CYIL vol. 15 (2024)

CYIL 15 ȍ2024Ȏ PROSECUTING „HATE SPEECH“ AT THE IMT, NUREMBERG … a more graphic description of Streicher as “a dirty old man of the sort that gives trouble in parks.” 42 Born in 1885 in the German city of Fleinhausen, Streicher started his career as a school- teacher in Nurnberg where, a few years later, he would start a political party, the German Socialist Party (GSP). Having antisemitism as its principal goal and policy, the GSP was later handed to Adolf Hitler, for which Streicher would earn some glowing adoration when Hitler penned his book, Mein Kampf . Streicher would subsequently receive some political appointments. For example, between 1921 and 1945, he was a member of the Nazi Party. In 1925, Streicher was appointed the Gauleiter of Franconia, a position which he occupied until February 1940. When the Nazi came to power in 1933, and until 1945, Streicher was a member of the Reichstag. In the SA , 43 Streicher held the title Obergruppenfuehrer . Streicher’s participation in the Nazi regime was through propaganda carried through the medium of newspaper which earned him the disgusting alias “Jew-baiter No. 1”. Editor and publisher of the anti-Semitic rag, Der Stürmer from 1922 to 1933, he subsequently became its owner and publisher. Numerous editions of the newspaper were published. Streicher resides in history as the notorious publisher of a newspaper who engineered an overplay of antisemitic propaganda and incitement. Streicher’s propaganda was not only distasteful and unpalatable: it stretched from invectives to the arena of incitement to violence, discrimination and persecution of the Jews in Germany. Over time, his publications were portent and potent to shape the mindsets of the Germans who consumed them. Streicher was the infamous German fore figure who dedicated his skills, passions and time towards the eradication of the Jews through antisemitic literature, disseminated to the German public day after day and week after week. Exceedingly disgusting and unpalatable were his outpourings that propagated an unfounded and incredible story of “ritual murder”: another dimension of propaganda that outraged the global community and sparked criticisms and protests with the Archbishop of Canterbury asking the government to prohibit such kinds of literature. Streicher’s “ritual murder” propaganda was based on a medieval belief that Christian children were murdered by Jews during Easter. This belief, it is reported, was distorted and misrepresented by Streicher so that its readers would disagree that it was not only a practice of the Middle Age but something that was being practiced by the Jews in Germany. Julius Streicher’s Der Stürmer contained illicit cartoons, horrific stories of alleged ritual murders, instructions for anti-Jewish campaigns and lists of Jewish dentists, doctors, and shopkeepers who Aryans were advised to avoid. His support for the policies and ideologies of the Nazi regime took the form of unpleasant publications, whose obscenity and repulsiveness point that during his trial testimony, „they all removed their headsets rather than listen to his foul and distorted beliefs“: as narrated by Alexander Hardy, Taylor‘s staff during the subsequent trials: see HARDY, Alexander, G. Hitler’s Secret Weapon: The “managed” Press and Propaganda Machine of Nazi Germany (Vantage Press 1968) 83. 42 WEST, Rebecca, A train of powder (Open Road Media 1956) 5, quoted in Taylor 22 and 378. See also the metaphorical description and depiction of Streicher by Tusa and Tusa 333: Any spectator in court had an instant desire to go and wash thoroughly after being in the same room as the man. The sight of Streicher doing his daily exercises in prison soured the breakfast in the stomachs of prisoners and guards alike. 43 T he SA (or Sturmabteilung – alternatively known in English as „Stormtroopers“ or „Storm Detachment“) was the principal paramilitary unit of the Nazi Regime.

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