It's been occurring to me that the attitudes of many of "our" conservatives toward Muslims is similar to the average Germans' prior to and during WWII toward the Jews. The quote from "GWTW" is typical - frankly they don't give a damn what happens to Muslims. Islam is routinely demonized on these pages through the "Religion of Peace" series, even though it's a professed Christian who lead a nation into raw, naked aggression, and continues to occupy a foreign land and people. The attitudes seem to be similar to a lynch mob, frankly.

Anyway, I started looking up how the Germans reacted to the demonization of the Jews and their eventual "Final Solution". And the "Patriot Act" has put the average American citizen in the same bind as the average German citizen in those days.

At this stage of the neocon game, it seems to be very similar to the Christians of the US today, frankly. Robertson, Falwell, the ideologues of the Right, seem be believe similar things about the Muslims. It seems very similar to the attitudes of our conservatives, who do not want to hear about the atrocities, who blame not the acts but the reporting of it.

"Bystanders may have remained unaware, or perhaps were aware of victimization going on around them, but, being fearful of the consequences, chose not to take risk to help Nazi victims. Cynthia Ozick writes,

"Indifference is not so much a gesture of looking away--of choosing to be passive--as it is an active disinclination to feel. Indifference shuts down the humane, and does it deliberately, with all the strength deliberateness demands. Indifference is as determined--and as forcefully muscular--as any blow.

"Claude Lanzmann's documentary, Shoah, provides another portrait of the bystander. At first, bystanders who were interviewed in this documentary engaged in self-deception about the murder of Jews. Only after lengthy questioning did they finally acknowledge that they chose their roles deliberately, even when they could have done otherwise.

"First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out because I was not a communist.
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the labor leaders, and I did not speak out because I was not a labor leader.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out for me.

--The Reverend Martin Niemöller, a pastor in the German Confessing Church who spent seven years in a concentration camp.