar. Roughly speaking.

I think people just assume it will all progress by virtue of an European identity...so no need to pay attention. That these people are the same as us anyway, unlike Americans and Middle Easterners.

Speculation. I have for a long time assumed something bad would grow out of the fall of the Soviet Union. Maybe people are just a little afraid to think about where Russia is going. Like the way Russia has always been a sensitive subject in Finland (don't piss them off...).

More uninformed comment from Sullivan today.

A Bavarian pope had a unique opportunity to reflect on the role the Church played in providing two millennia of religious anti-Semitism which paved the way for the atheistic, racist anti-Semitism of Nazism.

Religious anti-semitism?

Does he even know what these words mean?

Secondly he's wrong in saying the Nazis were atheist. Many were Christians but many were also followers of old Nordic religions or Hinduism. Some believed that the Aryan race themselves were gods (kind of like the 10% nation).

Did Sullivan somehow miss the whole Kinder, Küche, Kirche thing?

Did Sullivan somehow miss the whole Kinder, Küche, Kirche thing?

Well that was certainly just rhetoric on Hitler's part. Like many Aryanists he believed that the adoption of Christianity by the Germans was a disaster. Which is strange because Charlemange was largely responsible for that and Hitler still idolised him.

What Kinder, Kuche, Kirche does show though is that Hitler assumed most of his followers were Christians.

You should place a tracback to Sullivan. Maybe he'll check this blog out :)

Oh, but I did, and he did, respectively - at least once. One can only hope he is still lurking.