Expelled and Antisemitism

In "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed", as we've found out already, much is said about an alleged link between Darwin's theory of Evolution and Nazi Germany. Ben Stein goes all around to various death camps, with Nazi footage interspliced so that viewers can't mistake what the film is suggesting, and he cries crocodile tears.

But then Ben Stein interviews a Polish professor of dendrology, Maciej Giertych, who denies evolution.

What Ben Stein and the producers of "Expelled" either didn't know, or casually ignored, is that this professor harbors some very ignorant and rather antisemitic beliefs.

Professor Giertych had written and/or said the following:

"By their own will, [Jews] prefer to live a separate life, in apartheid from the surrounding communities. They form their own communes (kahals), they govern themselves by their own rules and they take care to maintain also a spatial separateness. They form the ghettos themselves, as districts in which they live together, comparable to the Chinatowns in the USA. It was only Hitler’s Germany that created the concept of forced separation, of a closed ghetto from which Jews were not allowed to leave.

Jews are not pioneers. They do not go conquering the wild world or overpowering the hazards of nature. They settle among other civilisations, preferably among the rich. They tend to migrate from poorer to richer lands.They do so always as a group, immediately forming their own separate community. (source)

In our civilisation, a righteous person living honestly will not get in conflict with the law, even not knowing it. On the other hand, living in agreement with the letter of the law but dishonestly, derives from the pharisaic attachment to rules but not to ethics. The exploitation of rules, of imprecisely written laws, of gaps in them, of their multitude and inconsistencies, activities on the verge of legality, tax evasion techniques, all formally within the law but unethical, derive from the rabbinical casuistry, from the mentality of deriving ethics from the written law. Yet, such a swindler, acting within the law, has in fact no moral respect for any law. He cannot be compared to the Sabbath traveller sitting on a water bottle, who is also using a convenient interpretation of the Law, but he is doing this in order to fulfil the Law and therefore in full respect for it.

In our civilisation, a righteous person living honestly will not get in conflict with the law, even not knowing it. On the other hand, living in agreement with the letter of the law but dishonestly, derives from the pharisaic attachment to rules but not to ethics. The exploitation of rules, of imprecisely written laws, of gaps in them, of their multitude and inconsistencies, activities on the verge of legality, tax evasion techniques, all formally within the law but unethical, derive from the rabbinical casuistry, from the mentality of deriving ethics from the written law. Yet, such a swindler, acting within the law, has in fact no moral respect for any law. He cannot be compared to the Sabbath traveller sitting on a water bottle, who is also using a convenient interpretation of the Law, but he is doing this in order to fulfil the Law and therefore in full respect for it.

And all of this occurs because the Jews didn’t recognize "Jesus Christ as the awaited Messiah":

What we consider as the Jewish people today refers to a tragic community, a people that has not recognised the time of its visitation. It is those who did not recognise Jesus Christ as the awaited Messiah. Those Jews who followed Christ merged within the Christian universality. Those who rejected Him became wanderers throughout the world, among believers of other religions, jealously nurturing their chosenness, this messianic consciousness,which gives a defining mark to their civilisation.

I can tell you right now that many Evangelical Fundamentalists who absorb and believe the crap that "Expelled" promotes, will read the professor's comments and simply say "Yeah, so? What wrong with that?"

They will not recognize the blatant antisemitic tone of Giertych, because they probably think the same thing about Jews themselves. They probably consider the Professor's comments to be "commonly known facts". I'll be so bold as to affirm the theme behind some research I did on antisemitism and the Evangelical Christian movement; The Evangelical Fundamentalist Christian movement as a whole, harbors a lot of antisemitism. I document this in my "Fundamentalist Deceit" blog, which has a who's who of big-time Evangelism, with quotes of theirs.

There is a common idea among Fundamentalists that the Jews are a "flawed" people -- that their biggest mistake as a group was rejecting Christ. This leads many Fundamentalists to presume the following:

(1) The Jews (who never convert) will go to Hell.
(2) That Israel will be inherited only by "true Christians (c) (tm)"
(3) That Jews will be included among those who help Satan in the end times
(4) Most importantly, that a powerful conspiracy of Jews exist who wage war against Christianity.
(5) Jews "control all the banks and the media".

I've actually had prolonged discussions with various Chrsitians who took it upon themselves to tell me these things, and then write me all sorts of rationalizations and alleged proofs of it.

Jewish Conspiracy theories abound in Evangelical circles, and it's largely due to a combination of ignorance and blind trust for their leaders who often utter incredibly antisemitic statements.

The link between Christianity and antisemitism goes back to the founding of the Christian Church, and finds itself traced through Martin Luther, John Calvin, the Puritans, and southern Baptists in America. It's too bad that so many Evangelicals can turn a blind eye to this very obvious and well-documented fact, and continue pandering to "Expelled". Darwin's theory had zero influence on antisemitism in Nazi Germany. It was the much stronger and more obvious ties between Christianity and Antisemitism that is to blame.

What Irony that Ben Stein, a Jew, can help to promote the propaganda of a movement of people who share a much closer and more intimate set of links to Nazi Death Camps than Darwin!