The Backlash of Secondary Anti-Semitism
In a German study, the notion of ongoing Holocaust-related suffering among Jews apparently increased feelings of anti-Semitism.
By: Tom Jacobs | October 26, 2009 | 09:15 AM (PDT) | 
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Members of aggrieved ethnic groups regularly organize rituals aimed at reminding the world of the injustices their people have suffered. Remembrances of the Holocaust, the Armenian genocide and other massive tragedies serve as eloquent proclamations that the pain persists, as the wounds of the past have yet to heal.
But what if these reminders simply breed more prejudice?
That’s the suspicion of some social psychologists, who have studied the “blame the victim” mentality familiar to so many people who have suffered individual tragedies. According to one well-founded theory, exposure to suffering makes it challenging to sustain the comforting belief we live in a fundamentally just world. Thus the sight of a homeless person produces feelings of irritation rather than empathy.
This distressing dynamic also occurs on a group level, producing the phenomenon known as secondary anti-Semitism. That’s the conclusion of a provocative new paper by Roland Imhoff and Rainer Banse of the University of Bonn’s Department of Social and Legal Psychology.
Their research, just published in the journal Psychological Science, suggests each reminder of the atrocities of World War II “evokes aversive feelings of guilt and thus increases a defensive anti-Semitism” among Germans. This type of backlash has long been suspected, but Imhoff and Banse are the first to provide empirical evidence of its existence.
The researchers gathered 62 first-year psychology students from their university and assessed their levels of implicit and explicit anti-Semitism. Among other techniques, they asked the participants to fill out a 29-item questionnaire in which they responded to such statements as “Jews have too much influence on public opinion.”
Three months later, the students gathered again for a formal testing session. To begin, they read a text about German atrocities inflicted on Jews at the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Half read a version that concluded the tragedy “has no direct implications for Jews today,” while the others read an alternate version that stated “even today, Jews suffer because of secondary traumatization.” They were then instructed to again fill out the same questionnaire they completed three months earlier.
Half of the participants had electrodes attached to their ring and middle fingers, which they were told were attached to a lie detector. According to the researchers, the belief their honest feelings would emerge provided a strong incentive to tell the truth, even if their gut responses were socially unacceptable.
Among those who didn’t wear the devices — and presumably felt freer to fib — the description of ongoing suffering among Jews decreased anti-Semitic attitudes. The socially correct response of increased empathy for the victim prevailed. But among those wearing the “lie detectors,” the reminder of ongoing suffering significantly increased anti-Semitic attitudes.
Intriguingly, among those who read about ongoing suffering, 40 percent said afterwards they did not recall that specific piece of information. This finding “is in line with the notion that forgetting is an alternative coping mechanism,” the researchers write.
“Our results have important implications for the choice of strategies to overcome prejudice and discrimination,” Imhoff and Banse conclude. “Although it may appear logical to emphasize victim suffering, our findings caution against such an approach. The data suggests it may be counterproductive in many settings.”
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When we were young, before the Left took over our culture and cleansed it, we were taught about injustices in history. We were not blamed for that history for we were not adults or even alive back then to have commited the offense nor were the children in the classroom alive back they to have been victimized. The Left came in and decided to blame groups of people by race for things they never did and to claim people by race are victims of things they never suffered. It is all based on a false sense of justice and a lie and so it has done more to divide the nation that heal the nation. But radicals do best when everyone is divided and pointing fingers at each other so I guess it serves it's purpose.
WHY I THINK THE HOLOCAUST IS A HOAXThe holocaust has been called by some the best documented crime in human history but if that's the case, one should reasonably expect some documentation of gas chambers. With all the allied soldiers passing through the liberated camps, not a single soldier got a single photo of any gas chamber. No Nuremberg Trial investigator did either. To this day, no documentation exists that gas chambers ever existed at any camp. Modern forensic testing techniques could confirm the existence of gas chambers but they are forbidden. Simple arithmetic shows that using the most sophisticated, state-of-the-art cremation ovens available today (http://www.matthewscremation.com/products/humanCremationEquipment.asp), it would have taken at least 250 modern ovens impossibly operating 24/7 to incinerate only half the alleged six million in the time allotted for the holocaust(<1000 days). Cremation ovens are some nearly indestructible things; made of heavy iron and refractory brick, one could be hit with a 1000lb. bomb and still be recognizable. No documentation or count of ovens was ever performed by any Nuremberg Trial investigation. Lice insecticide, Zyklon B, is still manufactured as Uragan D2 in the Czech Republic in the Draslovka Kolín factory and has been proven ineffective as an agent of mass murder. It's heat activated and would take many hours to produce any lethal concentration of cyanide. (Even under very controlled conditions, it's very difficult to kill someone using gaseous cyanide as California learned during its last disaster of a San Quentin gas chamber execution.) Cans of Zyklon B were found in liberated internment camps because lice and the resulting typhus disease were killing many internees and efforts were made to eradicate the insects. We had DDT for our Japanese-American concentration camps; the Germans used Zyklon B. (Had we lost that war, propaganda might have said we mass murdered Japanese using DDT gas.) TRUTH fears no trial. TRUTH fears no question. The easiest way to know the holocaust is a hoax is to recognize that Germany, Austria and other nations have erected outrageous laws prohibiting the questioning or investigation of the holocaust. Scholar historians and chemical engineer thought criminals are currently imprisoned for questioning the holocaust. (You can question God, Christ, Mohammad or Moses but Thou Shalt Not Question the Holocaust.) TRUTH does not need the protection of laws. TRUTH can stand on its own. Only lies need the protection of laws. The holocaust is a lie. Today’s holocaust cottage industry was jump-started with the 1978 Skokie, Illinois march absurdly led by an alleged neo-Nazis who was a Jew, Frank Cohen, alias Frank Collin who was eventually imprisoned for molesting children and is now operating a new scam concerning Egyptian gold found in a Wisconsin cave. (I couldn't make this stuff up!) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Collin Zionist-controlled mainstream media with tight control of information is assisting in the formation of a new taxpayer-financed faith-based holocaust religion whose foundation, like most religions, is mainly myth. If you've got the guts, watch the video at http://www.holocaustdenialvideos.com/ This website has some good information on it also, http://www.judicial-inc.org/ The TRUTH shall set ye free, but first IT shall make ye extremely miserable.
Neil take that cock out of your mouth before you speak.
Written By:Tom Jacobs
Tom Jacobs is a veteran journalist with more than 20 years experience at daily newspapers. He has served as a staff writer for The Los Angeles Daily News and the Santa Barbara News-Press. His work has also appeared in The Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and Ventura County Star.
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