Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf" is as vile as any book ever published.
Written in 1923 while he was in prison, it is the work of a failure; what is more, of a man who knows himself to be a failure. In the book he invents a "racial ladder" with Germans naturally at the top of it and Jews down at the bottom. If only they had been properly German, all those other people would have recognized his greatness. But by definition they couldn't be German, and they stood in his way, and so he had to kill them, stamp them out.
Almost 80 years after its first appearance, "Mein Kampf" remains an international hit. A slew of racists, radicals and Islamists share a frame of mind that the West is selfishly conspiring against them, with the Jews once again secretly in charge. Catering to such people since the early '60s, editions of "Mein Kampf" have been put out in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, and it is reported to be a best seller in the Palestinian Authority area. As its Arabic translator Luis al-Haj expresses it, "National Socialism did not die with the death of its herald. Rather, its seeds multiplied under each star."
Traditionally, Arabs were the masters and Jews were second-class subjects.
European-style anti-Semitism came in during the 19th century. Zionism, another import from Europe, redefined Jews according to nationality rather than religion, and the accompanying improvement in their lowly status abruptly challenged Arab assumptions of superiority. These second-class people could surely never have done it on their own; they could only be obtaining their new power from outside — it had to be a plot. Hitler says so, too: They have no thought of building up a Jewish state in Palestine, so that they might inhabit it, but they only want a central organization of their international world cheating, endowed with prerogatives, withdrawn from the seizure of others: a refuge for convicted rascals and a high school for future rogues.
Of all the Arabs convinced of Hitler's coming triumph, none was so eager as Haj Amin al-Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem and then-leader of the Palestinian Arabs. Haj Amin converted the Palestinian cause into a local branch of Hitler's worldwide anti-Jewish persecution. A friend and admirer of Himmler's, he raised a division of Bosnian Muslims for the SS. Hitler made grandiose promises to him but was cautious enough to add that they could be met only after victory.
Fanaticism had led Haj Amin into utter delusion. Hitler, the expected savior, had in reality the settled conviction that Arabs were "Untermenschen," and he had no intention of doing them any favors. On his racial ladder, Arabs occupied a servile place, held in much the same contempt as the Jews. All sorts of Arab leaders were to follow Haj Amin's example and fall into the racist trap Hitler set for them.
It cannot be proved, but I suspect that many — probably most — Arabs accept Israel as a fact of life. But the leadership, the intellectuals particularly, have internalized and perpetuated Hitler's fantasies about Jews and a Jewish state. In one Muslim country after another, leaders who may describe themselves either as Islamist or secular call for the state of Israel to disappear from the map, and its people to be annihilated. It does not seem in the least shocking to them to be proposing mass-murder.
Ahmad Ragab, a columnist for the Egyptian government paper "Al-Akhbar," is only one among many opinion-makers to "give thanks to Hitler, of blessed memory." The present mufti of Jerusalem, Sheikh Ikrima Sabri, said quite typically before his recent meeting with Pope John Paul II that the numbers of Holocaust victims had been exaggerated. "The Jews are using this issue, in many ways, (including) to blackmail the Germans financially."
But if really Hitler and his henchmen are role models, then it is confused and confusing that Arab media regularly publish articles and cartoons caricaturing Israelis as Nazis, twisting the Star of David into a swastika, and so on. In today's Arab world, Hitler and the Holocaust are labels bandied about without regard to historical truth, in order to promote hatred on the one hand, and self-pity on the other — twin signals of intellectual and moral failure.
David Pryce-Jones is a senior editor of National Review.