When Arie Zmora escorted an Israeli TV news crew around St. Cloud a few years back, he didn’t expect any trouble. The former St. Cloud State University (SCSU) professor had given an exclusive interview for a feature news story about anti-Semitism in the Granite City.
Eventually, they stopped in front of St. Mary’s Cathedral to get shots of the swastika engravings high on the church’s north and south walls. Seeing swastikas on a church shocked the veteran news team, even though they had years of experience filming some rather fierce scenes in Israel.
Soon, a small, curious crowd gathered around the crew, and a few of the onlookers angrily questioned why they were taking footage of the swastikas. After all, it was 2002, a year in which St. Cloud faced an onslaught of negative news coverage, from the Star Tribune to the Washington Post, about incidents of racism, anti-Semitism, and hate crimes. Many St. Cloud residents felt the coverage to be heavily imbalanced and unfair.
Ok.... Let's hear them out...
Perhaps it is not a coincidence that 2002 was the same year that the St. Mary’s church council first voted to remove the swastika discs. Rev. Steve Binsfield, rector of St. Mary’s, has repeatedly expressed his frustration over such coverage and criticism.
In a recent church bulletin, Binsfield noted how “the press can twist anything,” and how members of the church can “understand the history of the symbol and that it was a part of our church building before Nazism took strong root, the presence of that broken cross does more harm today in the public perception of our Church than good.”
Well ummmmmm 2002.. why did it stay up there that long?
Unfortunately, many subscribed to the ‘gospel of hate’ preached by radio priest, Father Charles Coughlin,” he wrote. In the 1930s, Charles Coughlin became the national mouthpiece of hate and anti-Semitism, with millions of listeners tuning in to his weekly radio program. A Catholic priest based in Michigan, Coughlin ranted endlessly about absurd Jewish-Communist conspiracies on his program. He also founded proto-White supremacist organizations that would go on to support Nazism and fascism.
Ok... the innocent rational... gone
sorry I don't see it. Your area supported proto-nazi's in america and happened to use the swaztika as a sign of their german nationalism
ummmmm i dunno maybe when we came back from the war it was time for it to come down at the least.
read the whole thing.... cause it is good newspaper journalism
No comments:
Post a Comment