Mein Kampf sales soar in Turkey

[emad]

Helena Smith in Athens
Tuesday March 29, 2005
The Guardian

Mein Kampf, the book Hitler wrote in prison before he rose to power in 1933, has become a bestseller in Turkey, provoking consternation.
The dreams of creating a master race are being snapped up by young Turks. Its publishers believe that more than 100,000 copies have been sold in the past two months.

Its sudden appeal has alarmed Turkey's Jewish community and is causing concern in the EU. A German diplomat said its success "might not give the right signals" to Europeans in advance of Turkey's opening accession talks in October.

"Obviously we're very concerned," Ivo Molinas, one of Turkey's 25,000 Jews, said in Istanbul. "This is a democratic country and the book can't be banned, but it would be good if the Turkish government openly said they don't like it being sold. Unfortunately, there has been no such approach."

Although Jews have been assured by booksellers and the publishers that their motives are "purely commercial and not ideological", Jewish officials say the book's popularity has coincided with a wave of anti-semitic articles in the press.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/turkey/story/0,12700,1447209,00.html

[ElectricIron Sweeney]

1. Israel

is our model for our current stand in the world: that is, that the best defense is not many friends; but the best defense is universal hate and fear of reprisals out of all proportion to need or reason. Israel reminds us that the difference between an elite and a minority is which way the guns are pointed. Israel is teaching the world that Jewish philosophy, religion, and society is incompatible with Islam, and not because it is inferior. Judaism builds a superior person, and an organized society which, with the help of modern western law no society can resist. If people ever find it necessary to rise up and rub this people and state out of existence, it will not be because they are personally of physically inferior. Rather, it will be as the Nazis did it, out of the deepest fear and hatred for them in their superiority.

[Malva Zebrina]

3. I am not sure I would hang the label of Nazi yet on the Turks

and I am not sure that the rhetoric , in effect, "they hate us for our freedoms" is appropos, but I do understand your fears.

There is a lot of fear being stirred up all over like never seen before, and we can thank an insane megalomaniac man, George Bush, for it.

[Malva Zebrina]

2. Yes, it is a democracy

and like in this most visible democracy that often touts itself as the greatest, Mein Kampf is sold and is on shelves in libraries and that is how a democracy works. So is the Communist Manifesto. Tim LeHaye books are sold by the millions, and books are also allowed to be written and published that are pro-Palestinian, or Pro-Israel. We have not banished their authors (yet) and only the more rabid fanatics see fit to burn them or keep them out of libraries.