I've come across Michael Savage's radio show a few times now and then. Basically I dismissed him as being even more obnoxious as Ann Coulter and not nearly as intelligent. I hadn't known he was an anti-Semite as well, but check out this quote from his radio show the other day referring to George Soros:
Hey George, let me tell you something, I don't have as much money as you. I have 50,000 times the influence that you do, you punk, lying, coward, Satanist, backstabbing freak. You're the people -- people like you give Jews a bad name, Soros. It's people like you who brought about the Holocaust, Soros. I stand by those words. I stand by those words. I would debate you tomorrow, Soros, on any platform, anywhere. I'll debate you anywhere. It's people like you who brought about the Holocaust, Soros.
Lovely.
At least Savage acknowledges that the Holocaust happened. On the other hand, he seems to be coming awfully close to saying that the Jews deserved the Holocaust, or at least "evil" Jews like George Soros (evil to Savage, anyway) did. Indeed, the imagery of "backstabbing" Jews echoes the Nazi propaganda that Germany lost World War I because it was "stabbed in the back" by Jews and Bolsheviks. As Sergey over at Holocaust Controversies put it:
Apparently, he [Savage] is crazy (literally). Basically, he blames "bad" Jews for the Holocaust. How nice. So maybe one should let the Nazis off the hook, if it were Jews like Soros who were responsible for the Holocaust?
I have to disagree with one point here. I don't think that Michael Savage is any more "crazy" than Ann Coulter. I suspect that he knows exactly what he is doing. Still, certainly one has to wonder if that's what Savage really means (that if "bad" Jews provoked the Nazis, then maybe the Nazis weren't so bad), whether he realizes it on a conscious level or not. Certainly he leaves the impression that that's what he might believe.
Savage is a Jew himself. That needs to be taken into account in your discussion.
I doubt that Savage actually thinks the Holocaust was brought on by bad Jews or rich Jews. He has spoken often enough of the scapegoat attitude which brought it about.
I think he and Coulter both are engaging in extreme rhetoric to make a point. Sometimes I think the points would be better made without such extremism. But it is their extremism which gets their message out. For example, this post and the myriad I have read over the last few days about Godless.
Assuming that's true, that makes Savage's remarks even worse in my book.
Michael Savage's real name is Michael Weiner. Savage is his nom de flame. His education is in nutrition and epidemiology. Under his real name he's written books on nutrition and homeopathy (so you know he must be a real scientist). Now he devotes himself to screaming on the radio and spreading bile in the pages of his books.
...is there anyone who Michael Savage /doesn't/ hate? Well, okay, anyone who skews even slightly liberal.
What do you call a self-hating jew?
Whatever he is, I felt a distinct discomfort close to nausea when I read the quote.
Soros is not much better. Like many Hungarian Jews, he took a fake name to avoid being sent to the death camps-understandable. He also worked for the Nazis, helping to confiscate property from other Jews.
Savage? Isn't he the wank that thinks that coffee enemas cure everything?
ANd Ruth, do you care to provide anything resembling evidence to back up that slander?
*crickets*
I'm certainly no fan of Soros, but, given that Soros was only 13 when the Nazis took over Hungary, I find your charge very hard to believe. You wouldn't happen to have any verifiable documentation of that charge, would you?
I have no problem with the fact Tivard Soros purchased idenity papers for his family, and that George Soros became Sandor Kiss in 1944-Jews were being deported to death camps and hiding a Jewish identity was necessary to survive. The family he lived with were low-level government officials who were in charge of auctioning off Jewish property. Again, I have no problem with that-to have protested would have aroused suspicion. In a TV interview I saw, George Soros reflected on that time as a happy one. If he has stated elsewhere that he was sorry to have played even an involuntary role in the losses of other Hungarian Jews, then I am sorry for the insult. Michael Kaufman's biography mentions that the Soros family took vacations in Nazi Germany in the 1930's:
'Soros grew up in a family that was so detached from its Jewish roots that they even vacationed in Nazi Germany, with Tivadar shrugging off "No Jews Allowed" signs by telling his wife, "You are a foreigner, it's not for you."
George Soros has no problem crashing the Indonsian currency for his own gain, but then lectures everyone else on the evils of capitalism-that hypocrisy galls me.
In a TV interview I saw, George Soros reflected on that time as a happy one. If he has stated elsewhere that he was sorry to have played even an involuntary role in the losses of other Hungarian Jews, then I am sorry for the insult.
Why do you expect such apologies from Soros, and not from thousands of people in Europe who took over Jewish property during and after the war? That is hypocrisy. Just because Soros is of Jewish descent, why should he apologize for the things other people do not have to?. And that when he was a teenager! Just as absurd as expecting Joseph Ratzinger to apologize for being drafted into Wehrmacht as a teenager.
Although Savage's comments are in fact ridiculous (it was not "people like" Soros who gave Jews a bad name to Hitler), they need not be interpreted as absolving the Nazis. Savage might be saying that it was "bad" Jews who gave the Jews as a people a bad name which in turn provoked the Holocaust. This is not necessarily at odds with the fact that the perpetrators of the Holocaust were evil and antisemitic. So while Savage's comments may indeed be crazy and are certainly antisemitic in some measure, I would not go so far as they indicate that he sympathizes with the Nazis or in any way condones the Holocaust.
I direct your attention to the following articles: http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1148 and http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=375. I have all the audio clips on which these articles are based. I would happy to e-mail them to anyone in case you wish to corroborate them and their context. For background on Savage: http://www.tampabaycoalition.com/files/720ManBehindSavageNation.htm(Savage called a "Jew hater" by one who knew him).
Here's a gem:
"Now, let's go a step further. I have a bill in my hand; a one dollar bill. It says "In God We Trust." That's next from the verminous Brooklyn College lawyers, isn't it? Go down South and have a 'tee-hee' over the goyim. Laugh at the goyim. Go down there and take away the crosses and they can't touch you, huh, Mr. Cohen? Hee-hee-hee. Mr. Cohen? And you wonder where anti-Semitism comes from. Let me strip the mask off of it for you today because if you think I'm going to mince words, you are mistaken. It comes from situations like this- when you have a New York Jew like Cohen going down South into the heartland of Christianity and stealing the religious symbols from Christians. You are not going to hear it anywhere else. It's so shocking, you don't even believe you just heard it. No one in the media has the guts to say what needs to be said. They're all going to make this a dancing on the head of the pin argument. They're all going to make it a little legal argument, and go onto to the next thing and sell you a piece of garbage on their television or radio show, but let me tell you something, there's a lot more at stake than a radio show. The future of this nation is at stake today. And I am not going to sit on the sidelines and have a little gentlemanly conversation. I said it like it is." (11-13-2003 Savage Nation Radio Broadcast)
On Liberal Jews (my emphasis):
"I certainly don't underestimate the Red Diaper Doper Baby, either. The Red Diaper Doper Baby- although pot-ed out, although deviant- is very, very smart with more power than you can imagine. They run every image in this country. Every image that comes out of Hollywood, Red Diaper Doper Baby driven. Every image that comes out of a New York newsroom, Red Diaper Doper Baby written. Every last one of them, Red Diaper Doper Baby, pull the switches on the images and the words that come out of Hollywood and New York. Don't for one minute think otherwise." (6-11-2003 Savage Nation Radio Broadcast)
"....Red Diaper Doper Baby lawyers that are suing over at Yale to kick-off those mean military recruiters. Get one of those foaming-mouthed, coke-glassed, CURLY-HAIRED DEVILS OUT OF NEW YORK CITY. Get one of those boys from NYU steeped in the hate America philosophy...." (11-3-2003 Savage Nation Radio Broadcast)
"there's a big difference here between a liberal like the one I am talking about and a radical, like the ACLU Mark Rosen-bum. Those have malice. The really dangerous ones are the ones with malice toward the white Christian male. The liberal does not have malice toward the White Christian male. Most of them are white Christian males. The ones that have real malice toward white Christian males are the mad-dog, foaming-mouth, Red Diaper Doper Baby. Usually they went to Columbia or NYU in my experience...." (9-17-2003 Savage Nation Radio Broadcast)
"When are you liberals going to wake up to the fact that a knife is at your throat, and you are going to still believe these Leftists who are screaming about civil rights: 'It sounds problematic to me,' said ACLU attorney Mark Nobody-BERG. 'If there is evidence to involve any of these 50 people in a crime, they should be targeted for investigation, but if people are being placed on a list because of something they have done in the past or someone they have associated with, an officer looking for a pretextual reason to stop them, that strikes me as wrong.' I think you ought to put Mark Nothing-BERG in prison pre-emptively." (12-12-2002 Savage Nation Radio Broadcast)(other examples of Savage's appending "berg" to a Jewish broadcaster's name in order to underscore their Jewishness include NPR's "Terry Gross-BERG" (1-10-2004) and CNN's "Wolf Blitz-BERG" )(See also http://mediamatters.org/items/200405200003 in which Savage baits media pundit David Brock as "Brock-STEIN")
"And so when you see the Red Diaper Doper Baby lawyers lining up to apologize for them, and you see the Red Diaper Doper Babies lining up to defend them, you understand that we have internal enemies in this country that must be SORTED OUT, SEPERATED and CONTROLLED before we are all dead. And yes the time will come. I'll make that prediction. You may not believe but the time will come that because of our need for self-preservation, we are going to stop the Red Diaper Doper Babies from killing us before we all die." (10-25-2002 Savage Nation Radio Broadcast)
"[P]eople who know me, know that this is the real me. I don't pretend to be angry, and then when I turn off the radio I suddenly go out and have a drink with a Red Diaper Doper Baby. Believe me, if it were up to me, I would deport them." (9-12-2003 Savage Nation Radio Broadcast).