How Nazi Antisemitism Infected Egypt
Join me as I find a lead on Twitter and follow it down a series of rabbit holes to a warren of truths and historical facts illuminating the world today...(welcome to my brain)...LOL
Monday, May 20th, 2024
This was written for my local island community, but it applies equally to all native-born Americans with Western Civilization as their primary family culture. Others may also enjoy it, but these are the people I know best and am speaking to directly.
The issues in the Middle East are complex.
Understatement of the year, right? Only, I’m not sure people are tracking that…
Most of us have never visited the region, do not have friends or family who live there, we’re not educated adequately by government schools during our childhood, and we’re basically deeply ignorant.
In fact, our ignorance is so complete we don’t see it, and as a result, many have honestly made the mistake of thinking about the people and cultures of the Middle East in very simplistic terms. Because of this, many believe their opinions are based on “enough” information to be valid or justified. But if my journey over the past seven months is any example — oh no, we don’t know diddly!
For example, how many Jews are there in the world? What’s your best guess? And, how many Muslims are there in the world? (See answers at the bottom of substack.)
For example, did you know…?
Honestly, me neither.
Since October 7, I have been spending one to four hours a day, informing and re-educating myself, researching the region’s history and tracking various sources of propaganda. I have read pro-Palestinian websites, I have studied the student movement organizations, I have delved deeply into the Nakba (which I had known about as a child already), and I’ve increased my understanding of Israel by 10 fold, at least! Israeli demographics, law, human rights, equality for Arabs, Jews, Christians, Druze, Secularists, the relatively recent history of the past 20 years, and more.
Today I discovered something very interesting on Twitter — which I then heavily vetted to confirm accuracy. Like so many incredible gems from history, this isn’t hidden or secret knowledge — it’s absolutely known as fact and generally ignored, forgotten or un-taught to the majority of students in the West.
Quote:
“For anyone wondering why Egypt is and long has been antisemitic … and why they would absolutely be helping Hamas by smuggling weapons and equipment through tunnels and do everything possible to stop Israel from going after Hamas and entering Rafah, this may help a little:
Omar Amin was the advisor to Gamal Nasser of Egypt in the 50s, and he implemented the education system that still exists in Egypt today. Omar Amin wasn’t always called Omar Amin. His real name was Johann Von Leers, and he was a Nazi and a high-ranking propaganda official for the Nazis working closely with Goebbels. He fled Nazi Germany to South America, then went to Egypt, changed his name, converted to Islam, and was one of the main people who brought Nazi ideology and Jew hatred to Egypt and surrounding countries.”
More info re: Johann von Leers
Supporting himself by writing freelance articles for the Nazi Party press, after the Nazis came to power in 1933, Leers was summoned by Joseph Goebbels to work in the propaganda ministry, where he was assigned to proliferate party propaganda, eventually penning 27 books between 1933 and 1945.
Read that again. Yes, Johann von Leers worked for the “Propaganda Ministry” and over twelve years he wrote twenty-seven (27) books. Twenty-seven. Damn!
Leers was a proponent of realpolitik, advocating a race-free foreign relations policy on the basis of relationship and alliance. He wrote the memo which led to the exemption of non-Jewish racial minorities from race laws in the Third Reich in 1934, 1936, and 1937.
In 1936, Leers was commissioned into the Waffen-SS as an under-Sturmbannführer, eventually becoming a full honorary Sturmbannführer.
What did it mean to be a Sturmbannführer? It was a Nazi Party paramilitary rank equivalent to major that was used in several Nazi organizations, such as the SA, SS, and the NSFK. The rank originated from German shock troop units of the First World War. The SA title of Sturmbannführer was first established in 1921.
Johann von Leers went on to serve as a lecturer at the University of Jena.
(Ah…I’m beginning to see a trend here, in that radically motivated people intent upon changing their society seek to influence the youth at University, capturing their willpower and effort for the rest of their lives, appealing to their naivete, over-confidence, egos, desire to be important, and overall ignorance which makes them easy to convince.)
Leers wrote the notorious anti-Semitic tract (published and popular during the Third Reich), Juden sehen dich an (Jews Are Looking at You). He was smart, being fluent in five languages, including Dutch and Japanese, but this next section is where it starts to get interesting and relevant to the Middle East!
Jeffrey Herf reports that in December 1942 Leers published an article in Die Judenfrage, a journal which belonged to the anti-Semitic intellectual world, entitled “Judaism and Islam as Opposites.”
As the title indicates, the author's perspective is Hegelian, presenting Judaism and Islam in terms of thesis and antithesis. This essay also reveals the ingratiating National Socialist perspective which Leers projected on the Islamic past, as well as the intensity of his hatred for Judaism and Jewry.
The following passage is part of the original text:
“Mohammed's hostility to the Jews had one result: Oriental Jewry was completely paralyzed. Its backbone was broken. Oriental Jewry effectively did not participate in [European] Jewry's tremendous rise to power in the last two centuries. Despised in the filthy lanes of the mellah (the walled Jewish quarter of a Moroccan city, analogous to the European ghetto) the Jews vegetated there. They lived under a special law (that of a protected minority), which in contrast to Europe did not permit usury or even traffic in stolen goods, but kept them in a state of oppression and anxiety. If the rest of the world had adopted a similar policy, we would not have a Jewish Question... As a religion, Islam indeed performed an eternal service to the world: it prevented the threatened conquest of Arabia by the Jews and vanquished the horrible teaching of Jehovah by a pure religion, which at that time opened the way to a higher culture for numerous peoples ...”
WHEN YOU CONSIDER HOW MANY ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALISTS DENY THE HOLOCAUST OF WORLD WAR II — AND THEN YOU DISCOVER THEIR CONNECTION WITH SURVIVING REMNANTS OF THE NAZI PARTY — IT BEGINS TO MAKE SENSE.
THIS IS FOUNDATIONAL PHILOSOPHY FOR ISLAMIC SCHOLARS AND SECULARISTS THROUGHOUT EGYPT — AND THE MIDDLE EAST.
This is partly what drives the people of Gaza — and by extension, what impacts Israelis (regardless of their religion) who directly experience the very bad luck of having Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis, Lebanon, Egypt, and a bit further afield, Iran as neighbors.
This level of hate — which led to the torture, enslavement, and murder of over six million Jews during WWII — is now codified into Egyptian law, history and culture — branded upon the minds of all Egyptian generations alive today.
Ask yourself:
“Does this deeply rooted anti-Semitic narrative and core philosophy shed light on my views of how Israelis view the reality of their situation, and does it suggest a few reasons for why they have committed themselves to the elimination of Hamas?”
I also recommend this video. It’s shorter than a minute long, and it will help you understand how you are being invited into, drawn into, convinced of, and participating as a pawn of an age-old, repeating, anti-Semitic pattern.
Or read the transcript:
“Antisemitism is not simply hating the Jew as other. Antisemitism works a little bit differently. What antisemitism does is turn the Jews, the Jew, into the SYMBOL of whatever it is that the given civilization defines as it's most loathsome qualities. " Yes, I wrote about it many times. From psychological point of view: That's what narcissistic abusers do, they turn the victim into symbol of the most loathsome qualities. And that allows the abuser to deflect. The abuser can do the most cruel atrocities to the victim, while staying in denial about himself and what he is doing. Because in his twisted mind, the victim is guilty of everything and therefore deserves it. That's what the most despicable regimes are doing to the Jews, for thousands of years. And that's what they are doing now, using the state of Israel as "The Jew", the same old symbol.”
Dear College Students & others who are leaping onto the Pro-Palestinian Narrative bandwagon with very little independent thought or self-education on the topic:
It would be best to understand right now how anti-Semitism works, so that you don’t regret for the rest of your life, falling into that black pit, and becoming a proponent of something you actually don’t want to promote and are being tricked into doing so.
Answers from above…
(1) There are 15.7 Million Jews on Earth (about half live in Israel)
(2) There are more than 2 Billion Muslims on Earth.
World Population Review is a great website, super objective, with an interactive map and plenty of data. Enjoy!