In Memory: Ethel and Julius Rosenberg
Today is Saturday, 19 June 2010.
On this date in 1953, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg became the first American civilians to be judicially murdered for the crime of espionage.
Part of the reason the Rosenbergs were killed was the general Cold War hysteria being whipped up by the right-wing, and particularly by the Republican Party, which cynically exploited an American population largely ignorant of the fact that the USA/USE and its subjects and allies were far more powerful than the USSR bloc.
At least as equally significant, I believe, is that the Rosenbergs were Jewish.
As I discussed earlier this year in my column on the Oklahoma City Bombing, the false identification of Judaism and Communism is deeply embedded in European thinking, whether in Eastern, Central, Western, or Far Western Europe (the USA/USE). Anti-Semitism is also similarly deeply embedded in religious, economic, and cultural terms. To this day, a plurality of Americans, at least, adhere to various Christian factions (e.g., evangelical, pentecostal, charismatic) which claim that all Jews who don’t convert to Christianity will, after the “Second Coming” of Christ and the Last Judgment, be damned for all eternity to hell, the Ultimate Holocaust. The assassination of the Rosenbergs must have given a particularly pleasing frisson to adherents of that obscene viewpoint.
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Incidentally, for those keeping score, the term “Second Coming” is to be found nowhere in the New Testament. The word popularly understood as “Second Coming” is, in the Greek, parousia, meaning “arrival”, “coming”, or “presence”. The use of the term “Second Coming” by self-proclaimed “Bible-believing Christians” is merely evidence of their infidelity to what they consider “The Book”, and of their hypocrisy.
On this date in 1953, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg became the first American civilians to be judicially murdered for the crime of espionage.
Part of the reason the Rosenbergs were killed was the general Cold War hysteria being whipped up by the right-wing, and particularly by the Republican Party, which cynically exploited an American population largely ignorant of the fact that the USA/USE and its subjects and allies were far more powerful than the USSR bloc.
At least as equally significant, I believe, is that the Rosenbergs were Jewish.
As I discussed earlier this year in my column on the Oklahoma City Bombing, the false identification of Judaism and Communism is deeply embedded in European thinking, whether in Eastern, Central, Western, or Far Western Europe (the USA/USE). Anti-Semitism is also similarly deeply embedded in religious, economic, and cultural terms. To this day, a plurality of Americans, at least, adhere to various Christian factions (e.g., evangelical, pentecostal, charismatic) which claim that all Jews who don’t convert to Christianity will, after the “Second Coming” of Christ and the Last Judgment, be damned for all eternity to hell, the Ultimate Holocaust. The assassination of the Rosenbergs must have given a particularly pleasing frisson to adherents of that obscene viewpoint.
______________________________________
Incidentally, for those keeping score, the term “Second Coming” is to be found nowhere in the New Testament. The word popularly understood as “Second Coming” is, in the Greek, parousia, meaning “arrival”, “coming”, or “presence”. The use of the term “Second Coming” by self-proclaimed “Bible-believing Christians” is merely evidence of their infidelity to what they consider “The Book”, and of their hypocrisy.
posted by HH at 8:32 PM
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