One of my better lectures used to “explain” Hitler’s success by putting the name of his party as a programmatic slogan under the microscope. Being young, I regarded the label as genial. However, due to the crash in total defeat, the trick appeared to be a spent PR stunt. Innocently, I also thought that getting away with the miracle cure was an indicator of German naiveté. It could only work in a crisis following upon a stable authoritarian system that got subjected to pastel-toned partial recall. The craving for security and for protection by a leader assuming “responsibility” preconditioned contemporaries to lick up the concoction spilled into their trough as though it was spilled milk and they were cats. Before we get to the present, you want to know about the ingredients of the potion that sold like bananas in a chimp-cage.

In a manipulation of words to blind the already shortsighted, the Party claimed to be “National” and “German”. It also pretended to be a “Workers” and “Socialist” organization. Why was this sooo good? Because all prejudices, especially the contradictory ones, were stroked. For some the “National” and “German” had a bad connotation given the imperial “old régime” defaced by defeat. For others, anything reeking of “socialism” and “workers” carried the stench of treason causing the rout of 1918. It all had to do with defeat, humiliation, and the association of the reparations-guzzling Western enemy and the Red terror in the East. The pasted-together name, the insinuation of what one was not and the silence about essentials helped to unite the grumblers of the fringes. Groups that loathed each other drifted to the Nazis in response to the crisis to unite in a single movement. The consequences became “history.” More than once, it seems now! Chavez, combining nationalism, socialism, envy, the hope for something for nothing, the foreigners and a lurking enemy inside, plus a siege mentality, is a good example. The ailment has metastases in the Third World and most significantly in Eastern Europe.

The illusion that, the tricks of Nazis and Communists cannot be repeated because people “remember” old plots, is lost. A lesson to be learned: Once again, we have a logical assumption and a great theory that fails in practice.

Fact-denying and reality-obscuring tags can do more than to hide snake medicine in opaque bottles. The brew becomes popular, as it soothingly appears to be something it is not. Old tricks, to exploit the uninformed that suffer from “memorial atrophy,” are used unabashedly. For one thing, the spoiled goods sell thanks to an amnesia that thrives on the ignorance of what would be known if only schools would transmit knowledge instead of disbursing “feel good about yourself”. Among the educated with access to information, popular distortions are covered up by those that wish to escape the obligation to resist even when it is hard to overlook (as in the case of Islamists) the challenge to reason and security. It is fitting to refer here to a scandal involving UN funds given to North Korea’s needy and used for years to support her “Dear Leader’s” lust for luxury. Mainly those of us are cheated that wish to be duped so as to avoid taking a stand for whatever we profess to stand for. A Foreign Minister whose country makes Holocaust denial a crime has suggested to Tehran a program about the different perceptions of the Holocaust. Facilitated self-swindle is a welcome cop-out that can make you feel better in a delusion that allows us to follow the path created by another herd. Stand-up comics are chased off the stage for using expired jokes. Political propagandists can prosper even if they colport old recipes guaranteed to function when it comes to failing those applying them.

The emasculation of the meaning of concepts is thriving in democracies as well as in dictatorships. In the former distorted terms, serve self-censorship and a welcome auto-paralysis. In the instance of dictatorships – pardon my slip – they tag themselves “democratic…” or “peoples…” – such labels serve as camouflage divorced from content. Naturally, if you question the name you are, according to another misuse of terms, “angering them” and “provoking hardliners”. Much of our problem is that the reversed concepts of newspeak enjoy a bull market. Those who nevertheless cry out that the emperor has no clothes are making them “lose face” which fuels intransigence thereby undermining “stability” and “peace”.

“Tolerance” has become one of our new buzzwords that matches “peace.” As again proven in Rostock (G8 conference), nothing is more violent than the tantrums of the “fighters for peace”. Actually, “tolerance” and this form of “peace” interrelate in the praxis. Those who, relying on experience, prepare for the violence are “intolerant”. They are guilty of stifling protest instead of seeking a “dialogue”. Therefore, it is in the defense of peace and freedom (can you recall the slogan?) that the venue is chopped into minced meat. Thereafter, by custom, the organizers of the “peaceful protest” will claim that the radicals, the black-clad masked figures had joined them unnoticed during the action’s initial non-violent phase. Once blocked – when trying to penetrate disapproved assemblies – they were incited by the presence of the police and the restrictions of their freedoms. Astonishingly, at that juncture the radicals – in Rostock their name was “Attak” – were prepared for the “provocation” and made good use of the “sticks and stones” they happened to carry. A ritual spin concludes such events. Like the “amen” that ends the sermon, the “moderate” spokesmen of the “movement” decline responsibility for the unexpected violence that came about through an “escalation”. The destruction – it will be emphasized that mainly things and hardly any people except cops were hurt – is credited to the lack of tolerance of the police. More “tolerance” for upset folks and “trust” could have diffused a “complex” situation. Those who gathered the mass and provided its slogans will claim not being responsible for a few kids that stepped out of bounds. The “tragic occurrences” are, however, full of “lessons” to be learned while the serial demo continues in the evening following the morning after.

In this context, “tolerance” attains a new meaning. Those qualifying to wear its halo would have surrendered to the congregation of the virtuous their own right to gather safely. Thus, self-defense is re-defined to make those practicing it guilty of intolerance. Added to the charge is the exhibited “lack of understanding” for the “frustrations” of groups that “passionately” feel that their conviction deputizes them to save mankind from its enemies.

Another context in which “tolerance” is applied as a club pertains to the response to the Islamist agenda. The problematic comportment has numerous components. These begin with the imposition of Islamic petty ways on the hosting majority. Such as the wearing of head-scarves where indigenous religious symbols are judged to be inappropriate. Or they demand that ID pictures be taken wearing the burka. Complementary are demands that whatever is allegedly insulting their sense of propriety be avoided even if it part of the natives’ accustomed way of life. Forget Christmas and the Three Little Pigs!

Second, immunity from regulations is demanded. At the low end of the scale, range matters such that children are exempt from certain school activities. More serious is the escalation to where, in the case of crimes by the law of the land, the impostor’s Islamic identity is used as a defense. There is a case in which wife beating – normally punished thanks to women’s righters – was excused in court. The religion of the household tyrant made such trashing expectable. As in the case of forced marriage, marriage by proxy (an intended consequence circumvents immigration laws) and female circumcision has yet to provoke fully fire from the “sisterhood”. The under-reaction to the slow spread of polygamy and “honor killings” – downgraded as it is “their way” – signal the erosion of the supremacy of national law. The likely explanation of the cave-in: values, such as being “multi-cultural“ and “respecting” foreign ways and “tolerance”, collide with the traditional conception of liberty that is made to retreat into the natives’ reservation.

Equally revealing is the silence of political parties that like to make a big issue out of small matters. One suspects that the sudden flexibility has causes that go beyond the clashing of competing principles. It might be that Islamist evildoers do not submit to verbal chiding; these parties like to be heroic retroactively and in the present they seek meek enemies. Furthermore, they tend to demand the vote for aliens and easy citizenship too. Are they aware that overlooking transgressions is a favor to grateful future voters? This sheds light on Germany’s problem with the quasi-sovereign state within the state of increasingly fundamentalist Turks.

Tolerance is an ethical imperative that, in this case, commands us to practice a humanistic policy toward the persecuted. However, its practice raises the question where the boundary of this obligation is. Freedom has its limits. So does tolerance when it is used to accept violations of the social consensus by those who are, as a principle, intolerant. Such a tolerance may mask cowardice or its consequence can endanger the way of life of a tolerant society. Such misapplied tolerance that excuses everything jeopardizes the body politic. The ability to practice tolerance and to harbor the persecuted is an expression of the host’s political-military strength, his economic success and reflects a developed ethical standard. If tolerance is allowed to be used to subvert this order by folks who were not tricked into settling, then suicide is being committed. In case that those who seek entry to gain protection and then claim to hate and to despise the host then, this tyrannical minority needs to be told to draw the consequences. Such as removing itself to the shelter of communities that conform to its norms. Not defending oneself in order to thereby protect elements that are by principle hostile to their benefactor is not an obligation nor is it wise. The end of misapplied leniency is, at least by the intent of the ungrateful, ruinous. Communities declining due to decay caused by permitting the impermissible will ultimately discover that they themselves are in need. At that stage, they will assuredly not be able to extend their helping hand to those who truly deserve shelter.