ACCG Returns to its "Brownshirts"

Disney-bred ACCG
bloggers have no idea.

Apparently, according to the self-appointed "Executive Director of the Ancient Coin Collectors' (sic) Guild",  questioning artefact collecting and heritage policies

is the modern cultural property nationalist equivalent of the Inquisition or of the "Brownshirts" in pre-WWII Germany, etc. etc. (history offers many illustrations). Their names might change, but the rabid ideological mentality is pretty consistent and nothing new.

and those who try to protect the rhinos, whales, elephants and butterflies are obviously "the modern natural environment retentionist equivalent of Atilla the Hun and Vlad the Impaler" - while tropical rainforest activists are the worst, Idi Amin and Pol Pot, obviously. It seems the no-questions-asked market is running out of the justifications it never had and is intent on playing the victim. Pathetic. Do these people really think they are doing collectors and the antiquities trade any favours with this sort of behaviour?

In blogs and discussion lists we have seen conservationists called "Heritage Brownshirts", frequently compared to "Josef Goebbels", accused of promoting an “archeologie uber alles” ideology and so on. The moment anyone questions this, the culprit protests innocence, claims he was "misunderstood". Nazi imagery is particularly prevalent in the rhetoric of the ACCG. Sayles not so long ago labelled a perfectly legitimate debate “Archaeological Goose-stepping". I've had occasion to remonstrate with another ACCG director who'd used imagery from the 1939 defeat of the Polish army in order to simply cause hurt because they could find no other way to counter arguments about artefact collecting and commerce. John Howland, notable for a recent extremely unpleasant Auschwitz "joke", is a favoured guest on Tompa and Sayles' blogs. It seems to me that people like Sayles shouting their mouths off over there have actually no idea what the Nazis and the Nazi occupation meant to us over here in central Europe.