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| Skokie's Statue To Hitler Fan M.K. Gandhi |
On October 2, 2004, with much fanfare and an obvious eye toward the burgeoning Indian vote in his village, Skokie Mayor George Van Dusen unveiled Illinois' first statue of Mohandas Gandhi.
The 8 ft. tall bronze statue stands in Skokie's sculpture park/bike path near Dempster and McCormick a mere 2 miles down the road from the Illinois Holocaust Museum.
The marble base upon which the statue sets contains an accolade to the Indian ascetic, which reads, "Apostle of Non-violence, Love, Truth and Justice." It also contains four quotations from the Indian nationalist leader -- all lofty appeals to truth, justice, righteousness, yada, yada, yada.
Oddly it omitted this utterance that the Mahatma issued in the Indian Newspaper, Harijan on April 22nd, 1940 -- the day that France formally surrendered to the armies of Adolf Hitler:
"Germans of future generations will honour Herr Hitler as a genius, as a brave man, a matchless organizer and much more."
Let me repeat. That glowing endorsement of Adolf Hitler, the murderer of 6 million Jews and 4 million others was written by Mahatma Gandhi.
I stumbled onto that little gem on page 190 of award-winning historian, John Lukacs' 1990 work, The Duel: 10 May-31 July 1940 - The Eighty Day Struggle Between Churchill and Hitler.
As I recall, members of Skokie Mayor Van Dusen's Democrat party howled when it was revealed that California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's father had been a member of Hitler's National Socialist Party.
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| Gandhi Fan Van Dusen |
And they actually sought to shoot down the nomination of a Reagan appointee to a Treasury Department post when it was revealed that as a 10 year old boy he had been enlisted in the Hitler Youth -- the equivalent of the Boy Scouts. In fact, Van Dusen was a top aide then to one of the very liberal Congressmen, Sidney Yates, who was making those noises.
But neither of those ever even came near the outright endorsement of Adolf Hitler that was penned by the supposed Indian holy man.
Odd, the selectivity of the outrage of these doctrinaire left-wing pols, isn't it?
You know, my whole life I never heard very many good things about Ghandi. Recently I've read portions of a book that even claim to document that he was a homosexual too, with a great disdain for women. Perhaps true, maybe not, I don't know, but he doesn't seem like he was a very nice man.
ReplyDeleteHe may have been gay, since he told his wife at one point that he just wanted to sleep with her "as a sister." But George Orwell, who lived in the area for a time during Gandhi's celebrity, thought that he was a total charlatan. Orwell wrote that it cost about 25,000 Pounds Sterling a year to keep up Gandhi's appearance of poverty -- i.e. they had to transport in special peasant foods for him etc.
ReplyDeleteThe Nazi's had already been clamping down on the Jews in Germany for at least 6 years when Gandhi wrote what a great man Hitler was.
Some liberal icon!