Before we jump into the media’s hypocrisy around Ukraine, a quiz question. The latest FBI statistics show that violent crimes dropped last year, as did hate crimes — except against Jewish people. Those went up.
Learn more in Episode 69, featuring the brilliant Leslie Zane, who explains how hate movements have poisoned people’s subconscious minds.
Now, onto Ukraine, the latest topic to explode the media’s hypocrisy meter.
Big media are rightfully pointing out Trump’s dangerous capitulation to Russia. “Even in the annals of Mr. Trump’s erratic presidency, the Anchorage meeting with Mr. Putin now stands out as a reversal of historic proportions,” the New York Times declared, noting that Trump got precisely nothing out of Russia, and has no plan for sanctions.
“Some critics compared it to the 1938 conference in Munich, when Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain of Britain surrendered part of Czechoslovakia to Germany’s Adolf Hitler as part of a policy of appeasement.” [Reminder: I don’t link to the NYT, which is largely a disaster. But if you must read it, do so for free this way.]
It’s not just the Times. Complaints about appeasement are everywhere. The BBC reported yesterday that it has asked British Prime Minister Keir Starmer whether the UK is “complicit in US 'appeasement' of Russia.” The Guardian noted, “For those who feared the summit on Ukraine might resemble Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler in 1938, the reality was worse.”
Yet these same media have been demanding appeasement from Israel. That’s not an opinion or assessment; it’s a fact. As I discussed in Episode 49, the media routinely cites Webster’s for definitions. There, to appease is “to make concessions to (someone, such as an aggressor or a critic) often at the sacrifice of principles.”
That is exactly what the media constantly says Israel must do: end the war without securing the return of remaining hostages and the end of Hamas, the Arab Nazi (yes) terrorist regime. Hamas and other Gazan terrorists carried out the Oct. 7 massacres of more than 1,000 people in Israel. These were purposely targeted civilians, not collateral damage. And the people of Gaza celebrated with candy and fireworks.
The media insists Israel make the biggest possible concession — no more war — at the sacrifice of the core, legitimate principles that it went to war for after those mass rapes and slaughter.
The real historical lesson
If the media wants to look back at World War II, it must do so honestly and fully. Here’s the reality, as I reported in Episode 58:
In the 1930s and the 1940s, there were people around the world, including right here in the United States, who thought the Nazis were the good guys. You know, they were socialists — “Nazi,” National Socialists. But the people who understood the truth, the facts, knew better. They saw what was going on.
They regretted not having taken much stronger action against Germany after World War I because the failure to take those stronger actions Allowed Nazism to grow, metastasize. In 1940, FDR understood that Nazism had to be defeated. People calling for appeasement and ceasefire deals, these kinds of things, were wrong. Those don't work.
FDR: “The experience of the past two years has proven beyond doubt that no nation can appease the Nazis. No man can tame a tiger into a kitten by stroking it. There can be no appeasement with ruthlessness.”
Tens of millions of civilians were killed in World War II. And afterward, Germany was deradicalized and denazified via occupation by Allied Forces.
Yesterday, Ukrainian Prime Minister Vladimir Zelensky came to the White House along with European leaders who support Ukraine, including the chancellor of Germany. On MSNBC, Rachel Maddow reported, “The world has evolved far enough and fast enough that Germany itself is now on the side of the countries that remember the catastrophe of appeasement, even though they were the ones back then who were appeased.”
Across the mainstream media, Zelensky is recognized for his willingness to stand up against an invasion from an anti-democratic movement trying to wipe his country off the map. He’s seen as stalwart in leading his people to keep fighting, and to secure his nation’s borders. Perhaps the media should listen to him about how his country’s struggle is so similar to that of Israel.
JL
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