The other "N-" word.
Heard a brief interview today (Tuesday, 18 January) with Fritz Stern, professor emeritus at Columbia University, on the mid-day news programme Here & Now on WBUR-FM, a National Public Radio station in Boston; he startled the audience at the Leo Baeck Institute in New York with the speech he gave upon accepting the Leo Baeck Medal for promoting ties between Germans and Jews, because he "seemed" to see parallels between the increased presence of religion in U.S. politics and the role that religion played in the rise of Nazism in Germany.
Here & Now's host Robin Young was unable to pin Prof. Stern down on whether he was actually comparing the current political climate in the U.S. to that of the Weimar Republic before the Nazis came to power in Germany:
ROBIN YOUNG: "In your speech, you spoke of how Germany was seduced by Nazism, and many people thought you were making an analogy to America today. Were you?"
FRITZ STERN: "I've...deliberately leaving that to the audience."
About a minute later, Prof. Stern said the following:
"Insofar as there are similarities [between the political climate in Germany before the Nazis came to power and in the U.S. today] at all, there are similarities in tactics, in occasional tactics, in the close attempt to suggest an alliance between religion and politics. I think one of lessons of what happened in Germany is, is that democracies are fragile, and I don't believe for one second that what happened in Germany is going to repeat itself here. But, that one has to be aware of danger to American democracy."
I'm not sure when this awards dinner was held (The New York Times had a piece on Prof. Stern's speech in its Thursday, 6 January 2005 edition, but you have to pay to access the full article at this late date); but the Leo Baeck Institute has his speech, as well as the presentation speech of Germany's foreign minister Joschka Fischer, posted on its site.
Here & Now's host Robin Young was unable to pin Prof. Stern down on whether he was actually comparing the current political climate in the U.S. to that of the Weimar Republic before the Nazis came to power in Germany:
ROBIN YOUNG: "In your speech, you spoke of how Germany was seduced by Nazism, and many people thought you were making an analogy to America today. Were you?"
FRITZ STERN: "I've...deliberately leaving that to the audience."
About a minute later, Prof. Stern said the following:
"Insofar as there are similarities [between the political climate in Germany before the Nazis came to power and in the U.S. today] at all, there are similarities in tactics, in occasional tactics, in the close attempt to suggest an alliance between religion and politics. I think one of lessons of what happened in Germany is, is that democracies are fragile, and I don't believe for one second that what happened in Germany is going to repeat itself here. But, that one has to be aware of danger to American democracy."
I'm not sure when this awards dinner was held (The New York Times had a piece on Prof. Stern's speech in its Thursday, 6 January 2005 edition, but you have to pay to access the full article at this late date); but the Leo Baeck Institute has his speech, as well as the presentation speech of Germany's foreign minister Joschka Fischer, posted on its site.