It should be possible to ungive the Noble Prize

[loinburger]

I am sorry to keep posting, but to me it feels like Ben is a Nazi apologist.

I don't think there's any question about it - he said that South Africa's golden age was prior to the dissolution of apartheid

[regexcellent]

There wasn't mass murder of white south africans.

Just that part of the legacy is amazing.

I can't see how anyone can judge him as 'bad'. You can say 'I wish he was perfect', but 'bad'? is sick.

JM

I don't think Mandela was bad. I'm disappointed things didn't turn out better, for sure.

[kentonio]

I am sorry to keep posting, but to me it feels like Ben is a Nazi apologist.

The racist religious fanatic is a nazi apologist? Who would have thought it..

[Sava]

The racist religious fanatic is a nazi apologist? Who would have thought it..

Any ardent supporter of the Catholic church is by definition a nazi apologist. It's not as if they spoke out against the holocaust.

[Jon Miller]

Parts of the catholic church acted against it.

I don't agree with that position (that it is a terrible thing the catholic church was part of).

Maybe they could have done more, but the US/Britain/etc all could definitely have done more too.

JM

[DinoDoc]

Any ardent supporter of the Catholic church is by definition a nazi apologist. It's not as if they spoke out against the holocaust.

Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign for suppressing truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly. - Albert Einstein 1940

They did.

[Fake Boris]

The Holocaust hadn't begun in 1940.

[Sava]

Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign for suppressing truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly. - Albert Einstein 1940

They did.

Didn't you once post a quote from Churchill directed at me that said something like 'only morons believe in quotes'? (and I'm paraphrasing)

[giblets]

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Einstein#Misattributed

Being a lover of freedom, when the revolution came in Germany, I looked to the universities to defend it, knowing that they had always boasted of their devotion to the cause of truth; but, no, the universities immediately were silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers whose flaming editorials in days gone by had proclaimed their love of freedom; but they, like the universities, were silenced in a few short weeks. Then I looked to individual writers who, as literary guides of Germany, had written much and often concerning the place of freedom in modern life; but they, too, were mute.

Only the church stood squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign for suppressing truth. I never had any special interest in the church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly.

Attributed in “The Conflict Between Church And State In The Third Reich”, by S. Parkes Cadman, La Crosse Tribune and Leader-Press (28 October 1934)[4]. The quote is preceded by “In this connection it is worth quoting in free translation a statement made by Professor Einstein last year to one of my colleagues who has been prominently identified with the Protestant church in its contacts with Germany.” [Emphasis added.] While based on something that Einstein said, Einstein himself stated that the quote was not an accurate record of his words or opinion. After the quote appeared in Time magazine, (23 December 1940), p. 38, a minister in Harbor Springs, Michigan wrote to Einstein to check if the quote was real. Einstein wrote back “It is true that I made a statement which corresponds approximately with the text you quoted. I made this statement during the first years of the Nazi-Regime — much earlier than 1940 — and my expressions were a little more moderate.” (March 1943) [5]
In a later letter to Rev. Cornelius Greenway of Brooklyn, who asked if Einstein would write out the statement in his own hand, Einstein was more vehement in his repudiation of the statement (14 November 1950) [6]:

The wording of the statement you have quoted is not my own. Shortly after Hitler came to power in Germany I had an oral conversation with a newspaper man about these matters. Since then my remarks have been elaborated and exaggerated nearly beyond recognition. I cannot in good conscience write down the statement you sent me as my own.

The matter is all the more embarrassing to me because I, like yourself, I am predominantly critical concerning the activities, and especially the political activities, through history of the official clergy. Thus, my former statement, even if reduced to my actual words (which I do not remember in detail) gives a wrong impression of my general attitude.

In his original statement Einstein was probably referring to the actions of the Emergency Covenant of Pastors organized by Martin Niemöller, and the Confessing Church which he and other prominent churchmen such as Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer established in opposition to Nazi policies.

LOL

[DinoDoc]

Didn't you once post a quote from Churchill directed at me that said something like 'only morons believe in quotes'? (and I'm paraphrasing)

You still seem to be wrong about the Church not speaking out against the Nazis.

[kentonio]

The church at different times criticized, collaborated, castigated and supported the Nazi regime. It isn't fair to call the church as a whole Nazi apologists, because there were some unbelievably brave priests and other church figures who risked (and often lost) their lives opposing the regime, but there were plenty of others that sold their souls.

When I mentioned Ben being a religious fanatic the emphasis was firmly on the word fanatic.

[Sava]

You still seem to be wrong about the Church not speaking out against the Nazis.

My only "error" would be in thinking of "the Church" as a monolithic entity.

I got you to bite, so my original statement is a success.

[molly bloom]

I am sorry to keep posting, but to me it feels like Ben is a Nazi apologist.

I don't think you're far wrong. Some of South Africa's leading politicians up to and including the most repressive years of apartheid were detained during WWII because of their treasonous links with the Nazi regime and with Nazi sympathizers in South West Africa.

Don't forget, Ben joined the Catholic Church of his own choice:

The fact that the Curia is now making its peace with Fascism shows that the Vatican trusts the new political realities far more than did the former liberal democracy with which it could not come to terms.

By trying to preach that democracy is still in the best interests of German Catholics the Centre Party ... is placing itself in stark contradiction to the spirit of the treaty signed today by the Holy See.

Volkischer Beobachter, 1929 on the signing of the Lateran Treaty

Poor Ben- moist at the gusset at the thought of those balmy days of Church & Fascist cooperation, all he can do now is get teary eyed at the golden age of Pass Laws, political repression, murder, assassination and deliberate underdevelopment of black South Africans.

[molly bloom]

And I actually don't know anything about Mandela.

Fixed for accuracy's sake.

[regexcellent]

there were some unbelievably brave priests and other church figures who risked (and often lost) their lives opposing the regime

Notably, Pope John Paul II