U.S. ‘Toy Soldiers’: Blind March of Students On “The House That Hitler Built”

In the dark days leading to the execution of the Führer’s Master Plan, an observer from afar documented it’s far reaching tentacles unto the Middle East. Sir Stephen Henry Roberts, author of The House that Hitler Built.

Germany in the 1930s: “As recent German writers have pointed out, it was not the Nazis who started the idea of making education a field for Kulterwaffen – a clash between rival systems of Kulture: the Communists set the ball rolling, the Hitlerites merely kicked the goal.”

Mes American Misérables, for you, there are no white victims or black criminals. Kill a black man, student protesters will hit the campuses and the streets worldwide for years (George Floyd). Five Black officers hunt and kill a young Black man, protests last less than two months in one School in one State (Tyre Nichols).

If humanitarian causes are what you seek, then either you remain ignorant to a World Map or you choose to overlook Syria, Yemen Afghanistan, Iraq, India, China, Africa and South American continents! But you’re not alone. Big Greta found it easy to go from Green to Gaza. Don’t you miss your ‘green house’ gas?

Amidst campus scandals, sexual assaults, and extremely high student loan debts, where’s the solidarity for your own against Universities?  Hate, Campus Anti-Semitism and Cancel Culture have blinded you acting against your own best interests. Sleeping bags will come in handy when you end up in the streets permanently! Blacklisting is not limited to jobs. Homes and Medicines too can be held out of reach!

Given a front row seat into a rising “The Youth Movement” in Germany, Roberts described how youth was targeted. Idea of a “A Common Mentality” in “Culture, The Press, and Education.”

Liken to Roberts, I too had a front row seat. Student Protesters at U.S. Universities resemble members of Hitler Youth performing the Nazi salute, albeit to a different kind of terrorist. I witnessed students (non-Arab) taking pleasure in online videos of Palestinian children taught hatred of Jewish People and Israel.

Indoctrination by teachers in classrooms, protesting, and calling on Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) of Israel stem from their own feelings of inadequacies-Race, Gender and Nationality.   

In my February 1, 2020 publication, U.S. ‘Toy Soldiers’: My Brothers and Sisters, Who Are Your Keepers?, I share my experiencesattending undergrad and grad school during the years of 2010-2016.

The title of my paper was inspired by the film, Au Revoir, Les’Enfants. The film, written and directed by Louis Malle, is based on his experiences attending a boarding school for boys.

Hatred of Jewish People in Universities in 21^st century goes back decades before October 7, 2023. Their protests will die down until the next event becomes a ‘trigger warning.’ Israel, be prepared.

Highlighted chapters of my paper are below starting with “The “Pied Piper” and Dangerous Liaisons” and include, “Hate: Fruits of the Poisonous Anti-Semitic Tree,” “Boycotts – From Ireland to Palestine,” and “Countering Anti-Semitism, From One Century to the Next.”

Without a doubt, my experiences fail in comparison to those endured by hostages of October 7^th.  For me, it started with Teachers. For them, Terrorists.

The “Pied Piper” and Dangerous Liaisons

One the first day of class, one of the teachers, the “pied piper,” shared her own feelings of inadequacy and lack of confidence when she first attended college finding it necessary to cry in the process. The story of her college experience incited fear, hate, anger, and racism promoting victimization through notions of “micro aggressions.”  

On the second week of class, she put up a PowerPoint slide with an image of people holding a sign that read “Diversity = White Genocide.” Not only did she not explain the slide, she called on students seeking their reactions. I stated that individuals demonstrating such a provocative sign were irresponsible and disrespectful to the actual victims of genocides.

The teacher was not alone in irresponsibly misappropriating historical events. Some minority groups in her classes had hijacked the tragedy of the Holocaust while denigrating the very people who endured its suffering and replacing it with their own ideas of victimization.

In these times, to be Jewish means being targeting from all directions. Richard B. Stone, Professor, Columbia University Law School argues that antisemitism arises from the “left, white supremacy, and Islam…” As the “Pied Piper” threatens, “We teachers talk.”

On the first day of my Social & Political Philosophy class, the teacher began by informing students that “we’re not going to be reading a big book about old white men.” Instead, as his syllabus stipulated, students would focus on Marxism and Socialist theories. After class, I informed him that I signed up and paid to study the greats of Analytic and Continental philosophy. And yes, they were white men.

Movements at universities have gained momentum. Question is, what country is moving and motivating students? International student admission brings in profit through higher fees. It also brings in agents of change.

Unlike other schools on campus, the Humanities run their school as a prison, Administrator as warden and teachers as ‘ring leaders,’ forcing students to choose a group, based on race, religion and nationality.

With the exception of a few truly fine professors and scholars, what I witnessed as a student on today’s college campuses is disconcerting. Primary focus of building communities was on student’s insecurities.

A Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis appeared surprised to read the topic for my 2015 Critical Pedagogy Project, “Forming an Alliance between Muslim and Jewish Communities.” She responded as if no one had ever worked on the subject but was particularly interested in what Rabbis and Leaders of Jewish organizations had to say. Her final feedback:

“Wow, you really were able to gain some valuable insights by talking to so many different people within both communities. It’s amazing that they were pretty open and willing to talk with you for the most part. The question you were asking for the project overall, about how to bridge the gap between the two groups, is a longstanding question that is not easily answered…. I’m glad that you were able to conduct a meaningful project that was of interest to you.” 

Clearly not of interest to her. Others teachers fostered hate and victimization. Agenda, promoting Critical Race Studies and opportunities for below average students of Communities of Color whose low writing and math skills never would get them accepted into a Master’s or Ph.D. program, let alone a Bachelor’s. As the Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis, they promote pipelines from K-12 to college getting paid for bringing in admission dollars.

 “Shadow University”

According to professors, Alan Charles Kors and Harvey A. Silverglate, this “totalitarian mindset” goes back decades. In their 1998 book, The Shadow University. The Betrayal of Liberty on America’s Campuses, their findings are both disturbing and relevant:

“Universities still set themselves apart from American society, but now they do so by enforcing their own politically correct worldview through censorship, double standards, and a judicial system without due process. Faculty and students who threaten the prevailing norms may be forced to undergo “thought reform.”

Professors’ Kors and Silverglate present examples of multiple legal cases disclosing the early beginnings of the end of free speech in all its forms: “speech codes, conduct codes, and ‘campus life’ bureaucracies through which a cadre of deans and counselors indoctrinate students and faculty in an ideology that favors group rights over individual rights, sacrificing free speech and academic freedom to spare the sensitives of currently favored groups.” 

It is likely that in the course of shaping and reshaping student’s minds with a milieu of counter-productive real and imagined aggressions, students developed antipathy towards those who disagreed.

In their “safe space” full of confusion and lack of trust to the outside world who disagrees with their views, they become easy targets of persuasion for movements who like sirens called out to them.

Enemy Amongst U.S.

The known phrase, “ignorance is bliss” is not so blissful when the past reawakens us shining light on dark hidden truths. History of the Holocaust has been well-documented with its focus on Germany. However, occupied Poland too became a “wounded country as Debbie Cenziper discloses in her book, Citizen 865: The Hunt for Hitler’s Hidden Soldiers in America.

Cenziper notes, in Lublin, the Trawniki Men in Warsaw became the foot soldiers of the Third Reich and proved to be “more vicious and vile than the S.S.” The lesson, or better still, the warning her book denotes is “how easy it was to turn people around and be loyal foot soldiers.” Poland’s history is a cautionary story of antisemitism undeterred.

I find Cenziper’s book main point of hunting down “Hidden Soldiers in America” critical as it relates to what I see as “toy soldiers” on college campuses. Although some students are able to critique Israel’s policies, others fall victim to propaganda provoking hatred of Jewish people and “convince the enemy to fight for you” inciting antisemitism in Jewish students.

Charles Small, Founder and Director of the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP), correctly points out that “we have to know the mind of our enemy…we need to respect our enemy enough to understand their culture, ideology, what they value and what their mission is.”  

Referring to the Monsey attacks, Rabbi Mark Golub^*noted, “this is not the end of it…”  Right, Rabbi. I have found that it is the beginning, a beginning tracing the blueprint of the past.

Blueprint of Past Enemies

Germany’s President, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, appeared to caution us saying “the spirits of evil are emerging in a new guise.” Survivors of the Shoah have not forgotten this evil. Neither did their old and new enemies. It readily appears the Führer’s blueprint was examined closely. Recall Nazism regime use of “brown army” and “black guards.”

Let me be clear, there can be only one Führer. What I see are nothing more than poor imitations by those who are simply attempting to utilize similar strategies and tactics.

How is it promoted?  By “A Common Mentality” in “Culture, The Press, and Education.”  Yes, little has changed. From business to government, one still hears of how culture trumps strategy.

Perhaps, but in terms of communicating messages (True or False), nothing beats the press, except social media. So why not get U.S. students educated on the dangers of miseducation? Because the systems, as they run, are working for those promoting the messages, corporate owned media.

Boycotts – From Ireland to Palestine

Boycotting can be traced back to the late 19^th century during the Irish “Land War” to Captain Charles Boycott. In Joyce Marlow’s 1973 book, Captain Boycott and the Irish. André Deutsch, points to the successful blacklisting of Captain Boycott later referred to as “organized isolation.”

Thanks to social media, “foot soldiers” can be recruited via online. Timing, preparation, and opportunity appears to have come together where “In 2005, Palestinian civil society organisations called for boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS).”

Listening to some students in classes and on campuses, I found that economic instability in their families and communities has played a factor in their resentment of the “white man.” Gentrification exacerbated an already tenuous situation.

“Countering Anti-Semitism, From One Century to the Next.”

Consider Sir Stephen Henry Roberts words of the early 1930s, that in the “final evaluation of the National Socialist revolution in Germany…Because it was comparatively bloodless we, too, readily lose sight of its extremely revolutionary aspects.”

Countering through multiple sectors is viable.

1. Trim the branch of the tree where the bird nests – Higher Education. Leverage your organizations that work with bipartisan members of Congress to reengineer the academic statis quo. The Trump Administration proposed cutting funding to universities that do not promote free speech. If “President Trump declares a war on antisemitism through an executive order,” then likewise, policy can be proposed to eliminate or restrict funding to universities who do not deter hate crimes and antisemitism targeting faculty who promote or support it.

2. From all angles, it appears that rising antisemitism is a multi-dimensional orchestration connecting subsets into a prong led by a conductor. Picture it. One does not need to be an engineer to imagine multiple pipes leading into a faucet with one handle.  Now, rethink it. Anti-Semitic movements orchestrate and play the idea of intersectionality connecting multiple identities led by the conductor controlling the “faucet” that pours out cries of protest. The siren calls they hear as music are in actuality harsh noises of hate and antisemitism shared online and taken to the streets.

3. Companies targeted by the BDS movement may retaliate by considering the prevalent use of surveillance programs to target them. Corporations too can exercise their First Amendment rights. Israel’s best are sought after by America’s military, business, medical, and technological corporations. It is time to work with Israeli and U.S. tech companies and local law enforcement agencies equipped with surveillance data.

4. Take the fight back to them by beating them at their own game. You may not be able to control what is communicated online but you can control the lines of communication. Leverage the Offices of Technology on campuses to control identifiable data utilizing algorithms.  

Some of these options may seem extreme. But these are dangerous times. When universities became privatized profiting as a business with left-wing agendas, they no longer stood as institutions of teaching adhering to the First Amendment. It is time to act “by any means necessary.”

Israel, your enemy’s blueprints are founded on “The House that Hitler Built.” If the blueprint’s twisted form follows its function of promoting your elimination, disaster will prevail. Bring their Houses down from within!

Israel, “Let us all keep our wits about us…”

Unlike U.S. “toy soldiers” who protest from the safety of their “safe spaces,” the Israel Defense Force (IDF) students march courageously “From High School to the Homefront.” They are an elite unit of men and women.  As the late Rabbi Mark Golub stated, “thank god we have an IDF to protest.”

On October 7th 2023, a bloody red line was drawn on Israel, marking a region where the ‘disorder of things’ prevails. But unlike what some leaders say, the past does not stay in the past: “ Vigilance! “Ghost of Munich Massacre” – Bloody ‘Black September’ to ‘Red October’ Are Upon Us.’ No going back or coming out unscathed.

Israel, Sisters and Brothers, “Let us all keep our wits about us…” Leadership failure is clear. Division from within the State of Israel provided an ideal distraction from outside enemies. Now, the People of Israel will need to decide if there is far too much blood ‘under the bridge.’ 

Indeed, the Palestinian argument has its roots with the Kingdom of Britain’s decree. British Kingdom wiped its hands ‘clean’ from its deed. A Kingdom where shadows surround the island nation where birds dare not nest for “The sun never sets on the British flag. God doesn’t trust it in the dark.” 

In the end, leaving it to Israel to put a new “House” in order. Or, was this Holy Land, where both Muslim People and Jewish People call Home founded on “The House that Hitler Built”?

Again, past is past. Justification for October 7^th bloody onslaught is a non-starter for Israel. There is no ‘turning the other cheek.’ Israel, not about right or wrong decision. It’s which decision you will be able and willing to live with. As in the past, will you forgive but never forget?

If we abide to the maxim that harming or killing “the other” is deserving of the fate that befell the Nazis, then it seems only fitting that such fate finds the United Kingdom and United States. My brothers and sisters, the hangman has been cheated.

Home to ‘The Third Reich,’ Germany was a land Golda Meir remarked she could not bring herself to set foot in after the Holocaust. Golda may have turned in her grave of the recent spectacle in her new found land.

Hard to fathom the one place you called Home could turn to Hell. Truth be told, the Birth of one people’s Homeland, was Death to another’s lost land. Indeed, Hitler had the last laugh.  

”Had the peoples and the nations known how much harm they brought upon themselves by destroying the Temple of Jerusalem, they would have wept more than the children of Israel” – TALMUD 

^*I wish to pay my respects to the family and friends of the late Rabbi Mark S. Golub. Rabbi Golub’s conversations as the creator and host of L’Chayim were intellectually stimulating, enjoyable and enlightening. One in particular comes to mind. The talk on the meaning of “–“ signifying the years in between birth and death.

Rabbi Golub, I find the impact on our lives of the life in your years 1945 – 2023 commands a standing ovation. Mark, you “Hit it out of the park!”  Rest in Peace.