The Fisherman and Nature of the Threat



 

A case study alone of the Nazi occupation of Paris in World War Two would be sufficient to shatter the myth perpetrated by Ian Brown of a 'homosexual empire'. The brutal Nazi occupation of Paris in World War Two did not stop many Parisian women from having passionate love affairs with German officers, even though their fellow Frenchmen had been murdered at the hands of the very same Germans during the Allied defense of France. These women were subconsciously attracted to the German invaders by the social and economic prestige that they could offer during war-time rationing, and other privations: as other Parisians starved, they continued to dine with their German lovers at the finest French restaurants, which were earmarked and reserved for German soldiers only. Despite more than two million Frenchmen being held in prisoner-of-war camps, the birth rate boomed in 1942; an estimated 200,000 children were born to Franco-German couples in the war. During the German occupation, world-famous French fashion designer Coco Chanel (second row, right) resided at the Hotel Ritz, noteworthy for being the preferred place of residence for upper echelon German military staff. She had an affair with Hans Günther von Dincklage, a German military intelligence officer who arranged for her to remain in the hotel. The Germans established brothels for their troops around occupied Europe - including this one (penultimate row) in a former Jewish synagogue in the French port of Brest. The German military commandeered at least 22 brothels in France for their own use. During wartime the number of full-time prostitutes working in Paris multiplied sixfold to at least 10,000.

Ian Brown's The Fisherman, a run through history, is influenced by two of his Breezeblock selections: 'Nature of the Threat' by Ras Kass and 'Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth' by GZA (See F.E.A.R.), especially the former, a track from Ras Kass's debut album 'Soul On Ice (1996). The referencing of a mobile phone and allusion to the Liberian Civil Wars (1989 - 1996, 1999 - 2003) sees Ian bring events right up to the present age; Jeffrey Dahmer serves this purpose for Ras Kass. Dahmer, murdered by a fellow inmate while in prison in 1994, was an American serial killer who murdered 17 men and boys between 1978 and 1991, with the majority of the murders occurring between 1989 and 1991. His murders were particularly gruesome, involving acts of necrophilia, dismemberment and cannibalism.

 

 

Top left: Fighters with the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) stand within a destroyed building during a lull in the fighting in April 1996. Many fighters from Sierra Leone fought in Liberia both with the NPFL and, after 1997 when NPFL leader Charles Taylor became president, as Liberian government militias.
Top right: Nigerian peacekeepers patrol by the bodies of several NPFL fighters who were killed during clashes with the United Liberation Movement for Democracy in Liberia (ULIMO-J) during two months of clashes between the two groups in April - May 1996. Hundreds of civilians were killed and thousands more wounded during the fighting.
Bottom left: Wounded civilians are treated in a make-shift clinic in the Liberian capital Monrovia in April 1996. Thousands of civilians were wounded and hundreds killed in April and May 1996 when forces from the NPFL and ULIMO-J fought for control of key areas of the Liberian capital.
Bottom right: Rebels from the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) and Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) patrol through the streets of Freetown, Sierra Leone shortly after a coup in May 1997 which overthrew democratically elected president Tejan Kabbah. Many Liberian fighters joined up with the joint RUF/AFRC forces during their nine months in power.

The chorus of The Fisherman undoubtedly has religious origins. In 'The Calling Of The First Disciples' (Matthew 4: 18 - 22), Jesus said to Simon and his brother Andrew:

And in Luke (Luke 5: 1 - 11), we read of Simon questioning Jesus's command to put out the nets:

They then signalled to James and John, the sons of Zebedee, to help them manage with the nets.

'Fisherman's friend' is describing the relationship Man has with Jesus. Jesus is the fisherman's (i.e., man's) friend; He died for the sins of mankind. This is Ian Brown speaking to music365.com on 16th February 2000:

 

Top: An early circular ichthys symbol in Ephesus. Ichthys (Koine Greek: IXOYE) is the ancient and classical Greek word for 'fish'. Here, the letters IXOYE are superimposed such that the result resembles an eight-spoked wheel. Ichthys (IXOYE) is an acronym for Iesous Christos, Theou Yios, Soter, which translates into English as 'Jesus Christ, God's Son, Saviour'.
Second row: An iconographic symbol for Christ.
Bottom left: 'The Calling of the Apostles Peter and Andrew' (c. 1308 - 1311) by Duccio.
Bottom right: Saint Catherine of Siena. As those outside of Noah's Ark perished, the ship became a fitting early symbol of the Church. The main part of a church's interior, the place where the congregation worship, is called the nave, from the Latin navis, meaning ship. On this theme, a chapel is structured such that, if one were to turn it upside down, it would resemble a boat. Disciples are fishers, human souls are fish, the world is the sea, the gospel is the net, and eternal life is the shore whither the catch is drawn.

The earliest depictions of The Last Supper show, not bread and wine, but rather, fish on the table. The fish was an early Christian symbol; its letters in Greek were the initials of the confession: 'Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour'. This also has origins in The Feeding of the Five Thousand (Mark 6: 30 - 44) with bread and fish, thought of as a dress-rehearsal for The Last Supper. The lyric, "Man shall not live by bread alone" was the message of Jesus to Satan, when He was being tempted in the desert. When asked by Satan to turn stones into bread:

The following lines are Ian's response to a comment made by a 'Select' magazine reporter at Glastonbury in 1998, who, when interviewing Ian in a caravan, commented that he smelt badly:

"Declaration by the Pope of Rome for Jesus to have Michelangelo's uncle's nose" argues that an indelible image of a 'white Christ' has been burnt into the mind of western civilization by Art. During the Renaissance period, Michelangelo used his uncle as a model for portraits of Jesus. On this tract, Ian is taking his lead from both 'Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth' by GZA and 'Nature Of The Threat' by Ras Kass:

 

Left: Alleged portrait of Cesare Borgia by Altobello Melone (c. 1490 - 1543).
Right: Bust of Christ Pantocrator, Saint Catherine's Monastery, Sinai (6th century).

Cesare Borgia (1475 - 1507), Duke of Valentinois, was the illegitimate son of Pope Alexander VI (Rodrigo Borgia) and Vannozza dei Cattani. It has been claimed that some paintings of Jesus Christ were based on Borgia, and that this in turn has greatly influenced images of Jesus produced since that time. It should be noted however, that similar portrayals exist in paintings predating Borgia by centuries, for example, the 550 A.D. 'Christ Pantocrator' ('Christ, Ruler of All') icon in St. Catherine's Monastery, Sinai. This is the oldest known surviving example of the icon of 'Christ Pantocrator', surviving the period of destruction of images during the Iconoclastic disputes that racked the Eastern church between 726 and 843 A.D.

 

Bottom: Saturnalia sculpture in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Saturnalia is an Ancient Roman festival held in honour of the god Saturn. It became one of the most popular Roman festivals, and was marked by drunken orgies, tomfoolery and reversal of social roles, in which slaves and masters ostensibly switched places, much like the Lord of Misrule in later Christian celebrations. It was introduced around 217 B.C. to raise citizen morale after a crushing military defeat at the hands of the Carthaginians. Originally celebrated for a day, on 17th December, its popularity saw it grow until it became a week-long extravaganza, ending on the 23rd of that month. Efforts to shorten the celebration were unsuccessful. Augustus tried to reduce it to three days, and Caligula to five, but such attempts caused uproar and revolt among the Roman citizens. Saturn, the Roman god of agriculture, was not a homosexual god; he was married to the goddess Ops and was the father of the father of Ceres, Jupiter, Veritas, Pluto, Neptune, and Juno, among others. Top left shows 'Ops with two children' (c. 1630) by Peter Paul Rubens. On this note, one of John Squire's artworks from 2007, shown here on the top right, is entitled 'Saturnalia' (paper, oil and wax on hessian, 20" x 16").

The Fisherman opens with allusion to Saturnalia, a feature of Nature of the Threat.

Saturnalia was the name the Romans gave to their holiday, from 17th December to 23rd December, marking the Winter Solstice; thus, the 17th of December, rather than the 25th of December is considered 'the birth of Saturn'. It is thought by some that the early Christians chose to celebrate the birth of Christ on 25th December (they never claimed that Jesus was actually born on that date), with intention to offset the pagan mid-winter festival of Saturnalia. 25th December was also thought to be another holiday in ancient Rome, a celebration marking the birthday of Mithras. As the Mithraic mysteries were in competition with Christianity for influence in the Roman Empire, it has been suggested by some that the setting of 25th December as 'Christ Mass' was a canny appropriation made to counter the Mithraic threat. Some of the claims made here, and elsewhere by Ras Kass in Nature of the Threat are questionable, as I will examine later in the essay. "Coca Cola made X-mas" refers to the impact that Coca Cola's advertising has had on the celebration of Christmas; it is frequently credited with the 'invention' of the modern image of Santa Claus as an old man in red and white garments. However, while the company did indeed begin promoting this image in the 1930s in its winter advertising campaigns, it was already common before that. In 1863, a caricaturist for Harper's Weekly, Thomas Nast, began developing his own image of Santa. Nast gave his figure a flowing set of whiskers and dressed him all in fur, from head to foot. A Boston printer, Louis Prang, introduced the English custom of Christmas cards to America, and in 1885 he issued a card featuring a red-suited Santa. At the beginning of the 1930s, the Coca-Cola company was looking for ways to increase sales of their product during winter, then a slow time of year for the soft drink market. They turned to a talented commercial illustrator, Haddon Sundblom (1899 - 1976), who created a series of drawings that associated the figure of a larger than life, red-and-white garbed Santa Claus with Coca Cola.

     

Left to right:
Saint Nicholas, with his crozier and mitre, as he appears on a German holy card. Santa is a variant of a European folk tale based on the historical figure Saint Nicholas, a bishop from the region that is now present-day Turkey, who gave presents to the poor. This inspired the mythical figure of Sinterklaas.
Louis Prang Christmas card from 1886.
Haddon Sundblom illustration.
Specially designed Christmas Coca Cola labels featuring Santa Claus.

Satan is identified by the number 666 in the following text from Revelation:

"Number of the beast. Prophesized by those who roam the Middle East" makes reference to gematria, an early form of Jewish mysticism. Its object is to conceal a name by substituting for it a cipher of equal numerical value to the letters composing it. In some instances, Ian has taken a reference and moulded it so as to form the narrative of a comparable modern day development. Compare these lyrics by Ian - "Fishing fleets slicing fins off pregnant dolphins in Japanese waters...Liberian militia, severing limbs off infants at the side of the road" - to the following lyrics from Nature of the Threat:

The following lyric from Nature of the Threat may have influenced Ian's viewpoint, and subsequent controversial assertion to Melody Maker in April 1998, when he was accused of homophobia:

Here is the quotation from Melody Maker:

Brown elaborated further to Melody Maker: "Gay people who are super-camp, exhibitionist... It comes from insecurities. You know, fine and dandy, that's you, great ! But you know, pack it in. Behave ! I just don't like exhibitionism, people who think they're shocking when they're not. If you've got it, flaunt it. But there's nothing worse than someone showing out who hasn't got it. It's embarrassing." This is Ian's explanation of the matter:

Ian was the singles reviewer for that week and these remarks came in response to hearing Divine Comedy's single, 'I Went to a Marvellous Party', for 'Twentieth Century Blues - The Songs of Noel Coward'. This was a tribute by various artists to renowned songsmith Noel Coward, the proceeds of which go to the Red, Hot, Blue Aids charity. "It just came out of nowhere," explained Ian Watson, Melody Maker's singles editor, to The Independent (3rd April 1998): "We printed it word for word, exactly how it was said." Those involved with the Twentieth Century Blues project were hesitant to get involved. A spokesperson said: "Ian Brown's review of the Divine Comedy single is a personal point of view," adding that Neil Tennant, who conceived the project, "is appalled by Ian Brown's obviously stupid remarks, but doesn't want to enter into a public row." Asked why Melody Maker published the comments, Watson said: "We felt if we were to take it out that would be protecting Ian Brown. I re-interviewed him on the phone and was amazed that he brought it up again. And the fact that he did, completely unprompted, was a real shock. If we cover it up we are working on the side of homophobia and helping hatred." Worryingly, not only did Ian Brown refuse to apologise or even retract these claims, but it can be surmised from this telephone conversation that it was actually a calculated statement. Andy Matthew, deputy editor of the gay lifestyle magazine, 'Attitude', was mystified. "I think he is being very naive, to think that this is going to go unchecked or unnoticed. It seems to me that he hasn't thought about the impact of the words." Matthew took the charitable view that ignorance rather than blatant prejudice was behind the outburst. "If he is trying to say the fascination with gay men is this camp caricature, then I agree with him that these stereotypes shouldn't be encouraged. But to suggest that violence comes from gay men, I find that circumspect. I don't understand where he is coming from. What I don't like is 'if someone's gay, they're gay', as if that is a problem, and I hope we are years ahead of the time that people think they are poor, mentally damaged men with a curse. I would like to speak to Ian Brown. I know that The Stone Roses and Ian Brown have a lot of gay fans. I think people tend still to not check themselves so much, whereas with rascism, for instance, they do. When it comes to gay issues, you can say whatever you want - it's a laugh and not taken seriously." (Andy Matthew speaking to The Independent 3rd April 1998). The explanation above, given by Ian Brown to Jockey Slut magazine - which notably omits any mention of his previous inclusion of Nazi Germany into his wild theorisation - is insufficient. Ian received "letters from history professors and students" regarding the historical accuracy of what, precisely ? That the earliest (recorded) instance in history of violence or war was Ancient Greece ? One would imagine, for example, that the combatants (Sumer - in modern Iraq - and Elam - a region that is now part of Iran) of the war in c. 2700 B.C., in the area around Basra, might have something to say about this claim. Or was this show of support regarding the proposition that the violence of the Greek, Roman and Nazi Empires has an inextricable link to homosexuality ? Some of the most ruthless dictators in History each had multiple wives and dozens of concubines at their beck and call. Homosexuality is a regular target for Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe's bile, castigating same-sex union as being tantamount to "dog behaviour" in July 2010. One would have to have some degree of concern for the mindset of those who felt compelled to put pen to paper in support of Ian's outburst. Ian's sense of validation upon the receipt of such mail is also unsettling; one could devise and submit online the most outlandish crackpot theory and receive emails supporting one's view within days. When, in June 2008, DUP MP and MLA (and wife of the Northern Ireland First Minister) Iris Robinson described homosexuality as an abomination worse than paedophilia, she claimed to be inundated with calls of support for her views; this, however, does not make her views any less deplorable. Rather like the way in which someone with racist inclinations might begin a sentence, "I'm not racist, but...", such feeble attempts at defending these untoward views are transparent in their desperation.

A 'homosexual power base' ? Images from a February 1939 Reichskanzlei party (rows one to three), and Prague functions from 1942 (fourth row) and 1943 (fifth row) would suggest otherwise.

There is an unsubtle shift in focus by Ian from homosexuality to "homosexual power bases" in the Jockey Slut excerpt above. One would like, firstly, to have a definition from Ian as to what a "homosexual power base" is exactly, and secondly, ascertain what relevance any homosexual presence within a civilization has to do with urges of violence and destruction. Given Ian's jail sentence for 'air-rage' in 1998 (when he allegedly threatened a stewardess that he would "chop her hands off"), an enterprising use of a mic stand in an altercation with a restrained security man in San Francisco in 2005, and an arrest in 2009 on suspicion of assaulting his wife at his house in West Kensington, a reassessment of violence as some sort of inescapable feature of the 'homosexual condition' is perhaps in order. Violence is the expression of physical force against one or more people, compelling action against one's will on pain of being hurt. The word violence covers a broad spectrum. It can vary from between a physical altercation between two beings, to war and genocide where millions may die as a consequence. How would Ian care to explain the behaviour of the children in the Bobo doll experiments, conducted by Albert Bandura in 1961 and 1963 ? Or the conduct of the prison guards in the 1971 Stanford prison experiment ? In November 2011, a healed fracture was discovered on an ancient skull from China, the earliest evidence of interhuman aggression. The individual, who lived 150,000 - 200,000 years ago, suffered blunt force trauma to the right temple, possibly from being hit with a projectile. The ancient hunter-gatherer - whose sex is unclear - survived to tell the tale, as the injury was completely healed by the time of the person's death. The skull was unearthed in a cave in Lion Rock, near the town of Maba, in Guangdong province, China, in June 1958. Before it was buried, a large rodent - probably a porcupine - gnawed on the bone, removing a significant portion of the face. Erik Trinkaus, who was part of an international team that re-examined the specimen, said the depressed fracture in the right temple region was the result of an impact that was "very directed, very localised", and that being struck hard with a stone cobble might have produced such an injury. Nazi Germany was not an aberration from an otherwise serene century; the 20th century was the most violent one of human history. The scope of Ian's poorly devised theory is limited to three empires in the whole of history. What are Ian's assertions of the breeding ground for the many other significant empires in history, such as the British Empire in the twentieth century, the Mongol Empire of the thirteenth century, the Russian Empire of the nineteenth century, or the Spanish Empire of the eighteenth century ? These countries conquered vast territories, and maintained empires for significant periods of time by use of military power. What classification of 'power base' would Ian care to designate these empires with ? In the years after World War I, still burdened by the harsh terms imposed in the Treaty of Versailles, Germany collapsed into disorder and ruin. The Great Crash and the Depression that followed further strengthened the anti-capitalist zeal that was fermenting in Germany. Poverty and discontent boiled over into mass unrest, with riots on the streets. Political extremism grew and many Germans were set to fall under its spell. Along with imperialism, the underlying cause of World War Two was racism. There is a Hebrew saying, Olem Golem ("a crowd is a robot"); the Nazi propaganda machine was able to induce a kind of mass psychosis that transformed some of the nation into brutes and others into passive marionettes. Supporters and perpetrators of Nazism, from the lower ranks to those at the very top, possessed an unshakeable belief that Germans were the victims of an international Jewish conspiracy, and a fervent zeal for retribution. The 'enemy' was completely dehumanized in the eyes of Nazis. Racism gave birth to Auschwitz, the killing factory in Poland. Hitler's mission, as he outlined in Mein Kampf, was the extermination of the Jew. The horrors of Nazi Germany should serve only as a chilling reminder of the depths that humanity can delve, should evil be given the conditions to foster. In the words of Pope John Paul II when he visited Auschwitz, "This is what happens when the world forgets God."

 

Nazi Germany spawned the most clinical killing machine in the history of mankind. The horrors of the Holocaust were not an offshoot of homosexuality, but rather, the human condition itself, in which its progenitors delved deep into the darkest recesses of the human psyche. In preparation for the January 1942 Wannsee Conference, Adolf Eichmann, the man in charge of the logistics for the Holocaust, drew up a list detailing the number of Jews in Europe still to be exterminated. Countries were listed in two groups, 'A' and 'B'. 'A' countries were those under direct Reich control or occupation (or partially occupied and quiescent, in the case of France); 'B' countries were allied or client states, neutral, or at war with Germany. The numbers reflect actions already completed by Nazi forces; for example, Estonia is listed as judenfrei ('free of Jews'), as the thousand Jews who remained in Estonia after the German occupation had been virtually exterminated by the end of 1941.

Ian Brown's comments seemed a world away from the man who, a decade earlier, had attended an Anti-Clause 28 march. Not for the first time, Ian's historical claims were wayward. In the 1920s, homosexual people in Germany, particularly in Berlin, enjoyed a higher level of freedom and acceptance than arguably anywhere else in the world. However, upon the rise of Adolf Hitler, gay men and, to a lesser extent, lesbians (In the racist practice of Nazi eugenics, women were valued primarily for their ability to bear children) were two of the numerous groups targeted by the Nazi Party and were ultimately among the roster of Holocaust victims. Beginning in 1933, gay organizations were banned, scholarly works about homosexuality, and sexuality in general, were burned, and some homosexuals within the Nazi Party itself were murdered, such as Ernst Röhm and his deputy, Edmund Heines. Heinrich Himmler had initially been a supporter of Röhm; using propaganda, he argued that the charges of homosexuality against him were manufactured by Jews, but later, Himmler engineered his murder in the Night of the Long Knives of 1934. Following this move, Hitler elevated Himmler's status and he immediately became proactive in the suppression of homosexuality. Himmler exclaimed, "We must exterminate these people root and branch... the homosexual must be eliminated." (Richard Plant, The Pink Triangle: the Nazi war against homosexuals (1986), p. 99. In 1936, Himmler gave a speech on the subject of homosexuality and described the murder of Röhm in these terms: "Two years ago... when it became necessary, we did not scruple to strike this plague with death, even within our own ranks." Himmler closed with these words: "Just as we today have gone back to the ancient Germanic view on the question of marriage mixing different races, so too in our judgment of homosexuality - a symptom of degeneracy which could destroy our race - we must return to the guiding Nordic principle: extermination of degenerates." A few months earlier, Himmler had prepared for action by reorganizing the entire state police into three divisions. The political executive, Division II, was directly responsible for the control of "illegal parties and organizations, leagues and economic groups, reactionaries and the Church, freemasonry, and homosexuality." Himmler personally favoured the immediate "extermination of degenerates," but he was empowered to order the summary execution only of homosexuals discovered within his own bureaucratic domain. Civilian offenders were merely required to serve out their prison sentences (although second offenders were subject to castration). In 1936, Himmler found a way around this obstacle. Following release from prison, all "enemies of the state" - including homosexuals - were to be taken into protective custody and detained indefinitely. Under the practice of "protective custody" (Schutzhaft), ostensibly designed to shield individuals from the "indignation of society," the Gestapo seized suspected homosexual men without warrants and confined them in camps along with political opponents and others - particularly Jews after 1938 - who "offended" the Volk. The official SS newspaper, Das Schwarze Korps, announced in 1937 that there were two million German homosexuals and called for their death. The extent to which Himmler succeeded in this undertaking is unknown, but the number of homosexuals sent to camps was far in excess of the fifty thousand who served jail sentences. The Gestapo dispatched thousands of homosexuals to camps without a trial, and Himmler gave special orders that they be placed in Level Three camps, human death mills reserved for Jews and homosexuals. Moreover, "protective custody" was enforced retroactively, so that any homosexual who had ever come to the attention of the police prior to the Third Reich was subject to immediate arrest (the Berlin police alone had an index of more than twenty thousand homosexuals prior to the Nazi takeover). Beginning in 1939, homosexuals from Nazi-occupied countries were also interned in German camps.

The Gestapo compiled lists of homosexuals, who were compelled to sexually conform to the 'German norm.' Along with Jews, Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, Roma ('Gypsies'), Jehovah’s Witnesses, people with mental and physical disabilities, and so called anti-socials, homosexuals too were persecuted, considered to be unworthy of life in Hitler's pursuit of a 'master Aryan race.' Nazism declared itself incompatible with homosexuality, because homosexuals did not reproduce and thus, perpetuate the 'master race'. As the regime consolidated power and centralized state authority, the instruments of persecution emerged. Joseph Goebbels, Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, believed that the function of the new Propaganda Ministry was to coordinate the political will of the nation with the aims of the Nazi state. To this end, he quickly set about monopolizing the means of communication by a process known as Gleichschaltung (coordination), which referred to the obligatory assimilation within the Nazi state of all political, economic, and cultural activities. Propaganda in the wake of a major political crisis in mid-1934 linked homosexuality to subversion, even treason, thereby encouraging public intolerance. With the reintroduction in 1935 of conscription for all men ages 18 to 45, Germany's homosexual men became liable for service in the armed forces, the Wehrmacht. The German military code did not bar homosexuals, even convicted homosexuals, from serving in the armed forces. As a result, thousands of homosexual men were drafted to serve a regime that persecuted them as civilians. In 1935, Nazi authorities rewrote criminal law Paragraph 175, and subsequent court interpretation radically expanded the range of punishable "indecencies between men." Enforcement of Paragraph 175 fell to the Criminal Police and the Gestapo, unified by 1936 under the SS and its leader, Reichsführer–SS Heinrich Himmler. Tens of thousands of homosexual men were imprisoned in concentration camps during the Nazi era, where many died from starvation, disease, exhaustion, beatings, and murder. The first concentration camps were improvised in local prisons, military barracks, even abandoned factories. Beginning in 1934, SS chief Heinrich Himmler oversaw the regularization of the camp system under SS control. The main camps - Sachsenhausen for the north, Buchenwald for the center, and Dachau for the south - were ostensibly to "re-educate" inmates through discipline and hard work. Concentration camp internment served a twofold purpose: the labour power of prisoners boosted the national economy significantly, and undesirables could be effectively liquidated by the simple expedient of reducing their food rations to a level slightly below subsistence. In the final months of the war, the men with pink triangles received brief military training; they were to be sent out as cannon fodder in the last-ditch defense of the fatherland.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

Top: After the end of Imperial Germany, a period of very liberal lifestyle followed, known as Die Goldenen Zwanziger ('The Golden Twenties'). Click here to view an issue of German lesbian periodical Die Freundin, from 14th May 1928. Click here to view the front cover of a September 1931 issue of 'The Island', a magazine for homosexuals, edited by Martin Radszuweit. Some 30 literary, cultural, and political journals for homosexual readers appeared during the Weimar era.
Second row (left): Marlene Dietrich in the 1920s.
Second row (right): Dietrich, who was bisexual, enjoyed the thriving gay scene and drag balls of 1920s Berlin. Here, she performs in Der blaue Engel ('The Blue Angel') from 1930, the first major German sound film. See also the 1931 German film, Mädchen in Uniform ('Girls in Uniform'), the first feature film to be produced with an openly pro-lesbian storyline. Even the insertion of an alternate ending - subtly pandered to pro-Nazi ideals - which enabled continued screening in German cinemas, was not enough to prevent its banning by Nazi Germany. The film was considered 'decadent' by the Nazi regime, which reportedly attempted to burn all existing prints, but by then several had been dispersed around the world. Director Leontine Sagan and many others associated with the film fled Germany soon after the banning. Another film portraying an intimate relationship between women, 'Anna and Elisabeth' (1933), also starring Dorothea Wieck and Hertha Thiele, was banned by the Nazis soon after its opening night.
Third row (left): The state encouraged large families through financial incentives and awards. This Nazi Party member fathered eight children, thereby helping his wife earn the gold Mother's Cross worn around her neck.
Third row (right): On 10th May 1933, Nazis in Berlin burned works of Jewish authors, the library of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, and other works considered 'un-German.' The Institut für Sexualwissenschaft ('Institute for Sexual Science') was an early private sexology research institute in Germany from 1919 to 1933. Click here to view a 1907 political cartoon depicting sex-researcher Magnus Hirschfeld, 'Hero of the Day', drumming up support for the abolition of Paragraph 175 of the German penal code that since 1871 had criminalized homosexuality. The banner reads, 'Away with Paragraph 175 !', whilst the caption reads, 'The foremost champion of the third sex !' The Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, under Hirschfeld's leadership, managed to gather over 5000 signatures from prominent Germans for a petition to overturn Paragraph 175. Signatories included Albert Einstein, Hermann Hesse, Käthe Kollwitz, Thomas Mann, Heinrich Mann, Rainer Maria Rilke, August Bebel, Max Brod, Karl Kautsky, Stefan Zweig, Gerhart Hauptmann, Martin Buber, Richard von Krafft-Ebing and Eduard Bernstein. The bill was brought before the Reichstag in 1898, but was only supported by a minority from the Social Democratic Party of Germany, prompting Hirschfeld to consider what would, in a later era, be described as 'outing': forcing some of the prominent and secretly homosexual lawmakers who had remained silent out of the closet. The bill continued to come before parliament, and eventually began to make progress in the 1920s before the takeover of the Nazi Party obliterated any hopes for reform. Among the first books consigned to the flames were the works of Sigmund Freud, who commented, "What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages, they would have burned me. Nowadays, they are content with burning my books." Freud's words proved to be prescient, as the burning of the books was a prelude to the burning of people. The mortality rate in these factories of death were often on such a scale that the crematoria could not cope. See the documentary, Memory of the Camps, for a harrowing account of the scale of this horror.
Fourth row (left): On 30th June 1934, as part of the Night of the Long Knives, SA commander Ernst Röhm (pictured) was executed on Hitler's orders as a potential rival, although this was done ostensibly as a reaction to Röhm's well-known homosexual tendencies. As part of a compromise with the Reichwehr (regular army) leadership, whose support he needed to become Führer, Hitler allowed Goering and Himmler to murder Röhm along with dozens of Röhm's loyal officers. The new Chief of Staff received his first order from the Führer: "I expect all SA leaders to help preserve and strengthen the SA in its capacity as a pure and cleanly institution. In particular, I should like every mother to be able to allow her son to join the SA, Party, and Hitler Youth without fear that he may become morally corrupted in their ranks. I therefore request all SA commanders to take the utmost pains to ensure that offences under Paragraph 175 are met by immediate expulsion of the culprit from the SA and the Party." Rudolf Diels, the founder of the Gestapo, recorded some of Hitler's personal thoughts on the subject: "He lectured me on the role of homosexuality in history and politics. It had destroyed ancient Greece, he said. Once rife, it extended its contagious effects like an ineluctable law of nature to the best and most manly of characters, eliminating from the reproductive process precisely those men on whose offspring a nation depended. The immediate result of the vice was, however, that unnatural passion swiftly became dominant in public affairs if it were allowed to spread unchecked." The tone had been set by the Röhm putsch, and the following year, on 15th September 1935, the campaign against homosexuality was escalated by the introduction of the 'Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour.' Until 1935, the only punishable offence had been anal intercourse; under the new Paragraph 175a, ten possible 'acts' were punishable, including a kiss, an embrace, and even homosexual fantasies. According to James Steakley in 'The Body Politic', one man, for instance, was successfully prosecuted on the grounds that he had observed a couple making love in a park and watched only the man. Under the Nazi system, criminal acts were less important in determining guilt than criminal intent. The phenomenological theory of justice claimed to evaluate a person's character rather than his deeds. The "healthy sensibility of the people" (gesundes Volksempfinden) was elevated to the highest normative legal concept, and the Nazis were in a position to prosecute an individual solely on the grounds of his sexual orientation. The law was so loosely formulated that it could be - and was - applied against heterosexuals whom the Nazis wanted to eliminate. The most notorious example of an individual convicted on trumped-up homosexuality charges was General Werner von Fritsch, Army Chief of Staff, and the law was also used repeatedly against members of the Catholic clergy. However, the law was undoubtedly used primarily against gay people, and the court system was aided in the witch-hunt by the entire German populace, which was encouraged to scrutinize the behaviour of neighbours and to denounce suspects to the Gestapo.
Fourth row (right): The genealogical chart of the "soldier-family Richter" is headlined, "The military power of the nation is secured by hereditarily healthy families with many children," and adds, "National Socialism very consciously places the care and preservation of our nation's hereditarily exceptional families in the center of its population policy." A system of ranking women according to the number of their offspring was devised by Minister of the Interior Wilhelm Frick, who demanded that homosexuals "be hunted down mercilessly, for their vice can only lead to the demise of the German people."
Fifth row (left): Just as desirable characteristics were viewed as hereditary, so too were the undesirable. This chart aimed to demonstrate alleged hereditary criminality and alcoholism, traits viewed by Nazi eugenicists as comparable to a "predisposition" for homosexuality.
Fifth row (right): Diagram of the spreading "contagion" of homosexuality from individual number 1 to 28 others. The Nazis believed that the agent of "infection" was the "seduction" by one man of another.
Sixth row (left): Autobiography of Pierre Seel, a gay man sent to a concentration camp by the Nazis. On 3rd May 1941, Seel was arrested and tortured, and sent to the city jail before being transferred on 13th May to the Schirmeck-Vorbrück camp, about 30 kilometres west of Strasbourg. His prison uniform was marked with a blue bar (marking Catholic and 'asocial' prisoners) rather than the infamous pink triangle which was not in use at Schirmeck. He later recalled, "There was no solidarity for the homosexual prisoners; they belonged to the lowest caste. Other prisoners, even when between themselves, used to target them." Seel recounts the horrific fate suffered by his lover, Jo, in the camp: "Then the loudspeakers broadcast some noisy classical music while the SS stripped him naked and shoved a tin pail over his head. Next they sicced their ferocious German Shepherds on him; the guard dogs first bit into his groin and thighs, then devoured him right in front of us. His shrieks of pain were distorted and amplified by the pail in which his head was trapped." Artist Richard Grune, formally trained at the Bauhaus school in Weimar under teachers including Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky, was arrested in December 1934. Under interrogation, Grune admitted to being homosexual and was held in 'protective custody' for five months, then returned to his childhood home on the German-Danish border to stand trial for violating Paragraph 175. In September 1936, Grune was convicted and sentenced to prison for one year and three months, minus time already served in protective custody. At his release, the Gestapo returned Grune to protective custody, asserting that his sentence had been too lenient. In early October 1937, Grune was sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where he remained until being transferred to Flossenbürg in early April 1940. Almost exactly five years later, as American forces approached, Grune escaped the evacuation of the Flossenbürg camp and joined his sister in Kiel. He spent much of the remainder of his life in Spain, but later returned to Kiel, where he died in 1983. Grune's desire to bring attention to the terror of the concentration camps led to the 1947 publication of a limited-edition portfolio of his lithographs, Passion des XX. Jahrhunderts (Passion of the Twentieth Century). His work generally reflects what he personally experienced at the Sachsenhausen and Flossenbürg concentration camps; some images were based on recollections from other survivors.
Sixth row (right): The once vibrant, Eldorado gay night club in Berlin, after being shut down in 1933.
Seventh row (left): Collage on the closing of gay and lesbian bars in Berlin, from Vienna newspaper Der Notschrei (The Cry for Help), 4th March 1933.
Seventh row (right): The state's initial steps to restore law and order focused on professional criminals and "habitual sex offenders." The second category included not only men with two convictions under Paragraph 175, but also men expected "with a high degree of probability" to violate that law. Regulations issued in February 1934 ordered police surveillance of these individuals and authorized restrictions on their activities. Here we see a Police observation photograph of the Cascade Bar, Berlin, May 1938, from the files of the Gestapo's Special Section that handled homosexuality matters.
Eighth row (left): In October 1934, the Gestapo moved to gather information about homosexual men. Telegrams to all local police departments ordered that new or existing lists of men suspected of being homosexually active in their districts be forwarded to Gestapo Special Section II–1 in Berlin. A subsequent telegram requested that the lists indicate political affiliation, particularly membership in the Nazi Party. Here we see the Berlin Gestapo radio-telegram for lists of suspected active homosexuals, as transcribed by the Police Radio Service for the chief of police in Dortmund, 24th October 1934. A week later, the Gestapo sought each suspect's date and place of birth; place of residence; occupation; membership in the Nazi Party or in a Nazi organization, including date joined and level of service; and "whether the person has been convicted by a court of homosexual activity or whether there have only been incidents."
Eighth row (right): In 1937, Das Schwarze Korps declared that Nazi efforts to combat homosexuality "proved" that fewer than 2 men in 100 were "abnormal." That minority, however (some 40,000 men nationwide, according to the author) posed such a threat, particularly to the nation's susceptible youth, that they should be treated as "enemies of the state" and destroyed.
Ninth row: Among the personal responses to the growing police attention to the lives of individual homosexuals was the "protective marriage", to give the appearance of conformity. Paul Otto (left) married the woman behind him with her full knowledge that his long-time partner was Harry (right). Berlin, 1937. By 1938, German courts ruled that any contact between men deemed to have sexual intent, even "simple looking" or "simple touching", could be grounds for arrest and conviction. The increasing police interest in the lives of homosexual men drove a few to emigrate where they could. The vast majority, however, like Paul and Harry, began to conceal their homosexuality, and many married; others committed suicide.
Tenth row: Identification photo of a bartender from Duisburg who was arrested for homosexuality. Duisburg, Germany, 27th August 1936.
Eleventh row (left): A writer from Düsseldorf who was arrested for homosexuality. Düsseldorf, Germany, 1938.
Eleventh row (right): Henny Schermann (pictured) and Mary Punjer were arrested in the raid of a lesbian bar in 1940 and taken to Ravensbruck. Both women were Jewish, and while their internment documents listed their Judiasm, it also noted that Schermann was a "compulsive lesbian" and Punjer as a "very active (sassy) lesbian." They were gassed to death in early 1942 in the Bernburg Nursing Home near Dessau, which had been adapted as a death factory. Austrian writer and lesbian, Grete von Urbanitzky, propagated Nazi ideology in her writings as early as 1920, but did not escape their persecution. In 1936, she was forced to emigrate to France and then to Switzerland. In 1941, all of her books were banned in Germany.
Twelfth row (left): The pink triangle (second column from right) was the designated camp badge for male homosexual prisoners, as shown on this undated chart titled "Distinguishing Marks for Protective Custody Prisoners." In addition to the basic badge (top), variations marked repeat offenders, prisoners in punishment battalions, and homosexual Jews. Other colours identified political prisoners, previously convicted criminals, emigrants, Jehovah's Witnesses, and so-called asocials.
Twelfth row (right): Prisoners during a roll call at the Buchenwald concentration camp. Their uniforms bear classifying triangular badges and identification numbers. Buchenwald, Germany, 1938 - 1941. Easily identified by their pink triangle badges, homosexual detainees - the "175ers" - were subject to physical and even sexual abuse by SS camp guards. Fearing guilt–by–association, most fellow prisoners shunned the homosexuals, leaving them isolated and powerless within the prisoner hierarchy. The pink triangle, originally used pointed downward in Nazi concentration camps to denote homosexuality, is now turned upright as a gay pride and gay rights symbol.
Thirteenth row (left): The operating room in the sick-bay building at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. A secret SS decree in November 1942 gave concentration camp commandants the right to order castrations of prisoners in unspecified "special cases", thus authorizing the compulsory castration of incarcerated homosexuals.
Thirteenth row (right): The brickworks near the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, located 35 kilometres north of Berlin. At least 1,000 homosexual men are known to have been held at Sachsenhausen between its opening in 1936 and the end of the war. Click here to view a photograph of prisoners at forced labor in the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria. During the war, the concentration camps became very important industrial enterprises. Many of them had quarries, and stone factories, and brickworks attached to them. Because the homosexual prisoners - those who wore the pink triangle - were often the lowest of the low on the social hierarchy, they were often put into penalty battalions, and sent off to these quarries and brickworks to carry out some of the most grueling work. There is evidence that homosexuals were the ones to charge the dynamite to blow up the rocks in the quarries. Often the SS guards would simply use them as target practice because their pink triangle was something they could easily shoot at. The brutality known to have taken place against homosexuals in the concentration camp is simply unfathomable.
Fourteenth row (left): Identification photo of a prisoner, accused of homosexuality, who arrived at the Auschwitz camp on 6th December 1941. He died there three months later. Click here to view a German police file photo of a man arrested in October 1937 for suspicion of violating Paragraph 175.
Fourteenth row (right): An illustrated response to a series of §175 trials in Frankfurt in 1950 and 1951. The judge, a former Nazi public prosecutor who had participated in the arrest of more than 400 homosexual men in 1938 and 1939, found the first of 100 defendants guilty of "degeneration" capable of "destroying the foundation of the state", the language of the Nazis. At least five defendants committed suicide before going to trial. Press coverage led to the judge's removal.
Fifteenth row (left and right): Block 24, Auschwitz. Numerous concentration camps had organised brothels, such as this one at Auschwitz, forcing female concentration camp prisoners into prostitution. These were set up mostly for the use of the SS, but often for select prisoners also. These brothels originally were established by the SS with the intention of prohibiting the spread of male homosexuality within the camps. Claus Füllberg-Stolberg and Martina Jung, et.al. Frauen in Konzentrationslagern: Bergen Belsen, Ravensbrück (Bremen: Edition Temmen, 1994), p. 136. German, Polish, Hungarian, Czechoslovakian, Soviet Union and Dutch women were chosen for the brothels through a selection process based on their physical appearance. Erika Buchman, a political prisoner from Ravensbrueck recalls that the "medium good ware would be sent to the concentration camps, the better to the Wehrmacht, and the prettiest and strongest girls into the homes for the officers and the SS." (Ibid., p. 139). The "ware", females ranging from their mid-teens to early thirties, would frequently be "tried out" in an operating room. (Ibid.) Ian Brown need only investigate the origins of the name of the first band that he ever saw live, for evidence of heterosexual urges within Nazi ranks.
Sixteenth row (left): The prisoners' brothel at the Buchenwald concentration camp, opened on 11th July 1943, was the fourth of a total of 10 so-called "special buildings" erected in concentration camps between 1942 and 1945. The very first camp brothel began operation behind barred windows in the Mauthausen camp in Austria, in the 10 small rooms of 'Barrack 1', in June 1942. Himmler, head of the SS, implemented a rewards scheme in the camps, whereby prisoners' "particular achievements" earned them smaller workloads, extra food or monetary bonuses. He also considered it beneficial to "provide the hard-working prisoners with women in brothels," as he wrote on 23rd March 1942, to Oswald Pohl, the SS officer in charge of the concentration camps. Himmler's cynical vision saw brothel visits increasing the forced labourers' productivity in the quarries and munitions factories. In this photograph, Himmler can be seen inspecting the camp brothel in Gusen.
Sixteenth row (right): Prisoners at the Dachau concentration camp were instructed to fill out this form in order to apply for a 15-minute visit to the camp's brothel.
Seventeenth row: Violence in history can most certainly not be ascribed to the possession of some sort of 'homosexual gene.' One need look no further than the era of conflict that is the focus of this essay, for evidence of this. When Nazi Germany was defeated in 1945, among the spoils of war for the victorious Soviet Army were the German people themselves. What followed were scenes - markedly heterosexual in nature - of utter horror, as an estimated two million German women were raped by Red Army soldiers. Only a handful of Soviet soldiers were ever court-martialed for the offence. Natalya Gesse, a close friend of the scientist Andrei Sakharov, had observed the Red Army in action in 1945 as a Soviet war correspondent. "The Russian soldiers were raping every German female from eight to eighty," she recounted later. "It was an army of rapists." A Catholic pastor in Danzig, testified: "They raped even 8-year-old girls, and killed those boys who tried to shield their mothers." Some Holocaust survivors were raped after being liberated. The rapists did not all wear a red star; among the perpetrators were Allied soldiers of American, British and French nationality. Rather than endure the brutal Soviet occupation, many women chose to commit suicide. In the German town of Demmin, more than 900 people took their own lives. Hundreds drowned themselves and their children in the rivers which surround the town.
Eighteenth row (left): In an interview with The Guardian on 15th September 2007, Ian also erroneously claimed that "Hitler converted to Catholicism just before he died." In actual fact, Hitler was raised by Roman Catholic parents and was brought up as a Roman Catholic. Upon coming to power, he understood how much it would hurt his cause if the 66% of the German population who were Protestants and the 33% who were fellow Catholics were to learn how anti-Christian he and his Nazi ring leaders actually were in their hearts. Hitler expressed his true thoughts and feelings for the Catholic Church in his private writings and in his candid communications with his inner circle, but was a shrewd politician who knew how to manipulate the churchmen of both of the major German faiths to his advantage, by convincing them at the time that he was a champion, not an opponent, of Christianity. Joseph Goebbels, Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, once stated, "The Führer is deeply religious, though completely anti-Christian. He views Christianity as a symptom of decay. Rightly so. It is a branch of the Jewish race." Hitler once boasted to his inner circle, "I promise you, if I wished to, I could destroy the Church in a few years; it is hollow and rotten and false through and through. One push and the whole structure would collapse... I shall give them a few years reprieve... The Church was something really big. Now we are its heirs. We, too, are the Church. Its day has gone..." On the night of 11th-12th July 1941, Hitler said "National Socialism and religion cannot exist together... The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity. Bolshevism is Christianity's illegitimate child. Both are inventions of the Jew. The deliberate lie in the matter of religion was introduced into the world by Christianity... Let it not be said that Christianity brought man the life of the soul, for that evolution was in the natural order of things." Here we see a posed picture which Hitler himself used often to show what a 'good practicing Catholic' he was. In this same interview with The Guardian, Ian talks about how he would like to see the Vatican plundered of its wealth, attaching his support to conspiracy theories that Nazi gold is buried under the Vatican. Various conspiratorial links between Catholicism and fascism are made by Ian in this Guardian interview ("Then when Mussolini took over Italy he stored all the gold in the Vatican...Hitler converted to Catholicism just before he died.") Even leaving aside for a moment the inaccuracy of such claims, the fact that Ian is attempting to discredit the Catholic faith by using the religious faith (or affiliation) of choice fascists is an extremely restrictive historical approach. It is on such precarious footing that Ian attempted to tie homosexuality to the horrors unleashed by Nazism. If Ian is keen to maintain such a one-tracked approach to this period of history, a boycott of Adidas might be in order, given that its founder, Adolf ('Adi') Dassler, was a member of the Nazi Party, and produced boots for the Wehrmacht. At The Stone Roses reunion press conference in October 2011, Ian Brown immediately pounced on a Daily Mail journalist who had introduced himself, asking "What does it feel like to represent the newspaper that used to support Adolf Hitler ?" British newspaper proprietor Lord Rothermere was a friend and supporter of both Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, which influenced the Mail's political stance towards them during the 1930s. Rothermere's 1933 leader 'Youth Triumphant' praised the new Nazi regime's accomplishments, and was subsequently used as propaganda by the Nazi Party ("The minor misdeeds of individual Nazis would be submerged by the immense benefits the new regime is already bestowing on Germany", wrote Rothermere in 1933). A journalist with sharper wit might in retort have equally asked Ian - sporting the latest Adidas range - "What does it feel like to be a walking advertisement for a manufacturer founded by a member of the Nazi Party, who produced boots for the Wehrmacht ?" It is all very well for Ian to shoot down the easy target of a Daily Mail journalist to generate a few titters from the gathered press, but his aim should perhaps have been directed instead towards the penultimate questioner at the conference, Gordon Smart of The Sun. In his desperation to be 'first' with a reformation story, Smart's oafish intrusion and speculation in this period contributed to Mani having to make a blunt request for privacy in a time of grief following the passing of his mother. At the time of writing, The Sun's Facebook page features continuous sponsored content announcing the reformation, offering readers the chance to win tickets if they 'like' the page. For a band with admirably resolute principles in their pomp, it is dispiriting to see such a cosy relationship develop with The Sun (and let's not get started on the 'hospitality' tickets on sale alongside standard tickets for the Heaton Park shows...). In promotion of his Greatest Hits solo release in 2005, Ian regaled The Sun newspaper with a story of how he was once "bombarded by a bevy of babes squashing their bare boobs against his windscreen." ... "I just thought to myself, this is rock 'n' roll !" (Ian Brown speaking to Louise Compton, The Sun newspaper, 16th September 2005). Thus, Ian can rail against the Daily Mail all he likes, but the endorsement sought from Rupert Murdoch's flagship right wing tabloid in both his solo career and his band's reunion is not exactly flying the flag for the counterculture. In December 2011, Brown (and Squire) made a guest appearance on the Justice Tonight tour, in aid of the Hillsborough Justice Campaign. A key purpose of this tour (stemming from the Don't Buy The Sun concert of September 2011) is to highlight The Sun's damning role in forming the immediate public perception of Hillsborough. In itself, Ian's appearance at the Manchester Ritz event in December 2011 is a meritorious action, but sadly it is negated by the singer's continued amiable association with The Sun newspaper. On the eve of The Stone Roses' reformation in October 2011, Ian Brown's chum Dynamo was drip-feeding Gordon Smart information on the band's reconciliation for the purpose of a Sun exclusive. The magician showed Smart the text on his phone containing affirmation from Ian Brown of the band's intention to reform. Either Ian Brown was aware of his friend showing this text to The Sun journalist, or he was not. If Brown was aware of (and comfortable with) Dynamo facilitating this exclusive to The Sun, then this does not sit well with his appearance at Manchester Ritz six weeks later. If Brown was not aware of (and uncomfortable with) Dynamo facilitating this exclusive to The Sun, then the singer needs to sit his friend down to explain what the Don't Buy The Sun campaign is all about. Returning to Ian's claims regarding Nazi gold, given the lack of substantive evidence linking the gold to the Vatican, I would as sooner entertain the notion that it is currently in the possession of Clint Eastwood, Telly Savalas, Don Rickles et al. On this venomous anti-clerical tract, Ian seems to be on a similar wavelength to author and journalist Christopher Hitchens, whose dissemination of the facts is also often skewed. In 2010, Hitchens made the following haphazard claim in Newsweek: "The so-called Vatican City, a political nonentity covering about 0.17 square miles of Rome, was created by Benito Mussolini in 1929 as part of his sweetheart deal between fascism and the papacy. It is the last survival of the political architecture of the Axis powers." Hitchens describes His Holiness as "an alleged head of state", with "repellent origins." Vatican City is not analogous to the Holy See, which conducts bi-lateral relations with 178 states around the world, as well as the European Union. The ambassadors from these states are accredited to the Holy See, and not to Vatican City, and vice-versa, the nuncios (ambassadors) that the Pope sends in return to these states represent the Holy See. This framework had existed for centuries before Mussolini even came to power. The numbers of states that have recognised the Holy See has fluctuated over this time. Even after the Italian nationalists conquered Rome in 1870, eliminating the last vestige of the Papal States, the Holy See maintained diplomatic relations with European powers such as Russia and Austria-Hungary. The 1929 Lateran Treaty, signed by Mussolini on behalf of Italian King Victor Emmanuel III and Secretary of State for Pope Pius XI, Pietro Cardinal Gasparri, resolved the 'Roman question' which had lasted since the 1870 Italian conquest, making the popes between Blessed Pius IX and Pius XI "prisoners of the Vatican." One of the three parts of the treaty established the sovereign territory of the Holy See, not only within the walls of the Vatican, but also recognizing the extraterritorial status of properties outside the Vatican, such as the major basilica churches of Rome and the papal summer retreat at Castel Gandolfo. A second part of the treaty actually was a financial settlement whereby Italy compensated the Holy See for the losses of its territory and property. By focusing on who signed the Lateran Treaty on behalf of Italy, and omitting the long history of diplomacy between states and the Holy See, Hitchens is spinning the facts in order to wage his vendetta against the Catholic Church. Pope Pius XII's leadership of the Catholic Church during World War II remains the subject of continued historical debate. Contrary to commonly held belief, Pius XII fought stridently to save the Jews of Europe from the gas chambers of Nazi Germany. Moreover, his courageous efforts were universally recognized until the mid 1960s, at which point liberal Catholics sought to facilitate a realignment of popular opinion. One such attempted rewrite of history is John Cornwell's 1999 book, 'Hitler's Pope', which accused Pope Pius XII of not doing enough, or speaking out enough, against the Holocaust. Cornwell argued that Pius's entire career as the nuncio to Germany, cardinal secretary of state, and pope was characterized by a desire to increase and centralize the power of the Papacy, and that he subordinated opposition to the Nazis to that goal. Cornwell's scholarship has been heavily criticized, for example, by Kenneth L. Woodward, who stated in his Newsweek review that "errors of fact and ignorance of context appear on almost every page." (Newsweek, 27th September 1999). Five years after the publication of 'Hitler's Pope', Cornwell himself conceded: "I would now argue, in the light of the debates and evidence following Hitler's Pope, that Pius XII had so little scope of action that it is impossible to judge the motives for his silence during the war, while Rome was under the heel of Mussolini and later occupied by Germany." (The Economist, 9th December 2004). More recently, American historian Rabbi David Dalin's 'The Myth of Hitler's Pope' (2005), moved to redress the balance, arguing that some critics of Pius are liberal Catholics and ex-Catholics who seek to "exploit the tragedy of the Jewish people during the Holocaust to foster their own political agenda of forcing changes on the Catholic Church today", and that Pius XII was actually responsible for saving the lives of many thousands of Jews. Pope Pius XI's 1937 encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge, the creation and composition of which, Pope Pius XI credited to his successor, was the first official denunciation of Nazism made by any major organisation. Smuggled into Germany, it was read from all the Catholic pulpits on Palm Sunday in March 1937. It decried Nazi's neopaganism, its war of annihilation against the Church, and described the Führer as a "mad prophet possessed of repulsive arrogance." It resulted in persecution of the Church by the infuriated Nazis, who closed all the participating presses and "took numerous vindictive measures against the Church, including staging a long series of immorality trials of the Catholic clergy." (Thomas Bokenkotter, A Concise History of the Catholic Church (2004), pp. 389 - 392). Michael Voris of RealCatholicTV sets the record straight in his 2011 documentary, 'Pius XII and the Jews', highlighting that at least 700,000 Jews were estimated to have been saved by the efforts of Pius XII and the Vatican during the Holocaust. The Catholic Church, at the direction of Pope Pius XII, was the single most successful relief organisation in saving Jewish lives, dwarfing all others. It is often said that you should never judge a book by its cover, but a definite exception should be made in the case of 'Hitler's Pope.' The dust jacket of the American edition features a standard of expertise in photo doctoring and manipulation of which Joseph Stalin would be proud. The dust jacket of the British edition shows Nuncio Pacelli leaving a reception given for German President Hindenburg in 1927. The photograph, a favourite of those who seek to portray Pius XII in an unfavorable light, shows the Nuncio dressed in formal diplomatic regalia (which could easily be confused with papal garments), as he exits a building. On each side of him stand soldiers of the Weimar republic. In front of him stands a chauffeur saluting and holding open the square-looking door, typical of automobiles from the 1920s. Those who do not recognize the differences in uniform details could easily confuse the Weimar soldiers with Nazi soldiers because of their distinctive helmets associated with Nazi-era German soldiers. Use of this photograph, especially when coupled with a provocative title such as 'Hitler's Pope. The Secret History...', gives the impression that Pope Pius XII is seen leaving a meeting with Hitler. Making matters even worse is the caption from inside the dust jacket on early British editions of the book. This caption says that the photograph is from March 1939. By this time, Hitler was Chancellor of Germany, and this was the month Pacelli was made Pope. A fair-minded person reading the caption could easily conclude that Cardinal Pacelli paid a visit to Hitler immediately prior to being elected Pope. The American edition of 'Hitler's Pope' carries the same photograph as the British edition, but undergoes transformation. It is cropped to eliminate two important points of reference: the soldier nearest the camera and the square door of the automobile, both of which provide clues as to the true date of this photo (1927). The photo also has been significantly darkened, giving it a more sinister feel. Even more telling is the intentional blurring of the background. Looking at this cover, Nuncio Pacelli is in focus, but the soldier to his left and the chauffeur are both badly blurred. Such is the degree of blurring that it is impossible even for a well-trained observer to recognize that the soldier wears a Weimar uniform rather than a Nazi uniform. It is now no longer evident that Pacelli is about to enter a vehicle; the chauffeur, due to the blurring and cropping that eliminates the car door, takes on the appearance of a saluting SS officer. Even a civilian in the background could seem to be a military (Nazi) official. Since none of the images on the British edition are blurred, and since Nuncio Pacelli's face is in focus on the U.S. cover, but the other images are blurred, the only logical conclusion is that the photo was intentionally altered to support Cornwell's thesis. Such recourse to devious photographic manipulation of Roman Catholic history by authors such as Cornwell is of course felt necessary, because Pope Pius XII never met Hitler. Liberal mainstream media, eager to propound 'Hitler's Pope' as truth, threw its considerable weight behind making the book a bestselling international sensation. 'Hitler's Pope' was excerpted in Vanity Fair and London's Sunday Times. Most liberal reviewers and commentators uncritically endorsed Cornwell's allegations, apparently without investigating their veracity. Cornwell became a celebrity in demand on the lecture, talk-show and book-signing circuit, and was given a flattering profile on television's 60 Minutes. Cornwell's about-turn over his claims did not stem from pressure by the mainstream media, who were all too happy to endorse his unverified (and strongly anti-religious) conclusions. Author Eugene Fisher - who holds a doctorate in Hebrew culture and education - lamented, "It is a sad commentary on the secular media that this blatantly anti-Catholic screed was ever published, much less hyped into bestseller status." In their nefarious assaults on the Vatican, Brown and Hitchens are both very keen to draw attention to moments in History when the Catholic Church may have fallen short of its ideals. Particular focus is given to the Second World War era, but would either figure be as keen to acknowledge Pope John Paul II's instrumental role in resolving the subsequent global conflict, in which he threw the weight of the Church behind ending Communism in his native Poland, and eventually all of Europe ? A role which in part led Time magazine to recognise him as 1995 'Man of the Year', American author Jonathan Kwitny to describe him as "Man of the Century", and Carl Bernstein to declare him to be "the greatest moral leader of our time." Christian Ostermann, the director of the Cold War International History Project at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, commented: "Poland is often overlooked as the first crack in the Iron Curtain. We're so focused on the events of 1989 that we forget that Poland in 1980 and 1981 showed the unwillingness and inability of Soviet military force to maintain hard-line rule. That's what marked the demise of the Brezhnev doctrine that had legitimized Soviet intervention since 1968." In an NME October 2009 feature, Ian interviewed hip-hop mogul Jay-Z in what too often became a cringeworthy session of sycophancy. Among the topics of the pair's discussion - overseeing a buffet in the rather plush surroundings of Lanesborough Hotel in London - was social poverty. Ian recollects a "beautiful quote" by Jay-Z, whereby if he could have one superpower, he would "zap the rich people and move them to the ghettos... and take the poor people and put them where the rich are so that the people could understand each others' life." Ian - making reference to his own song, Crowning Of The Poor - tells Jay-Z that he is one of those that has been crowned. "The world crowned you and that's it. You get shinier every day." This would only be bettered on the mutual sycophantic scale in April 2011, when Jay-Z was interviewed by Gwyneth Paltrow for Goop magazine: Gwyneth Paltrow: "As someone who has walked through museums with you, eaten with you, heard music with you, I know firsthand how creativity in all areas lifts your consciousness. Do you feel that as a cultural figure of importance it is part of your responsibility to share what inspires you ?" Jay-Z: "I think it's every human's job to inspire others, to feed one another's senses. Inspiration begets inspiration times infinity. Imagine if the person that was inspired to create the phonograph didn't share it with the world." On 'Changes', Tupac said infinitely more about social poverty and other pressing social issues in under five minutes than the combined ramblings of this NME backslapping session. For all the criticism that Ian levels at Bono - some of which is conceivably justified - for his attachment to issues of world poverty, the U2 frontman has undoubtedly made significantly greater strides in his actions than the featured NME pairing. However, neither Bono, Jay-Z or Brown, whose combined wealth (at the time of writing) would, at a conservative estimate, be one billion US dollars, have shown any willingness to renounce themselves of their own wealth to any meaningful degree. In his solo career, Ian has become a walking advertisement for Adidas - see Just Like You (A.D.I.D.A.S.) - who, along with GAP, Nike and Reebok, have a shameful record of labour exploitation across the globe (see the John Pilger documentary, 'The New Rulers Of The World'). Careful photographic positioning in greasy spoon cafes (an image tiresomely milked dry in the Britpop era a decade earlier as a badge of 'working class authenticity') in accompaniment to wildly concocted armchair theorizing on how to solve world issues, I personally find to be lacking in substance. So too the idle dreaming of a hip-hop mogul wishing he could attain cartoon superpowers to solve the plight of world hunger. In contrast to Ian's line of argument, I would propose that the most effective 'model' to follow in this respect would be found in the history of the Catholic Church itself, in the example set by St. Francis of Assisi. Speaking to The Guardian on 15th September 2007, Ian claims that "music is the nearest thing to achieving Christian ends. It unifies people and sustains them. It uplifts them and makes them closer to love. You get a great gig at Wembley or somewhere and that is modern Christianity in action." If paying in the region of £100 to watch pampered rockstars rattle through their back catalogue is "modern Christianity in action", I for one would be filled with despair (Far from being an aspirational beacon of Christianity, Wembley, lest it not be forgotten, was pushing very strongly for its slice of the Live Aid revenue in 1985). The "nearest thing to achieving Christian ends" is Christianity in its purest form, nothing else; there is a world of difference between a communal vibe - such as that experienced at a gig or football match - and an everlasting communion with God. To quote C. S. Lewis, "Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important." Conveniently, this envisioning of Christianity's renewed ethos sees Ian Brown (and a musical elite) usurp God from His throne, which is rather like a landlord offering me assurances that I will find the meaning of life at the bottom of a pint glass. Ian's ridiculous proposition that the stairs of heaven be moved to Wembley Arena calls to mind Lewis's 'The Screwtape Letters': "[God] will not be used as a convenience. Men or nations who think they can revive the Faith in order to make a good society might just as well think they can use the stairs of heaven as a shortcut to the nearest chemist's shop." A sold-out Wembley Arena is by no stretch of the imagination a stepping stone to being souled out for Jesus Christ. A sold-out Wembley Arena lines the pockets of the music establishment, whereas a souled out sentient being understands the eternal implications of the present life, and therefore lives that life in concern for the soul and eternal resting place of oneself and others. In 'Seven Pillars of Wisdom', T. E. Lawrence wrote, "and the living knew themselves just sentient puppets on God's stage.", and the world should remain just that - God's stage. If such a religious transformation as that yearned for by Ian Brown did materialise, it would in my mind fulfil the vision of Aldous Huxley when he wrote, "Maybe this world is another planet's hell." Indeed, Ian's choice of venue for this joyous gathering is rather contradictory. The Stone Roses had once proudly proclaimed that they would "never play Wembley." Speaking to the NME in December 1989, Ian offered his thoughts on the dance revolution: "I would hate it to get like America where music is really compartmentalised. Things that have happened as part of this dance revolution have affected us. Like the new law where you can get six months for throwing a party. That's the kind of event we'd rather be associated with than doing football grounds or the rock 'n' roll circuit." They reneged on that Wembley promise, playing there in what would be John Squire's final gig with the band. A pic 'n' mix approach to Religion, which may at first appeal as being the most palatable option, is ultimately a fruitless one. Christianity, nor indeed Religion as a whole, is most definitely not a sweet shop; even if it was, bear in mind that the child who tried to consume all the confectionary delights around her in Willy Wonka's chocolate factory was last seen being rolled ungraciously to the juicing room for operation. Backing every horse in a race, some may feel, is a surefire way of backing the winner. However, if you take Dutching to its extreme in a bookmaker's, the only surefire guarantee is that you will never prevail. In his interpretation of The Feeding of the Five Thousand, Ian makes a woeful attempt at reducing Jesus Christ to the status of some sort of shaman or 'vibemaster': "Then his posse went among them and the baskets were overflowing - that was the vibe in the air. That was the energy, the feeling." (Ian Brown speaking to The Guardian, 15th September 2007). Furthermore, irreverent categorisation of Jesus with Muhammad Ali and Bob Marley demonstrates a nonsensical comprehension of Religion. Lord, Liar, or Lunatic - make your choice; the suggestion that the relationship of Jesus to the Father is on a par with that of a heavyweight boxer or reggae artist is inane. With such a disrespectful (not to mention blasphemous) elastic phraseology, Ian has likened Jesus to everything ranging from a spearhead of Communism to a benign county sheriff in charge of a posse. If Ian does not believe that Christ is divine - and clearly, he does not - then he needs to stop pedalling his warped vision as to what idealized form Christianity should take, given that the term, by extension, will have become defunct. In John 14: 6, Jesus Christ said, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." In what would resemble some sort of dystopian nightmare, Ian's spiritual sputum and contagion seeks to christen Wembley Way as 'the way' to the Heavenly Father.
Eighteenth row (centre): Hitler carefully positioned in front of Church of Our Lady in Nuremberg, September 1934.
Eighteenth row (right): Hitler signing an autograph for a Christian, 24th September 1935.
Nineteenth row: Adolf Hitler did not convert to Catholicism just before he died, as Ian falsely claims. One thing the Nazi dictator did do, the day before he died, was marry his long-time mistress Eva Braun in a civil ceremony, on 29th April 1945. He was also engaged to two other women earlier in his life, Erna Hanfstaengl and Renate Müller. Both Hitler and Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda Joseph Goebbels were at one stage attracted to Magda Quandt, but Hitler withdrew his interest when he found out that she was promised to his most fanatical disciple. On 19th December 1931, Hitler, seen here in the background (twentieth row), acted as Goebbels' Best Man at their wedding. Below this is a photograph of the Goebbels family (background centre is Joseph Goebbels' stepson Harald Quandt). In 1936, Joseph Goebbels began an intense affair with the Czech actress Lída Baarová, that ended her engagement to actor Gustav Froehlich. When Magda learned of this affair, she complained to Hitler, a conservative in sexual matters who was fond of Magda and the Goebbels' young children. He ordered Goebbels to break off his affair, whereupon Goebbels offered his resignation. He wanted to divorce his wife, marry Baarová, and leave Germany for Japan with her. A furious Hitler then ordered Himmler to remove Baarová from Germany, and she was deported to Czechoslovakia, from where she later left for Italy. These events damaged Goebbels' standing with Hitler and may well explain why Goebbels was erased in this doctored photograph of their meeting with Leni Riefenstahl in 1937. The Nazi filmmaker, centre, is visited by the Führer in Berlin. They are joined by, at far left, her brother Heinz, and at far right, his wife Ilse. The ghostly outline next to Ilse in the middle right of the frame turns out to be none other than Joseph Goebbels. The Baarová affair, however, did nothing to dampen Goebbels' enthusiasm for womanizing. As late as 1943, the Hitler Youth leader Artur Axmann was ingratiating himself with Goebbels by procuring young women for him. On 21st March 1935, Adolf Eichmann married Veronika Liebl, and the couple had four sons: Klaus Eichmann (b. 1936 in Berlin), Horst Adolf Eichmann (b. 1940 in Vienna), Dieter Helmut Eichmann (b. 1942 in Prague) and Ricardo Francisco Eichmann (b. 1955 in Buenos Aires). After the death of his first wife, Carin von Kantzow, President of the Reichstag Hermann Goering married the actress Emmy Sonnemann (twenty-second row) in Berlin on 10th April 1935; Adolf Hitler was Best Man. Emmy and her daughter Edda can be seen here receiving a handwritten letter from Hermann Goering in his death cell at Nuremberg. On 28th July 1939, Josef Mengele married Irene Schönbein, whom he had met while studying in Leipzig. Their only son, Rolf, was born on 11th March 1941. Five years after Mengele emigrated to Buenos Aires in 1949, his wife Irene divorced him. She continued to live in Germany with their son. On 25th July 1958, in Nueva Helvecia, Uruguay, Mengele was remarried to Martha Mengele, the widow of his younger brother Karl. Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer of the SS, married Margarete Siegroth on 3rd July 1928, and the couple had a daughter, Gudrun, the following year. Gudrun and her father are photographed here (twenty-third row) visiting a concentration camp with Nazi entourage, probably around 1941. Himmler separated from his wife in 1940, at which time he became friendly with a secretary, Hedwig Potthast, who left her job in 1941 to become his mistress. He fathered two children with her, a son, Helge (born 1942), and a daughter, Nanette Dorothea (born 1944). Rudolf Höss, the first commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp, raised a family whilst commanding over a million people to be put to death in his garden; he and his wife and five children lived blissfully in a house less than 100 yards away from the camp. On 2nd September 1929, Martin Bormann, head of the Party Chancellery and private secretary to Adolf Hitler, married Gerda Buch. Gerda was the daughter of Major Walter Buch, who served as a chairman of the Nazi Party Court. None other than Adolf Hitler acted as a witness at the wedding and the couple went on to have 10 children (twenty-fourth row), one of whom died shortly after birth. Gerda would have a powerful influence on Bormann. She hated the Catholic Church and was a rabid anti-Semite. Joachim von Ribbentrop, Foreign Minister of Germany from 1938 until 1945, married Anna Elisabeth Henkell on 5th July 1920, with whom he had five children. Walther Hewel, an early and active member of the Nazi Party, and one of Hitler's few personal friends, often tended to be shy around women. As a result, Hitler often tried to play matchmaker for him. In 1944, Hewel married Elizabeth Blanda at Berchtesgaden. They had one son by the time of his death the following year. Albert Speer, Hitler's chief architect and, for over 3 years of World War II, Minister of Armaments and War Production for the Third Reich, married Margarete Weber on 28th August 1928. After his release from Spandau Prison, Speer formed a relationship with a German-born Englishwoman, who was with him in London at the time of his death from a stroke, on 1st September 1981. Prior to the accession of Speer, Hitler's foremost architect in the Third Reich was Paul Troost. After his death in 1934, Hitler remained close to his widow, Gerdy Troost.
Twenty-fifth row: SS Obergruppenfuhrer Arthur Greiser, unhappy in his first marriage, began an affair with a young pianist named Maria, whom he would also marry. Catherine Epstein's comprehensive work, 'Model Nazi: Arthur Greiser and the Occupation of Western Poland' (2010) showcases his love letters to her. Reinhard Heydrich, SS-Obergruppenführer and General der Polizei, chief of the Reich Main Security Office (including the SD, Gestapo and Kripo) and Stellvertretender Reichsprotektor (Deputy Reich-Protector) of Bohemia and Moravia, left behind a wife and four children. Ian Brown's vision of a 'typical' Nazi is seemingly in the mould of a Lieutenant Gruber from 'Allo 'Allo !, yet this so-called 'homosexual power base' had curiously heterosexual markings in its upper echelons. Springtime for Hitler, this was not. The Nazi Empire was, after all, one that Hitler envisaged would reign supreme for a thousand years; this would have proved rather difficult without Aryan procreation on a mass scale.
Twenty-sixth row: Adolf Hitler at the Nietzsche Archives in Weimar, Germany. Before Ian cares to run any further with the notion that a 'homosexual gene' was the root cause of World War Two, he should take care to remember that it was precisely a choice interpretation of eugenics - that of Hitler's appropriation of the philosophy of Arthur de Gobineau and Friedrich Nietzsche - which sowed the seeds of War.
Twenty-seventh row: A strong argument could be made that Adolf Hitler's devastation over the loss of a female lover, his half niece Geli Raubal, was the moment that propelled his descent into madness. The couple lived together for over two years and their stormy relationship ended in September 1931 when Raubal died in suspicious circumstances - supposedly from suicide - after having an argument with Hitler. Hermann Göring would later tell attorneys at the Nuremberg trials that Raubal's death had devastated Hitler to such an extent that it changed his views and relationships with all other people. Official Nazi photographer Heinrich Hoffmann said of Raubal's death, "That was when the seeds of inhumanity began to grow inside Hitler." Ernst Hanfstaengel, in 'The Missing Years' (1957), writes "I am sure that the death of Geli Raubal marked a turning point in the development of Hitler's character. This relationship, whatever form it took in their intimacy, had provided him for the first time in his life with a release to his nervous energy which only too soon was to find its final expression in ruthlessness and savagery. His long connexion with Eva Braun never produced the moon-calf interludes he had enjoyed with Geli and which might in due course, perhaps, have made a normal man out of him. With her death the way was clear for his final development into a demon, with his sex life deteriorating again into a sort of bisexual narcissus-like vanity, with Eva Braun little more than a vague domestic adjunct." As detailed above, Joseph Goebbels had an affair with Lída Baarová, but it was Hitler who first fell for Baarova, then 20 years old, during a visit in 1934 to a film set in Berlin. Three days later, she was summoned to tea at the chancellery, whereupon Hitler told her that she reminded him of somebody both "beautiful and tragic" from his past - Geli Raubal.
Rows twenty-eight and twenty-nine: Robert Ley, head of the German Labour Front from 1933 to 1945, increasingly devoted his time to "womanising and heavy drinking, both of which often led to embarrassing scenes in public." Evans, Richard J. The Third Reich in Power (London: Allen Lane, 2005), p. 463. In 1942, his second wife, Inge Ley, shot herself after a drunken brawl. Inge was one of many women who became infatuated with the Führer. Another was Renate Müller, and suspicion was to shroud the nature of her death, like that of Raubal before her.
Bottom row: For the sake of argument, let us pretend that Adolf Hitler did become a Catholic in his final hours. The Catholic Church is not responsible for egomaniacal interpretation of Biblical text by the fascist leaders of history. Down in his bunker, the delusional Führer could have become a vegan or a keen chess player, yet this would not taint either of these life choices one jot.

Among Ian's reading on this subject may have been William L. Shirer's 'The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich', first published in 1960. Shirer, a radio reporter for CBS, covered Germany for many years until December 1940, when increasing Nazi censorship of his broadcasts made work impossible for him. Shirer's book, purported to be a 'definitive' work on Nazi Germany, can be criticised for its coverage of homosexuality in this period. In none of its 1245 pages can one find reference to the Nazi persecution of homosexuals. Shirer disparages the alleged homosexuality of some Nazi figures, denouncing them as "notorious homosexual perverts"; their homosexuality is referred to as "moral degeneration" and evidence of their "depraved morals." Citing rifts within the Nazi hierarchy, Shirer panders to stereotype when asserting that they "quarrelled and feuded as only men of unnatural sexual inclinations, with their peculiar jealousies, can." Forsaking an objective use of language to refer to the alleged homosexuality of top Nazis, Shirer resorts to prejudice-laden comments that attack their homosexuality, rather than their fascism exclusively. As with Ian's comments to Melody Maker years later, there is an unjustifiable attempt made to forge links between the alleged homosexuality of particular Nazi figures to the regime's monstrous crimes against humanity. Headline-making attacks, such as the ransacking of the headquarters of the German homosexual rights movement by fascist students and storm troopers on 6th May 1933, are not found in the book. Shirer cites the notorious Nazi book-burning in Berlin four days later, but fails to acknowledge that many of the 20,000 torched volumes were from the trashed headquarters of the homosexual rights movement, the Institute for Sexual Science. Also ignored by Shirer are: the outlawing of gay rights groups; the closure of gay bars and magazines; the criminalisation of the intent to commit homosexual acts; the creation of the Reich Office for Combating Abortion and Homosexuality; the compiling of 'pink lists' by the Gestapo; the mass deportations of homosexuals to concentration camps; the introduction of the death penalty for gay sex. Shirer could not justifiably claim to have had no access to source material on the issue; his own bibliography cites Eugen Kogon's book, 'The Theory and Practice of Hell', published in 1950. Written by an ex-Buchenwald political prisoner, it documents the grisly fate of homosexuals: "(they) had to slave in the quarry. This consigned them to the lowest caste in the camp during the most difficult years...virtually all of them perished." A whole chapter of 'The Memoirs of Dr. Felix Kersten', the recollections of Himmler's doctor, is devoted to Himmler's fanatical obsession with the extermination of gay people. In 1959, the leading Nazi Rudolf Höss explained in his book, 'Kommandant in Auschwitz', how he sought to 'cure' homosexuality by forcing gay inmates to undertake hard labour and compelling them to have sex with female prostitutes. The Nazi campaign against homosexuality targeted the more than one million German men who, the state asserted, carried a "degeneracy" that threatened the "disciplined masculinity" of Germany. Denounced as "antisocial parasites" and as "enemies of the state," more than 100,000 men were arrested under a broadly interpreted law against homosexuality. Approximately 50,000 men served prison terms as convicted homosexuals, while an unknown number were institutionalized in psychiatric hospitals. Others - perhaps hundreds - were castrated under court order or coercion.

As the Allies swept through Europe to victory over the Nazi regime in early 1945, hundreds of thousands of concentration camp prisoners were liberated. The Allied Military Government of Germany repealed countless laws and decrees. Left unchanged, however, was the 1935 Nazi revision of Paragraph 175. Under the Allied occupation, some homosexuals were forced to serve out their terms of imprisonment regardless of time served in the concentration camps. The Nazi version of Paragraph 175 remained on the books of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) until the law was revised in 1969 to decriminalize homosexual relations between men over the age of 21. The continued legal and social prohibitions against homosexuality in Germany hindered acknowledgement that homosexuals were victims of Nazi persecution. In June 1956, West Germany's Federal Reparation Law for Victims of National Socialism declared that internment in a concentration camp for homosexuality did not qualify an individual to receive compensation. Homosexuals murdered by the Nazis received their first public commemoration on 8th May 1985, in a speech by West German President Richard von Weizsäcker - the fortieth anniversary of the war's end. Four years after re–unification in 1990, Germany abolished Paragraph 175. In May 2002, the German parliament completed legislation to pardon all homosexuals convicted under Paragraph 175 during the Nazi era.

   

'The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich' (left) by William L. Shirer is skewed in its coverage of homosexuality. 'The Pink Swastika' (1998) by Scott Lively and Kevin Abrams can also be heavily criticized for its woeful attempt to strand together homosexuality and fascism; its agenda is glaring within the claim on page 239, "At Auschwitz, for example, Kapo Ludwig Tiene became the most prolific mass murderer of all time by strangling, crushing and gnawing to death as many as 100 boys and young men a day while he raped them. Incidentally, the second most prolific serial killer in history was also homosexual, the infamous 'Bluebeard'." Firstly, the devised pecking order is flawed from the outset, as a mass murderer and a serial killer are not one and the same thing. A serial killer, as typically defined, is an individual who has murdered three or more people over a period of more than a month, with down time (a 'cooling off period') between the murders, and whose motivation for killing is usually based on psychological gratification. Secondly, the only evidence of Tiene's existence comes from a single book, 'They Called Him Piepel', by Auschwitz survivor Yehiel Dinur. Dinur had, understandably, serious issues with post-traumatic stress disorder for the remainder of his life following his two-year incarceration at Auschwitz. His literary works about Auschwitz have been criticized by fellow survivors as being factually inaccurate. Some modern Jewish scholars describe his works as pornographic fiction rather than accurate historical accounts. At any rate, Tiene was described in the book as a Lageralteste - a senior camp inmate, not one of the Nazi guards. Ian Brown would be better informed reading 'The Men with the Pink Triangle' (1980, middle) by Heinz Heger, a homosexual Holocaust survivor who died in 1994, or watching the documentary film, 'Paragraph 175' (2000, right), than latching on to insensitive homosexuality theories concocted in poorly devised revisionist works.

In May 2010, in an exercise in hippie-speak, Ian proudly proclaimed of his native city: "We've got people from all over the world that live in Manchester, but we all get on. There's no black or white or Asian or gay or straight or young or old, we're all part of the Republic of Mancunia. I think we're the most forward-looking city in the world in that attitude - more so than New York, way more so than London because people are dead tribal in London." Ian's faux-liberal attitude of rejoicing that there is no 'gay' or 'straight' in his native city of Manchester is very difficult to reconcile with his unshakeable conviction that the ancient civilizations of Greece and Rome (and a 20th century genocide) were the very essence and definition of homosexuality. As a footnote, this notion that the populace of Manchester is superior as a collective to all other cities worldwide is self-serving garbage; for example, I would consider one of Ian Brown's Mancunian chums, Gary Neville, to be the embodiment of moronic tribalism and about as forward-thinking as a boomerang. Racism and xenophobia plague every society on this planet, and the city of Manchester is no exception. In February 2012, a Jewish charity reported that more anti-Semitic crime took place in Greater Manchester than London in 2011, despite seven times more Jews living in the capital. Nearly half of the 586 anti-Semitic crimes reported in the UK were in Greater Manchester, the Community Security Trust (CST) said. Ian was extremely fortunate that his Melody Maker outburst - following hot on the heels of his 'air-rage' incident - did not derail his solo career at the outset; in early 1997, Crispian Mills, lead singer of Kula Shaker, glamourized Nazism in allegedly saying "Hitler knew a lot more than he made out. The Nazis studied the Vedas, the scriptures, the Holy Grail... They were also into magic and all that. I'd LOVE to have great big flaming swastikas onstage just for the f*** of it." During an earlier interview, Mills had said: "You can see why Hitler got support. It was probably the uniforms that swung it." He was derided by contemporary acts for this comment and accused by newspapers such as the Daily Mail of harbouring Nazi sympathies. Their second album failed to make an impact and the band's career was sabotaged by the consistently bad press these comments invited. Four years after the Meoldy Maker affair, Ian later demonstrated equally poor control in a David Brent-esque comment, made speaking to The Guardian (Saturday 2nd February 2002), when asked what life was like in his spell in Strangeways prison:

This hagiographic Guardian feature allows a host of ludicrous quasi-messianic claims from the former Stone Roses frontman to go unchecked. Ian takes drugs to get "closer to God", and describes one experience in Mexico, when he could see the colour of the planets and "hear the sound of Jamaica" from across the sea, and jaguars growling in the jungle. He sees it fit to inform the interviewer that some have been known to tell him: "You walk the earth like a god." We learn that Ian never feels weighed down by gravity when he walks down the street, and the spirit breathes life into him when he reads the Bible; in the very same feature, he claims that he reads the Bible "for the stories", so one can only assume that this a fictional, literary spirit that he perceives is being fueled within him. If Ian believes that the Bible is merely a collection of 'stories', then by extension the Ten Commandments must be nothing more than a set of handy 'tips' or 'guidelines', rather than the true command of God. In that case, the singer should not be seething with indignation at the British Airways stewardess for 'breaking' the Ninth of these. At least not until he gives a little more adherence himself to the ultimate meaning of the First. Jesus is not loved at all unless He is loved above all. Finally, Ian describes a recurring dream where he is sitting under a tree, wearing a gold crown, with a lion under one arm and a lioness under the other. When Jesus offered two crowns - a golden one or the crown of thorns - to Saint Catherine of Siena in a vision, she chose the crown of thorns. In his hubristic vision, Ian Brown deems himself as being a worthy recipient of the golden crown, and as we learned earlier in this essay, the singer is the self-appointed distributor of this crown (see his excessive fawning over Jay-Z in the quoted NME feature). Other artists to make ill-advised comments regarding the Nazi regime include David Bowie and Bryan Ferry. In 1976, David Bowie was in the grip of a crippling drug addiction, surviving on a diet of peppers, cocaine and milk (see the 'Cracked Actor' documentary for an insight into his fragile state around this time). Speaking to Playboy magazine, he stated that Hitler was "one of the first rock stars", and that Britain was "ready for a fascist leader." On 2nd May 1976, Bowie was photographed making what looked like a Nazi salute outside London's Victoria station; Bowie claimed that the photographer had simply caught him in mid-wave. Bowie later retracted and apologised for his Playboy statements, attributing them to a combination of an obsession with occultism, the Thule society and Nietzsche, and excessive drug use. In 2007, Bryan Ferry received criticism for his praise of Nazi iconography, subsequently apologising for his comments.

After a press conference in Australia in 1964, The Beatles gave Nazi salutes in response to the mass hysteria from the Australian crowd, and John Lennon can be heard saying, "Deutschland über alles" ("Germany above everything"). The first verse of Germany's national anthem - which translates as "Germany, Germany above everything" - has been ignored since the fall of the Third Reich. In November 2009, singer Pete Doherty was booed after singing this verse at a concert in Munich, and later apologised.

Here are the entire lyrics to Nature of the Threat by Ras Kass, which I will subsequently break down and analyse:


This song is controversial in some of its assertions and is, in some instances, in error.

Ras Kass is indeed 'rough' in his estimation here, given that the first humans, homo sapiens, evolved some 37,500 years ago. The phenotypical traits referred to by Ras Kass are not recessive permutations associated exclusively with Europeans. A study of the Aborigine in Australia reveals a frequency of blonde hair. Conversely, many Asians have skin that is fairer than Europeans, and many Europeans also have the combination of dark hair and eyes.

Range map of the Cro-Magnon man (Homo sapiens) - also known as European Early Modern Humans (or EEMH) - showing the extent of their migration into north Africa, the western Middle East, and Europe up to 37,500 years before present (YBP). Based on simulation by Currat & Excoffier (2004), top to bottom shows 37,500 YBP, 35,000 YBP, 32,500 YBP and 30,000 YBP.

Albinism is a congenital disorder characterized by the complete or partial absence of pigment in the skin, hair and eyes due to absence or defect of an enzyme involved in the production of melanin. Albinism results from inheritance of recessive gene alleles, and is known to affect all vertebrates, including humans. There is a blatant contradiction in the song's claim that Albinism was "a sin to the original man, Africans", yet labeling Europeans "the first race haters" immediately after. The notion that Europeans are genetically defective descendants of albino mutants, who migrated to Europe simply because black people disapproved of their presence in Africa, is strongly questionable.

A Kuna woman selling Molas in Panama City. The Kuna (Total population: about 50,000), an indigenous people of Panama and Colombia, have a very high incidence rate of albinism. In Kuna mythology, albinos (or sipu) were given a special place.

The equator, it should be noted, emcompasses North Africa; more of Africa is above the equator than below. These 'mutants' also travelled to the east and west. With each mutation, Europeans are adapting to the world, just as Asians and Australoids have experienced similar mutations that deviate from Sub-Saharan Africans. If Ras Kass is suggesting that the 'black African' has never mutated, then essentially he is rendering these people a gross disservice.

This is a rather difficult claim to substantiate. Indeed, at what point in the annals of history is Ras Kass claiming that Europeans became the first body of people to hate a race ?

This is erroneously interpreted; Schopenhauer wrote that every man is faded or bleached, in regards to how their internal human spirit pales in comparison with art.

Neanderthals, it seems, were not savage enough and may even have been wiped out by Cro-Magnon, the predecessor of modern European and Middle Eastern populations, what one could describe as a proto-caucasoid. Grimaldi man was a name given in the early 20th century to an Italian find of two paleolithic skeletons, supposedly showing 'negroid' traits. When found, the skeletons were the subject of dubious scientific theories on human evolution, partly fueled by biased reconstruction of the skulls by the scientists involved. In the 1960s, the Grimaldi find, together with various other European finds of early modern humans, was classified as Cro-Magnon (in the wider sense), though the term "European Early Modern Humans" is today preferred for this assemblage. The true nature of Grimaldi man is still a subject of controversy.

Top: The Grimaldi skeletons on display in the Musée d'Anthropologie in Monaco may have belonged to a different ethnic group. The so-called Grimaldi Man may have been a contemporary group of modern humans, distinct from the Cro-Magnons. The find is from the 'Grotte des Enfants', near Menton, on the French Riviera. The interpretation of the Grimaldi finds as belonging to a 'negroid' race is complicated by the two skeletons being that of a woman and an adolescent, and some dubious reconstruction work. The skulls had been damaged by the weight of the overlying sediments, and some reconstruction, particularly of the lower face was necessary. Having lost all her molars of the lower jaw, the upper jaw of the woman had been progressively translated forward and the lower part of the face had become more protruding. The adolescent had all his teeth, but these were manipulated by the anthropologists, Marcellin Boule and René Verneau, when trying to reconstruct the skull and the face. Boule drilled the maxillaries in order to release the wisdom teeth that were still inside them. By doing this, he changed the face, as the natural growth of the wisdom teeth would have remodeled the dental arc in a natural way. Having then too many teeth to fit the jawline, he reconstructed a 'typical' prognathic jaw, possibly bearing in mind the jaw of the woman. The diagnosis of 'prognathism' in the adolescent is hence speculative - artificial and possibly intentionally created. Based on these characteristics, Boule and Verneau concluded that the two specimen were 'negroid'. Other non-negroid characteristics were disregarded. With the rise of Afrocentrism in the wake of decolonialisation of Africa, Grimaldi man has again become the subject of controversy. Cheikh Anta Diop insisted that Grimaldi man represent a distinct black race, different from the Cro-Magnon. The Afrocentrist theory of the origin of Europeans vary somewhat from author to author, but the essence is that 'white man' only appeared around 20,000 years ago, with a 'black' Grimaldi man as ancestor.
Bottom: While Grimaldi man may well have been the earliest modern inhabitants of the Ligurian coast, the Cro-Magnons settled Europe from the East. Italy and South France being among the last areas settled, meaning the Grimaldi people would have been contemporary with rather than preceding the Cro-Magnon immigration wave. With current genetic mapping of the world's population history, the origins of Europeans from a common Caucasian / Mongolian group is dated to some 50,000 years in Central Asia, and all humans share an origin in East Africa some 150,000 years ago. The map shows the spread of early modern man (red) from Africa, based on genetic studies: modern humans (red), Homo erectus (green), Neanderthals (yellow). In Europe, the first modern humans (Cro-Magnons) would have encountered the Neanderthals. One of the major historical failings of this song is its attempt to assign racial populations to rigid national and continental borders, across such a vast period of history. Homogeneous people cannot be systematically navigated across the earth's surface, like some sort of real-life projection of a Risk board game. A host of factors - more complex than the colour of skin - have influenced the mutation and migration of the Earth's populace. 'Nature Of The Threat' takes the guise of a play in which the entirety of humanity's existence is condensed into a pendulum-like movement between the forces of good (black) and evil (white), with a succession of black superheroes - from the Black Grimaldi man to the Black general Hannibal - waiting in the wings, ready to avenge the white aggressors. Ras Kass would do well to learn from the response that Anne Frank's father, Otto Frank, gave after World War II had come to an end. He responded to remarks that were made about 'those Germans' by asking "Which German ?" 'Nature Of The Threat' would benefit greatly from even a teaspoon of such objectivity; instead we have a song which dines on the ease with which individuality is wiped out by the stereotype. If Ras Kass was ever given the opportunity to remake the debating sequence of A Matter of Life and Death along lines of race instead of nation-state, it would achieve a level of propaganda that would make Leni Riefenstahl blush.

Top: Aurochs on a cave painting in Lascaux, France, below which is the Venus of Willendorf. Ras Kass seems unaware here that he is asking us to acknowledge the artistic potential of 'Europeans', given that these come under the umbrella term of Cro-Magnon art. The oldest undisputed works of art were found in the Schwäbische Alb, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. The earliest of these, the Venus figurine known as the Venus of Hohle Fels, dates to some 40,000 years ago. Further depictional art from the Upper Palaeolithic period (broadly speaking, 40,000 to 10,000 years ago) includes cave painting (e.g., those at Chauvet, Altamira, Pech Merle, and Lascaux), portable art (Venus figurines such as the Venus of Willendorf) and animal carvings (such as the Swimming Reindeer).

The Russian Empire was officially proclaimed by Tsar Peter I following the Treaty of Nystad, in 1721. In its application of modern terms and concepts to various historical eras, Nature of the Threat is at times desperately lacking in context. A prime example of this is its classification of 'Russians' existing in the year 2000 BC. The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. In this song, Ras Kass is moulding various empires and nation states in his mind, centuries prior to them actually forming. The 'nation state' is largely a 19th-century European phenomenon, facilitated by developments such as mass literacy and the early mass media. Thus, Ras Kass's efforts to trace a white 'national pride' in Europe's DNA, going back some four millennia, are ultimately fruitless. Even in modern day history, it would be erroneous to think of empires as monolithic beasts; Empires such as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Russian Empire, the Ottoman Empire and the British Empire were multi-ethnic empires, with populations that belonged to many ethnic groups, and spoke many languages.

Europe was populated long before 2000 B.C. From approximately 40,000 B.C., there were various migrations from the Middle East into Europe. The Aryan invasion theory of India has long been disregarded. One of the main ideas used to interpret and generally devalue the ancient history of India is the theory of the Aryan invasion. According to this account, India was invaded and conquered by nomadic light-skinned Indo-European tribes from Central Asia around 1500 - 100 B.C., who overthrew an earlier and more advanced dark-skinned Dravidian civilization, from which they took most of what later became Hindu culture. This so-called pre-Aryan civilization is said to be evidenced by the large urban ruins of what has been called the 'Indus valley culture' (as most of its initial sites were on the Indus river). The war between the powers of light and darkness, a prevalent idea in ancient Aryan Vedic scriptures, was thus interpreted to refer to this war between light and dark skinned peoples. The Aryan invasion theory thus turned the Vedas, the original scriptures of ancient India and the Indo-Aryans, into little more than primitive poems of uncivilized plunderers. Ras Kass's line of thought is swayed too much towards the classical theory of the origins of Hinduism. The Aryan Invasion view of ancient Indian history has been challenged in recent years by new conclusions based on more recent findings in archaeology, cultural analysis, astronomical references, and literary analysis. Archaeologists, including Jim Schaffer and David Frawley, have established convincing arguments for this new interpretation. Archaeological digs have revealed that the Indus Valley culture lasted from about 3,500 to 1,800 B.C. It was not destroyed by outside invasion, but by internal causes and, most likely, floods. The 'dark age' that was believed to have followed the Aryan invasion may never have happened. A series of cities in India have been studied by archaeologists and shown to have a level of civilization between that of the Indus culture and later, more highly developed Indian culture, as visited by the Greeks. Finally, Indus Valley excavations have uncovered many remains of fire altars, animal bones, potsherds, shell jewelry and other evidences of Vedic rituals. Thus, there seems to be no racial evidence of any such Indo-Aryan invasion of India but only of a continuity of the same group of people who traditionally considered themselves to be Aryans. The Indo-Aryan invasion as an academic concept in 18th and 19th century Europe reflected the cultural milieu of the period. Linguistic data were used to validate the concept that in turn was used to interpret archeological and anthropological data. It is now thought that there was no invasion by anyone.

Ras Kass needs to make up his mind where racism originated; earlier in the song, Europeans are labeled "the first race haters", yet this is followed up here with the description of Hinduism as "the origins of racism." It should be noted that there are different theories concerning the establishment of the caste system in India: religious-mystical, biological and socio-historical.

Indo-European languages originated in Anatolia and dispersed from there, not India. Sanskrit is an Indo-Aryan language; Greek is a Hellenic language; and German and English are Indo-Germanic languages.

Indo-European language family. Branches are in order of first attestation; those to the left are Centum, those to the right are Satem. Languages in red are extinct. White labels indicate categories / un-attested proto-languages. Click here to view this in a larger format.

The Minoan civilization was a Bronze Age civilization that arose on the island of Crete and flourished from approximately the 27th century BC to the 15th century BC. It was rediscovered at the beginning of the 20th century through the work of the British archaeologist Arthur Evans. Will Durant referred to it as "the first link in the European chain." The early inhabitants of Crete settled as early as 128,000 BC, during the Middle Paleolithic age. However it was not until 5000 BC that the first signs of advanced agriculture appeared, marking the beginning of the civilization. The Bronze Age began in Crete around 2700 BC. In the late 3rd Millenium BC, several localities on the island developed into centres of commerce and handwork. This enabled the upper classes to continuously practice leadership activities and to expand their influence. It is likely that the original hierarchies of the local elites were replaced by monarchist power structures - a precondition for the creation of the great palaces. From the Early Bronze Age (3500 BC to 2600 BC), the Minoan civilization on Crete showed a promise of greatness.

Whilst Ras Kass is no doubt eager to attribute the ancient Egyptian name of Egypt, 'Kemet' ('black land') to skin colour, it refers instead to the fertile black soils of the Nile flood plains, distinct from the deshret, or 'red land' of the desert. If one were to adopt such an erroneous literal association of skin colour with terrain, then the skin colour of the 'original man' was neither black nor white, but red. Adam, the first man created by God in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, etymologically is the masculine form of the word adamah, meaning ground or earth, and related to the words adom (red), admoni (ruddy) and dam (blood). Ras Kass might as well be championing the exploits of Sir William Wallace or John Logie Baird, since it is thought that Scotland comes from the Greek word skotos, meaning darkness. By the close of the Bronze Age (up to Late Helladic IIIC, 1400 - 1060 BC), contacts between the Aegean and its neighbours were well established. Egypt was just one of numerous connections, in a network which extended as far as southern Spain. Mycenaean pottery, for example, has been found in Sardinia, Southern Italy and Sicily, Asia Minor, Cyprus and the Levant.

Geometry, one of the oldest mathematical sciences, is a branch of mathematics concerned with questions of shape, size, relative position of figures, and the properties of space. Initially a body of practical knowledge concerning lengths, areas, and volumes, in the 3rd century BC geometry was put into an axiomatic form by Euclid, whose treatment - Euclidean geometry - set a standard for many centuries to follow. Archimedes developed ingenious techniques for calculating areas and volumes, in many ways anticipating modern integral calculus. The field of astronomy, especially mapping the positions of the stars and planets on the celestial sphere and describing the relationship between movements of celestial bodies, served as an important source of geometric problems during the next one and a half millennia. The earliest recorded beginnings of geometry can be traced to ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Indus Valley from around 3000 BC. However, quite why Ras Kass is citing the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates as testament to Egypt's influence on the study of geometry and astronomy in Greece is baffling; surely, Euclid or Pythagoras (who was thought to have visited Egypt in his youth) would serve as a better reference point here ? 'Elements' by Euclid is one of the most influential works in the history of mathematics. Although many of its results originated with earlier mathematicians, one of Euclid's accomplishments was to present them in a single, logically coherent framework, making it easy to use and reference, including a system of rigorous mathematical proofs that remains the basis of mathematics 23 centuries later.

Top: Euclid in Raphael's 'School of Athens'. Geometry and Astronomy do not have one specific 'creator'; rather, they were developed by different people in different places, and sometimes in parallel. The ancient Greek scholars brought all the strands into a more coherent geometry than anyone else had previously managed. One only has to look at the archaeoastronomically designed Stonehenge (bottom) for refutation of the claim that Egypt 'created' geometry and astronomy. The surrounding circular earth bank and ditch, which constitute the earliest phase of the monument, have been dated to about 3100 BC.

'Philosophy' (philosophia) is the 'love of wisdom'. Wisdom cannot be stolen. Hence, 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.'

Top: Personification of wisdom (in Greek, 'Sophia') at Celsus Library in Ephesus, Turkey. Sophia is a central term in Hellenistic philosophy and religion, Platonism, Gnosticism, Orthodox Christianity, Esoteric Christianity, as well as Christian mysticism.
Bottom: Personification of knowledge (Episteme) at Celsus Library.

Knowledge is a familiarity with someone or something, that can include descriptions, facts, information, and/or skills acquired through experience or education. It can refer to both the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject. It can be implicit (as with practical skill or expertise) or explicit (as with the theoretical understanding of a subject); and it can be more or less formal or systematic. In philosophy, the study of knowledge is called epistemology, and the philosopher Plato famously defined knowledge as "justified true belief." Knowledge acquisition involves complex cognitive processes: perception, learning, communication, association and reasoning; while knowledge is also said to be related to the capacity of acknowledgment in human beings.

Venn diagram representing a definition of knowledge. Not all true beliefs are knowledge, not all unknown beliefs are false.

Ras Kass may then wish to ignore the writing of 3rd century philosopher Maximus of Tyre, who described Sappho as "small and dark." Little is known of female homosexuality in antiquity. Sappho, born on the island of Lesbos, was included by later Greeks in the canonical list of nine lyric poets. The adjectives deriving from her name and place of birth (Sapphic and Lesbian) came to be applied to female homosexuality beginning in the 19th century. Sappho's poetry centres on passion and love for various personages and both genders. The narrators of many of her poems speak of infatuations and love (sometimes requited, sometimes not) for various females, but descriptions of physical acts between women are few and subject to debate. There is no evidence that she ran an academy for girls. Her homoerotica should be placed in the seventh century (BC) context. Homosexuality was undoubtedly a feature of Ancient Greece, but the term 'Greek culture' brings together a vast number of strands: Arts, Language, Literature, Religion, Philosophy, Science, Mathematics, Dance, Music, Education, Politics. In this respect, both Ras Kass and Ian Brown are throwing terms around like confetti; Ian makes the claim that "Romans, Nazis and Greeks were all homosexual", yet soon backtracks, instead claiming that these empires had "large homosexual power bases." Later on 'Nature Of The Threat', Ras Kass shows no reluctance in breaking down 'Human Relations' into each of its subdivisions: 'Entertainment, education, labor, politics. Law, religion, sex, war and economics'; were he to do the same here for 'Greek culture', he would perhaps begin to appreciate the difficulty in applying an unbrella term of 'homosexual.' Ancient Greece was not a 'Year Zero' for homosexuality, despite the best efforts of Ian Brown and Ras Kass to designate it as such. The only two adjectives that Ian and Ras Kass seem to possess in their vocabulary for Greek and Roman civilization seems to be 'violent' and 'homosexual', yet Greek and Roman civilization were responsible for some of human's greatest achievements; indeed, the English historian Edward Gibbon wrote in 'Immortal History', "If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus." Same-sex behaviour was regulated in Ancient Rome by the Lex Scantinia, introduced in 149 BC. This law regulated sexual behaviour, including pederasty, adultery and passivity, potentially legislating the death penalty for same-sex behavior among free-born men. Some historians believe that even before Lex Scantinia, such laws existed in Rome, but direct evidence of these has been lost. See Polybius' The Histories, volume VI, chapter 37 in relation to supplicium fustuarium. In the fourth century, there would be dramatic new laws condemning same-sex behaviour. Most scholars interpret a convoluted law from the year 342 A.D. surviving in both the Theodosian Code and the Code of Justinian, as a decree from the emperors Constantius II and Constans that marriage based on 'unnatural sex' should be punished meticulously. In a law of 390 A.D., surviving in the Theodosian Code and the Lex Dei ('Law of God'), the emperors Valentinian, Theodosius, and Arcadius declared that any man taking the role of a woman in sex would be publicly burned to death. A key figure in this way of thinking was the Roman emperor, Constantine. In 312 A.D., Constantine had reached out to Christianity as the basis for his authority. Throughout the next 25 years of his reign, Constantine embraced Christianity and gave financial help to the Church and legal sanction to some of the bishops' powers. As his sons, Constantius II and Constans, came of age in an increasingly Christian society, they and many of their advisors would have grown up with Biblical strictures. Thus, the pronouncements of the Book of Leviticus (18: 22 and 20: 13) against male homosexuality as an abomination punishable by death in God's eyes would logically have influenced writers of imperial law. Such strictures were reinforced in the New Testament (Romans 1: 24 - 27). The foundations of 'Nature Of The Threat' would truly come crashing down if the theory of the first record of a possible 'homosexual couple' in history - Khnumhotep and Niankhkhnum, Egyptians who lived around 2400 BC - proved to be true (See also The Contendings of Horus and Seth in Ancient Egyptian Literature).

Khnumhotep and Niankhkhnum. The pair are portrayed in a nose-kissing position, the most intimate pose in Egyptian art, surrounded by what appear to be their heirs.

Though often ignored or suppressed by European explorers and colonialists, homosexual expression in native Africa was present and took a variety of forms. Anthropologists Stephen Murray and Will Roscoe reported that women in Lesotho engaged in socially sanctioned "long term, erotic relationships" called motsoalle. E. E. Evans-Pritchard also recorded that male Azande warriors in the northern Congo routinely took on young male lovers between the ages of twelve and twenty, who helped with household tasks and participated in intercrural sex with their older husbands. The practice had died out by the early 20th century, after Europeans had gained control of African countries, but was recounted to Evans-Pritchard by the elders to whom he spoke.

By the fifth century B.C., Rome had not even left the Italian peninsula; the Roman Principate only started in 31 B.C.

The territorial development of the Roman state. By 510 B.C., R.O.M.E. has succeeded to be nothing more than a tiny speck on the map of Europe.

As illustrated above, Rome had no vast empire in the fifth century B.C., of which they needed to be fearful of anyone in protecting. Phoenicia was an ancient civilization in the north of ancient Canaan, with its heartland along the coastal plain of what is now Lebanon and Syria, between the Lebanon Mountains and the Mediterranean Sea. Phoenicians were not black and were most likely a Semitic people. By the fifth century B.C., its decline had already began to set in. Cyrus the Great conquered Phoenicia in 539 BC. The Persians divided Phoenicia into four vassal kingdoms: Sidon, Tyre, Arwad, and Byblos. They prospered, furnishing fleets for the Persian kings. Phoenician influence declined after this. It is likely that much of the Phoenician population migrated to Carthage and other colonies following the Persian conquest. In 350 or 345 BC, a rebellion in Sidon led by Tennes was crushed by Artaxerxes III. Its destruction was described by Diodorus Siculus. Alexander the Great took Tyre in 332 BC after the Siege of Tyre. Alexander was exceptionally harsh to Tyre, executing 2,000 of the leading citizens, but he maintained the king in power. He gained control of the other cities peacefully: the ruler of Aradus submitted; the king of Sidon was overthrown. The rise of Hellenistic Greece gradually ousted the remnants of Phoenicia's former dominance over the Eastern Mediterranean trade routes. Phoenician culture disappeared entirely in the motherland. Carthage continued to flourish in North Africa, overseeing the mining of iron and precious metals from Iberia, and using its considerable naval power and mercenary armies to protect commercial interests. Rome finally destroyed it in 146 BC, at the end of the Punic Wars.

Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group. Whilst Ras Kass would have the support of Yale scholar, Ben Kiernan, in making this claim about Carthage, it nevertheless could be disputed on two counts. Firstly, the people of Carthage were sold into slavery, not exterminated. Secondly, the first genocide of history could instead be placed some seven centuries earlier. The Yu Ding records that Liwang of Zhou (d. 828 BC) ordered his army not to leave old and young of a rebel country alive.

Christians do not claim that Jesus was named 'Christ'; Jesus is called Christ, however, meaning 'the anointed one'. The word is used as a title, hence its common reciprocal use Christ Jesus, meaning 'The Messiah Jesus'. The New Testament was translated into Greek and Latin originally, and thus Greeks are naturally going to give Him a Greek name. For the same reason, most Christians do not call God 'Yahweh'; they call Him God. It is simply a matter of translation, rather than any shortcoming, or misunderstanding, in belief.

His name is the Son of God.

It should be noted that Josephus (c.37 – c.100 AD) never saw Jesus, as he was born after His crucifixion.

Jesus was not murdered by Pontius Pilate. Since Ras Kass seems cognisant of the Nicene Creed, he should be aware that Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate. The Nicene Creed incorporated for the first time the clause was crucified under Pontius Pilate (which had already been long established in the Old Roman Symbol, an ancient form of the Apostles' Creed dating as far back as the 2nd century AD) in a creed that was intended to be authoritative for all Christians in the Roman Empire. The name Peter is 'Petrus' in Latin and 'Petros' in Greek, deriving from 'petra' which means 'stone' or 'rock' in Greek. Jesus told Peter that on this rock - on him - He would build His Church (Matthew 16: 18). The Basilica in Rome is built on top of Simon Peter's remains; Jesus had already chosen Rome as His temple on earth. After the crucifixion of Jesus in the second quarter of the 1st century AD, it is recorded in the Biblical book of the Acts of the Apostles that one of His twelve disciples, Simon known as Peter, a fisherman from Galilee, took a leadership position among Jesus' followers and was of great importance in the founding of the Christian Church. It is believed by a long tradition that Peter, after a ministry of about thirty years, travelled to Rome and met his martyrdom there in the year 64 AD, during the reign of the Roman Emperor Nero. His execution was one of the many martyrdoms of Christians following the Great Fire of Rome. The question posed here by Ras Kass typifies all that is wrong with the song's thesis; because one white individual (Pontius Pilate) had a hand in the crucifixion of Jesus, the singer is in wonder as to how other white people embraced the message of Jesus. Ras Kass will only gain a foothold of objectivity when he realizes that the 'white man' is not some monolithic mass of functionality.

Top: 'Christ Handing the Keys to St. Peter' (1481 - 82) by Pietro Perugino. Peter scrapes away the humanity of Jesus to see His divinity and announces it, and this act establishes the Catholic Church. It comes into visible reality with Pentecost.
Bottom: St. Peter's Basilica.

Ras Kass might like to work on his pronunciation of In Hoc Signo Vinces ('In This Sign, Conquer'); vinces, the latin for 'conquer', is not pronounced like the surname of the fictitious Roald Dahl chocolate factory owner.

Constantine saw the Chi-Rho in a dream, which is not technically a cross, but does invoke the crucifixion of Jesus as well as symbolizing His status as the Christ. It features on the exterior of the Basilica of St. John Lateran, Rome, with the surrounding wreath symbolizing the victory of the Resurrection.

After ending all persecutions against the Faith, Emperor Constantine insisted that the bishops of the time gather together in Nicaea and deal with the Arian heresy, the challenge by the priest, Arius, to the divinity of Christ. Settling the calculation of the date of Easter was among the main accomplishments of the First Council of Nicaea, not the birth date of Christ (It would be Pope Liberius who, in 354 AD, formalized the 25th December as the birth date of Our Lord). Grammatically, the opening line of this extract is poor; Constantine did not 'convene the Nicene Creed'. Rather, the bishops of the time convened to construct the first part of the Nicene Creed. The Christian doctrine of the Trinity developed from the biblical language used in New Testament passages such as the baptismal formula in Matthew 28: 19, "Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." See also Paul the Apostle's blessing (2 Corinthians 13: 14), "May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all." The Old Roman Symbol (see above), which dates as far back as the 2nd century AD, is clearly tripartite in form. The Christian doctrine of the Trinity took substantially its present form by the end of the 4th century as a result of controversies in which some theologians, when speaking of God, used terms such as 'person', 'nature', 'essence' and 'substance', terms that had never been used by the Apostolic Fathers, in a way that the Church authorities considered to be erroneous. The raising on the third day is recorded before 325, and by contemporaries. With one stroke of his pen, Ras Kass attempts to dismiss two thousand years of Christianity, at the same time becoming preoccupied with details such as Jesus' height, skin colour and beard growth. The Resurrection is the cornerstone on which the whole of Christianity, both for the individual and for the body of the church, is built; Crucifixion ain't no fiction, and nor is the Resurrection. Jesus never spoke of His death without immediately speaking of His Resurrection and the glory of His Resurrection. He never spoke of that cross without giving a foreshadowing of the empty tomb. Ian and Ras Kass both appear keen to siphon off one from another, but these moments are divinely intertwined; there can be no Easter without a Good Friday. The 72-hour juncture between the establishment of the Eucharist and His Resurrection requires no editing. At the Last Supper, at this apex of the intimacy of His life, Jesus establishes a memorial of His Death and Resurrection. At that Last Supper, everything that had taken place on the spiritual battlefield up until that point and until the end of time came to a head at that meal, in one sublime act. Everything that happened in human history before the Paschal feast moves to that moment, and everything that has happened since, flows from that moment. It is the moment of our consummate victory, the apex of History, the centrepiece of His story.

The classic white portrayal of Jesus in art predates the Renaissance era by centuries, as illustrated earlier in this essay.

Just as I would refute the claims made by Ian Brown that a sold-out Wembley Arena ("You get a great gig at Wembley or somewhere and that is modern Christianity in action.") or taking drugs (see the singer's February 2002 Guardian interview above) brings a sentient being closer to God, I would also have to take strong exception here. Just as History is written by the victors, so too, art is painted by the victors. However, Christianity does not crave white exclusivity; if it did, it would be the Ku Klux Klan. The message of the gospel in the New Testament is what brings us closer to God. It is this message, the message of the cross, which restores our relationship with God. Through our obedience to His will, we can be reconciled to the God that created us.

 

On the left is Caravaggio's depiction of the crucifixion of Apostle Peter; on the right is Wembley Way, which Ian Brown considers to be a 'gateway' to Heaven. In his martyrdom, Peter considered himself unworthy to die in the same way as his Saviour, and thus was crucified at Rome with his head downwards. One - and only one - of these images embodies the way to God the Father; my money is very firmly on the former. Ian's man-centred structural approach to Christianity has all the self-consumed qualities of the Tower of Babel.

Thankfully, teachers do not mention that France was conquered in this era, given that France was not conquered. Under the orders of the Great Umayyad Caliph Al-Walid I, Tariq ibn-Ziyad led a small force that landed at Gibraltar on 30th April 711. After a decisive victory at the Battle of Guadalete on 19th July 711, Tariq ibn-Ziyad brought most of the Iberian Peninsula under Muslim occupation in a seven-year campaign. They crossed the Pyrenees and occupied parts of southern France, but were defeated by the Frank Charles Martel at the Battle of Poitiers in 732. However Poitiers did not stop the progress of the Berber Arabs and in 734, Avignon was conquered, Arles was attacked and the whole of Provence was overrun. In 737, the Muslims reached Burgundy, where they captured a large quantity of slaves to take back to Iberia. Berbers of the Maghrib, in 739, revolted against their Arab masters, one which was to spread through Iberia. In the midst of this chaos, Charles Martel responded with continuous campaigns against the Muslims in the south of Gaul between 736 and 739. In 759, the Franks, under the leadership of Pepin the Short, expelled the Muslims from Septimania, which was one of the five administrative areas of Al-Andalus. Why is Ras Kass so fiercely critical of other conquests, yet seemingly keen to wear this on his lapel as some sort of badge of honour ? Islam was spread by the sword throughout the Middle East, North Africa, and parts of Europe. In the summer of 1084, soldiers of the emir, Benavert of Syracuse, attacked Nicotera and carried the inhabitants away into slavery. They plundered and desecrated two churches in Reggio Calabria and devastated the nunnery of Rocca d'Asino at Squillace, raping the nuns who lived there, and taking them away as captives. If Ras Kass wishes to take any sort of racial/religious pride in events such as these, then that is entirely his prerogative.

An 'ofay' is an offensive term for a white person, used by black people. That Ras Kass sees fit to use such a term is ironic, given that at no point in this song does he descend from his soapbox to decry (what he perceives as) racism. Later in the song, Ras Kass provides a limited definition of racism, no doubt for the purpose of giving himself carte blanche to use such offensive language. It also allows him the felicitous scope to build a song around the thesis that all white people can be earmarked as potential predators.

The Moors were the medieval Muslim inhabitants of Al-Andalus (comprising most of what is now Spain and Portugal) and the Maghreb. The name derives from the old tribe of the Mauri and their kingdom, Mauretania (not be confused with the country of Mauritania). Mauretania lay in present-day Morocco and western Algeria.

Technically, the date of Granada's defeat was 2nd January 1492. The Granada War was a series of military campaigns between 1482 and 1492, during the reign of the Catholic Monarchs, Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon, against the Nasrid dynasty's Emirate of Granada. It ended with the defeat of Granada and its annexation by Castile, ending Islamic rule, Al-Andalus, on the Iberian peninsula and completing the Reconquista. Provisional surrender, in the form of the Treaty of Granada, was signed on 25th November 1491, which granted two months to the city. The reason for the long delay was not so much intransigence on either side, but rather the inability of the Granadan government to coordinate amongst itself in the midst of the disorder and tumult that gripped the city. After the terms were negotiated, which proved rather generous to the city, it capitulated on 2nd January 1492. The besieging Christians sneaked troops into the Alhambra that day in case resistance materialized, but it did not. Granada's resistance had come to its end. Whilst Ras Kass is no doubt disapproving of the actions of 'white Catholics' in this era of Iberian history, it is important that he notes the first two letters of Reconquista, since this was a Reconquest. Lands under control of the Muslims were reconquered by Catholics who possessed them more than six hundred years before Islamic warlords began stealing them.

As both a European and a Catholic, I have never heard of this one. Thanksgiving Day is a holiday celebrated primarily in the United States and Canada. Currently, in Canada, Thanksgiving is celebrated on the second Monday of October and in the United States, it is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November. The reason for the earlier Thanksgiving celebrations in Canada has often been attributed to the earlier onset of winter in the north, thus ending the harvest season earlier. Thanksgiving in Canada did not have a fixed date until the late 19th century. Thanksgiving in North America had originated from a mix of European and Native traditions. Typically in Europe, festivals were held before and after the harvest cycles to give thanks to God for a good harvest, to rejoice together after much hard work with the rest of the community. At the time, Native Americans had also celebrated the end of a harvest season. When Europeans first arrived to the Americas, they brought with them their own harvest festival traditions from Europe, celebrating their safe voyage, peace and good harvest. In this passage of the song, Ras Kass is mistakenly attempting to tie in the Treaty of Granada (25th November) with Thanksgiving Day (fourth Thursday of November), due to the close proximity of their dates. Thanksgiving in the United States was observed on various dates throughout history. The first Thanksgiving which was celebrated on a fixed day was in 1863, in an effort by President Abraham Lincoln to foster a sense of American unity between the Northern and Southern states. By the middle of the 20th century, the final Thursday in November had become the customary day of Thanksgiving in most U.S. states. It was not until 26th December 1941, however, that President Franklin D. Roosevelt, after pushing two years earlier to bring the date forward to give the country an economic boost, signed a bill into law with Congress, making Thanksgiving a national holiday and settling it to the fourth (but not final) Thursday in November. There is no 'Thanksgiving Day' in Europe, unless Ras Kass considers the populace of Norfolk Island and Pieterskerk to represent that continent in its entirety.

15th century illumination of Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont, where he preached an impassioned sermon to take back the Holy Land. The Crusades are popularly understood as power-hungry popes reaching out to grab as much land as they could possibly get, which is a misleading perception. There were three major players in the Crusades: the Catholics, the Muslims and the Byzantine Empire. In 1071, Muslim forces crushed the Byzantine Empire's army at the Battle of Manzikert; Byzantine has no more defence. Twenty years prior to this, the Church in the East and West had split - the Orthodox, effectively the Byzantine Empire, had split off from Rome. Byzantine emperor Alexios I appealed to Pope Gregory VII for help, but Gregory was occupied with the Investiture Controversy and could not call on the German emperor, so a crusade never took shape. In the year 1095, Gregory's successor, Pope Urban II, calls for a crusade, to do two things: recapture the Holy Land and save the Byzantine Empire, and that is how the first crusade began.

G.K. Chesterton once wrote, "The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him." Cardinal Ximénes was given no such racial remit as that alleged by Ras Kass here. Religion was the driving concern of the Spanish Inquisition, not skin colour. The Inquisition had no jurisidiction over practising Muslims or Jews, only over professed Christians who were still living as Muslim or Jew. Wary of the need to protect its national security at a time when it was in great danger from Muslim aggression, Spain decided independently of the Catholic Church that the Inquisition would be the tool used to ensure the loyalty of the conversos to the state. The courts of the Inquisition were duly set up by the Catholic Church to inquire into whether members of the church were properly living out their faith. The courts were also trying people for other grave sins like adultery, fornication, severe blasphemy and immorality among the clergy. By and large, the courts of the Inquisition were the most just and humane legal systems that existed anywhere in Europe at the time. They were started to protect people from unjust treatment, not to harm them with unjust rulings. As grand inquisitor, Ximénes initiated several reforms in its working and used every endeavour to reduce the number of cases reserved for its tribunal. He carefully watched the various officers of the Inquisition, lest they should abuse their power by undue violence or oppression, and he arranged and circumscribed the limits of their jurisdiction. He protected scholars and professors from the examination and supervision of the Inquisitors, and issued beneficient regulations regarding the instruction and conduct of new converts, so as to guard them against superstition and blasphemy. An examination of some of the various cases investigated and adjudged by Ximénes shows the care and diligence he exercised in discharging the duties of an office which has been much calumniated and misunderstood. Severe he certainly was, but always straightforward and just in the wielding of his authority as grand inquisitor. In 1499, Ximénes accompanied the court of the Spanish Inquisition to Granada, and there joined the Archbishop of Talavera in his efforts to convert the Islamic Moors to Christianity. The Archbishop of Talavera had used the more gentle measure of slow conversion through argument, but Ximénes proceeded with the more direct and quick means of forced mass conversion and ordered the burning of all Arabic manuscripts in Granada, except those dealing with medicine. The indignation of the unconverted Mudéjar swelled into open revolt, known as the First Rebellion of the Alpujarras. The revolt was suppressed and they were given a choice of baptism or exile, and most accepted the former. However, Ximénes had created an insoluble problem that would not end until 1609, when the Moors were expelled from Spain.

Top: The Reconquista was a crusade for Christ, not a crusade against black people. The above map details the expulsion of Jews in Europe from 1100 to 1600. "In the same month in which their Majesties [Ferdinand and Isabella] issued the edict that all Jews should be driven out of the kingdom and its territories, in the same month they gave me the order to undertake with sufficient men my expedition of discovery to the Indies." So begins Christopher Columbus's diary. The expulsion that Columbus refers to was so cataclysmic an event that ever since, the year 1492 has been almost as important in Jewish history as in American history. On 30th July of that year, the entire Jewish community, some 200,000 people, were expelled from Spain. Earlier in the song, Ras Kass instructs us to 'check the historical pattern'; if he were to do the same himself here, he would see that the focal point for enforcing an ultimatum of 'conversion or exile' in 1499 was the same as that in 1492 - Religion. The Inquisition was used by the Spanish monarchy to promote Spanish loyalty through the religion of the state. If, as Ras Kass seems to believe, Christian Spain was driven by a strictly racist agenda against black people in this era, would he care to explain why hundreds of thousands of Jews fled Spain and Portugal in 1492 and 1497 respectively ? Furthermore, would he care to explain why two Catholic Saints - Saint Ignatius of Loyola and Saint Teresa of Ávila - were brought before the Inquisition at this juncture of history ? The demonization of the Spanish Empire in thie era is known as The Black Legend, and Ras Kass is manifesting his very own 'Black Legend' in this passage of the song. The Conquistadores and in particular, the Spanish Empire, were cast in a less than favorable light by their enemies, in a politically motivated attempt to morally disqualify Spain and its people, and to incite animosity against Spanish rule. The first people who spread lies about the Inquisition were other European countries. Spain's inquisition began in 1478; just 14 years later in 1492, Christopher Columbus, who was sponsored by Ferdinand and Isabella discovered the New World that was rich with all sorts of treasures. As the sixteenth century dawned, Spain entered her golden age, a period of great wealth, influence, prosperity and military power. All of the surrounding countries, who had similar desires of conquering the New World and advancing their kingdoms, looked on with both jealousy and fear at Spain's ascent to power. So, the newly minted Protestant countries of Germany and England, helped by the printing press, began to wage a propaganda war against Spain and thus created the Black Legend. The Black Legend is a set of myths, claiming that the Spanish were a superstitious people, still stuck in what is sometimes erroneously called the Dark Ages. Two important Protestant publications in the propaganda war were John Foxe's 'Book of Martyrs' (1554) and a leaflet published in 1567 penned by a supposed Inquisition victim named Montanus. Montanus portrayed Catholic Spaniards as barbarians who ravished women and sodomized young boys. The propagandists soon created 'hooded fiends' who tortured their victims in horrible devices like the knife-filled Iron Maiden (which never was used in Spain). The number of victims was exaggerated; Foxe claimed 32,000 were burned at the stake (In actual fact, during the high point of the Spanish Inquisition from 1478 to 1530, scholars found that approximately 1,500 - 2,000 people were found guilty. From that point forward, there are exact records available of all 'guilty' sentences, which amounted to 775 executions). The myth became the accepted stereotype, as seen in Dostoyevsky's Grand Inquisitor in 'The Brothers Karamazov' and in Edgar Allan Poe's tale of 'The Pit and the Pendulum'. Innumerable books and pamphlets poured from northern presses, accusing the Spanish Empire of inhuman depravity and horrible atrocities in the New World. Opulent Spain was cast as a place of darkness, ignorance and evil.
Bottom: Ras Kass would no doubt include Saladin in his roster of 'great Moors'; however, the actions of the Kurdish warrior following the conquest of Christian Egypt very much blur the lines in the singer's imagined 'Merciless White versus Defenceless Black' spiritual battlefield. After Saladin's victory, Egypt did not simply become Muslim, but Sunni Muslim, because Saladin had all the Shia Muslims slaughtered.

The term 'Moor' applies not just to Africans, but also at various times to Arabs and Muslim Iberians. Thus (even though the term means 'black'), Moors were not simply a 'black people'.

A self-depiction by the Muslims in Iberia, taken from the 'Tale of Bayad and Riyad', a 13th-century Arabic love story.

Baghdad eclipsed Ctesiphon, the capital of the Persian Empire, and is the capital of modern-day Iraq. Several Turkish emirs gained a strong level of influence in the region, such as the Eldiduzids. However, there has never been any such entity as 'Baghdad, Turkey'. If Ras Kass is going to identify a body of people as the 'forefathers of black people', he should at least choose something of substance, otherwise the study of History becomes very muddled indeed. At the time of writing this essay, the United States are in occupation of Baghdad but one would not imagine anyone referring to this region as Baghdad, United States.

The word negro means 'black' (not 'black object') in Spanish and Portuguese, from the Latin niger. Around 1442, the Portuguese first arrived in sub-Saharan Africa while trying to find a sea route to India. The term negro, literally meaning 'black', was used by the Spanish and Portuguese as a simple description to refer to people. From the 18th century to the late 1960s, 'negro' (later capitalized) was considered to be the proper English-language term for certain people of sub-Saharan African origin. The usage was accepted as normal even by people classified as Negroes, until the later Civil Rights movement in the late 1960s. One well-known example is the identification by Martin Luther King, Jr. of his own race as 'Negro', in his famous 1963 speech, 'I Have a Dream.' During the American Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, some African-American leaders in the United States, notably Malcolm X, objected to the word, preferring 'Black', because they associated the word Negro with the long history of slavery, segregation, and discrimination that treated African Americans as second class citizens, or worse. In Spain, Mexico and almost all of Latin-America, negro means 'black person' in colloquial situations, but it can be considered to be derogatory in other situations (as in English, 'black' is often used to mean irregular or undesirable, as in 'black market/mercado negro'). However, in Spanish-speaking countries such as Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay where there are few people of African origin and appearance, negro (negra for females) is commonly used to refer to partners, close friends or people in general independent of skin color. In Venezuela the word negro is similarly used, despite its large African descent population.

From about the 8th century onwards, an Arab-run slave trade also flourished, with much of this activity taking place in East Africa, Arabia, and the Indian Ocean. 1441 marks the start of European slave trading in Africa, when the Portuguese captains Antão Gonçalves and Nuno Tristão captured 12 Africans in Cabo Branco (modern Mauritania) and took them to Portugal as slaves. The first Englishman recorded to have taken slaves from Africa was John Lok, a London trader who, in 1555, brought five slaves from Guinea. A second London trader taking slaves at that time was William Towerson, whose fleet sailed into Plymouth following his 1556 voyage to Africa and from Plymouth on his 1557 voyage. Despite the exploits of Lok and Towerson, John Hawkins of Plymouth is often considered to be the pioneer of the British slave trade, because he was the first to run the Triangular trade, making a profit at every stop. Hawkins' 1564 voyage on the huge 700-ton ship, Jesus of Lubeck, however, pertain to the second of his three slavery voyages. Members of a London syndicate, including Benjamin Gonson (Hawkins' father-in-law and Treasurer of the Admiralty), merchants and civic leaders Sir Thomas Lodge, Sir Lionel Ducket and Sir William Winter, backed Hawkins' first slavery voyage. In October 1562, Hawkins, with about 100 men, left Plymouth on board three ships: the Solomon (120 tons), the Swallow (100 tons) and the Jonas (40 tons). Thomas Hampton of Plymouth was second in command. After stopping off at Tenerife in the Canaries, they sailed to Sierra Leone on the Guinea coast, where they took on board a cargo that included about 300 slaves "besides other merchandises which that countrey yeeldeth", some traded, some purchased and some captured. In Hispaniola, despite that by Asiento the Spanish had granted slave-trading agreements solely to the Portuguese, the Africans were traded for hides, ginger, sugar and pearls. Hawkins returned to Plymouth in September 1563. On 18th October 1564, Hawkins again left Plymouth for Guinea and the West Indies, on his second slave trade voyage. Following the success of his first mission, this time one of his benefactors was Queen Elizabeth herself. His ships were the Jesus of Lubeck (700 tons), again the Solomon, the Tiger (50 tons) and the Swallow (30 tons; not the same ship that sailed previously). One of the unknowing drawbacks for Ian Brown in raiding Nature Of The Threat for lyrical inspiration is that he himself is propagating falsehoods and errors, such as with the citing of the first slave ship on Some Folks Are Hollow.

Cannibalism is neither a uniquely black or white domain. The term comes from Caníbales, the Spanish name for the Carib people, a West Indies tribe formerly well known for their practice of cannibalism, witnessed by Christopher Columbus. Ibn Battuta, a 14th century Moroccan Berber Islamic scholar and traveller, recorded his encounters with cannibalism in Africa. A group of African cannibals and their leader came to see sultan Mansa Suleiman. They came from a region that possessed a gold mine, so the sultan was gracious to them, and gave them a slave woman as a hospitality gift. The cannibals killed and ate her, then smeared her blood on themselves and returned to thank the sultan.

This lyric, taken literally, makes the false assertion that 'white people' have slaughtered an entire race. I am not quite sure what charge is being laid at the door of nuns here by Ras Kass, but I would contend that it rather pales in comparison to what happened at the nunnery of Rocca d'Asino at Squillace in 1084 (see above).

The Earth's population will not 'almost all be Black' by 2050. Since this song has been one long diatribe against 'White Europeans', I have selected the following European population projected data, from a 2004 United Nations Report, 'World Population to 2300.' It estimates that there are to be over 600 million Europeans in the year 2050, so unless Ras Kass has plans up his sleeve to do a 'Jeffrey Amherst' on the continent any time soon, his figures do not quite add up.

Source: A 2004 United Nations Report, 'World Population to 2300.'

Gunpowder was invented in the 9th century and firearms in the 12th century in China. These inventions were later transmitted to the Middle East and to Europe. The direct ancestor of the firearm is the fire-lance, a gunpowder-filled tube attached to the end of a spear and used as a flamethrower; shrapnel was sometimes placed in the barrel so that it would fly out together with the flames. The earliest depiction of a gunpowder weapon is the illustration of a fire-lance on a mid-10th century silk banner from Dunhuang. The Tê-An Shou Chhêng Lu, an account of the siege of De'an in 1132, records that Song forces used fire-lances against the Jurchens. In due course, the proportion of saltpeter in the propellant was increased to maximise its explosive power. To better withstand that explosive power, the paper and bamboo of which fire-lance barrels were originally made came to be replaced by metal. And to take full advantage of that power, the shrapnel came to be replaced by projectiles whose size and shape filled the barrel more closely. With this, we have the three basic features of the gun: a barrel made of metal, high-nitrate gunpowder, and a projectile which totally occludes the muzzle so that the powder charge exerts its full potential in propellant effect. The earliest depiction of a gun is a sculpture from a cave in Sichuan dating to the 12th century of a figure carrying a vase-shaped bombard with flames and a cannonball coming out of it. The oldest surviving gun, made of bronze, has been dated to 1288 because it was discovered at a site in modern-day Acheng District where the Yuan Shi records that battles were fought at that time; Li Ting, a military commander of Jurchen descent, led foot-soldiers armed with guns - including a Korean brigade - in battle to suppress the rebellion of the Christian Mongol prince Nayan. The Arabs obtained firearms in the 14th century. Ahmad Y Hassan claims that the Battle of Ain Jalut in 1260 saw the Mamluks use against the Mongols in "the first cannon in history" gunpowder formulae which were almost identical with the ideal composition for explosive gunpowder. However, Iqtidar Alam Khan states that it was invading Mongols who introduced gunpowder to the Islamic world and cites Mamluk antagonism towards early riflemen in their infantry as an example of how gunpowder weapons were not always met with open acceptance in the Middle East. One theory of how gunpowder came to Europe is that it made its way along the Silk Road through the Middle East; another is that it was brought to Europe during the Mongol invasion in the first half of the 13th century. English Privy Wardrobe accounts list "ribaldis", a type of cannon, in the 1340s, and siege guns were used by the English at Calais in 1346. Despite the best efforts of Ras Kass to portray it as such, Christianity is not some sort of white supremacist manifestation. Religion and ethnicity are two distinct entities that should not be confused. God did not promise to save an ethnicity; He promised only to save souls.

Top: An illustration of an ampulliform Chinese fire-lance with a gunpowder charge shooting a blast of flame with lead pellets as coviative projectiles. The weapon was called the 'phalanx-charging fire-gourd' ('chong zhen huo hu-lu'). This illustration is from the Huolongjing, a 14th century military treatise compiled by Liu Ji and Jiao Yu, with the preface added in the year 1412.
Middle: Hand cannon from the Chinese Yuan Dynasty (1271 - 1368).
Bottom: Guns - Safavid Empire - Iran (Persia).

It is very easy to identify the limitations in such a definition. It is rather like saying that Chess is a board game in which white pieces attack and capture black pieces in an effort to checkmate the black king. Racism is the belief that there are inherent differences in people's traits and capacities that are entirely due to their race, however defined, and that, as a consequence, justify the different treatment of those people, both socially and legally. Moreover, racism is the practice of the different treatment of a certain group or groups, which is then justified by recourse to racial stereotyping or pseudo-science.

The way in which this is worded makes little sense ("Before slaves came here", white people would perform this act "in front of all the slaves").

Ras Kass's source material for many of the claims on this track stem from 'The Isis Papers; The Keys to the Colors' (1991) by Dr. Frances Cress Welsing, and the work of Dr. Ishakamusa Barashango, the latter of whom is namechecked in the song. Cress Welsing cites a 'behavior-energy' underlying racial conflict, and asserts that both homosexuality and sexism are necessarily derived from this behavior-energy system. Her work has been criticized for stating that black male homosexuality is consciously imposed on the black man by the white man in order to destroy the black family, that black homosexuality is a sign of weakness and that homosexual patterns of behavior are simply expressions of black male self-submission to other males in the area of sex, as well as in other areas such as economics, education, entertainment, labor, law, politics, religion, and war.

   

Dr. Frances Cress Welsing (left), Dr. Ishakamusa Barashango (middle) and Ras Kass (right).


Bibliography:

RealCatholicTV.com

The Catholic Encyclopedia


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Paul McAuley


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