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How Not to Choose Cover Art for “The Israel Lobby”

Via Harry's Place, the German edition of the Mearsheimer/Walt book:

("In German it means, 'The Bart, The." "No one who speaks German could be an evil man!")

There are no doubt those who will argue that incorporating the Star of David into the U.S. flag is not ipso facto anti-Semitic. It certainly is unfortunate, however, given how this iconography has been used in the past:

The image above is of the cover of the Nazi propagandist Johann von Leers' book The Forces Behind Roosevelt (hint: the forces were not the wheels on his wheelchair).

Gene at Harry's Place generously allows that the German publisher might not have been aware of this eyebrow-raising concatenation of circumstances. If that were true, the German publisher should be fired from his job for being a fucking ignoramus. Further, I don't think one needs to be fluent in every trick of Hitlerist propaganda to immediately sniff around the motive behind what was obviously intended as a provocative cover.

The German conscience is still very much tormented by guilt over its not-too-distant history, so one need only be alive and breathing in Germany today to realize that the use of Jewish symbolism in a leery, conspiratorial manner is bound to touch a nerve or two and ring up a whole list of uncomfortable questions. Is this worth the price in terms of book sales? Evidently so.

A shame Team Chosen didn't try this icky profit play first. It'd have done von Leers proud.

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