Cultural Larceny
IF YOU ARE READING this, hello! You may call me Art Thief.
Normally I prefer a more formal mode of writing, however as this is an introduction I feel a friendlier, more personal tone in the first person voice is apropos.
I have been offering commentary on various National Vanguard articles for several years now, very shortly after I stumbled across the site some time around the election of Donald Trump. It was on one of my first comments (if not my very first) that I began using this nom de guerre, Art Thief. It was here, on an article regarding the confiscation of fine art works from the Jews during the National Socialist period in Germany in the latter 1930s.
I would like to take a moment to truly expound upon and explain that comment and lay to bed some myths, misconceptions, and general perfidy contained in the accusation that “the Nazis stole art from the Jews.” That accusation cannot be held to be true by any internally consistent moral code espoused by those who have leveled it. The article linked above focuses solely upon that hypocrisy, ceding the moral ground of the accusation of theft, by focusing upon the fact that Germany was subsequently plundered by the victorious Allies at the end of that conflict. As I state in my comment, this is a grave error and an unnecessary concession. For those who prefer brevity, my comment should suffice; however, for those that prefer a more rigorous analysis in determining moral rightness, please read on.
The entire argument is of course an odd duck; why on Earth would anyone spare the mental effort and emotional energy in concern with the “theft” of any quantity or quality of art, especially in light of the fact that much if not all of it was subsequently recovered upon Germany’s defeat, given the other far more horrible accusations against the Germans which are generally accepted as true? Does quibbling about a few daubs, or even a host of masterpieces, really matter against a backdrop of supposedly millions of murders?
I have several ideas as to why this myth has not been consigned to the memory hole, with Western edutainment happily cranking out reams of lurid “Holocaust” propaganda, but that is a topic for another time. To put it shortly, I believe this is an effort to establish a buttress against the erosion of the Holocaust narrative by ensuring there is a multidimensional emotional programming ensuring that the listener automatically equates “the Nazis” to evil in all forms, and thus to more readily accept a blatantly false and even ludicrous accusation against them, or more quickly reject an otherwise sound and well-presented opinion or belief from them. In short, it is to ensure that even when doubt is created around the Holocaust, the Western mind is still primed with “Nazis bad” — and thus can more easily lay those doubts to rest.
This, in turn, is why I feel it necessary to ensure we do not cede moral advantage on this — or any similar — topic.
The accusation’s particulars are as follows.
According to the hype, the National Socialists stole — the word “confiscated” is never used in this case — art in the form of paintings, sculptures, and architectural pieces from the Jews and other undesirables as they were expelled from Germany and occupied territories. It is usually alleged that they simply stashed these pieces away. No reason is ever given for this; the purpose of the accusation is to prove that “Nazis” are the epitome of evil, so any further explanation other than “evil Nazis” is not needed.
Interestingly, the Jews’ own modern arts carry clues to these questions and their answers, such as the movie Rush Hour; though, they of course do not see the hypocrisy that such exposes. However, this is getting ahead of myself.
The narrative goes on to allege that when the Allies “liberated” conquered Germany, vast troves of this confiscated art (one article insists that over 1,500 paintings were recently recovered from one hold-out alone) were discovered in underground vaults, warehouses, and the private collections of National Socialist officials. We are then told that where possible, this has been returned to those who supposedly were the rightful owners or their heirs — or simply given to the State of Israel.
However, there are some points that should be absolutely clarified. The first is that by and large, these artifacts were not “stolen,” however much one might like to paint the National Socialists with the “bad” brush. The National Socialists were the legitimate national authority in Germany at the time, and their policies were law. This was the confiscation of property under law, no more a “theft” than the imposition of a tax or tariff; the majority of those commenting on these events as a “theft” would never deign to call taxation theft, let alone slavery reparations; indeed, as the original article…
Read more:
https://nationalvanguard.org/2022/03/cultural-larceny/
