Saturday, August 12, 2006
ANOTHER VAGUE LINK BETWEEN THE LEFT AND ANTI-SEMITISM
Let’s see how the “Pope was a Nazi!” crowd copes with this:
Germany was rocked by the revelations last night that Günter Grass, its greatest living author and doyen of the Left, was a member of Hitler’s elite Waffen-SS.
The Nobel laureate, who has been the country’s moral guide for decades, admitted in an interview published today that he became a member of the infamous Nazi corps at the age of 17.
Germany’s “moral guide”, was he? Tough gig.
UPDATE. Lefty Lindsay Beyerstein stands by her man:
Regardless of whether GG served in the SS, I’m still looking forward to reading The Tin Drum, because Amanda totally sold me on the book on the drive back from the NOW conference in Albany.
UPDATE II. Leftist authors sure do love tyrants. Here’s Gabriel García Márquez—like Grass, a Nobel Prize winner—on Fidel Castro:
His devotion is to the word. His power is of seduction. He goes to seek out problems where they are. The impetus of inspiration is very much part of his style. Books reflect the breadth of his tastes very well. He stopped smoking to have the moral authority to combat tobacco addiction. He likes to prepare food recipes with a kind of scientific fervour. He keeps himself in excellent physical condition with various hours of gymnastics daily and frequent swimming. Invincible patience. Ironclad discipline. The force of his imagination stretches him to the unforeseen.
José Martí is his foremost author and he has had the talent to incorporate Martí‘s thinking into the sanguine torrent of a Marxist revolution. The essence of his own thinking could lie in the certainty that in undertaking mass work it is fundamental to be concerned about individuals.
He’s concerned about individuals, all right. That’s why he keeps jailing and killing them.
(Via Lois B.)