That anecdote was told and retold by Alfred Rosenberg, Hitler's propagandist and racial ideologue. Rosenberg maintained that the book left by the mysterious stranger played a pivotal role in the development of Rosenberg's political thought; the book was Russian Orthodox priest Sergei Nilus' 1905 "The Great within the Small and Antichrist, an Imminent Political Possibility. Notes of an Orthodox Believer" and, as an appendix to his book, Nilus included the first "full" version of the Protocols Of The Learned Elders of Zion. As forecast by Pastor John Hagee in a March 2003 sermon, Sergei Nilus also predicted that the Antichrist would be Jewish.

In the same 2003 trio of sermons, given March 9th, 16th and 23rd, which were later mass marketed by JHM Ministries and also probably broadcast, as all of Hagee sermons seem to be broadcast, on distribution networks that now in 2008 reach up to 100 million households around the world, pastor John Hagee not only declared that the Antichrist, which Hagee predicts to be immanent, will be German, a "blasphemer", gay and "partly Jewish - as was Adolf Hitler, as was Karl Marx", Hagee also proposed that an international satanic banking conspiracy, led by the Rothschild Banking family of Europe, was plotting to wreck the US economy by devaluing the US dollar. By requesting that YouTube take down my videos, and videos posted by scores of other parties, Pastor John Hagee and JHM Ministries has, in effect, claimed that Hagee's anti-Semitic hate-speech is protected by JHM's 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational license; JHM and Hagee are claiming, in effect, that the promotion of the worst sort of anti-Jewish propaganda is copyright protected under JHM's religious, "educational" mandate even though Hagee's claims are not derived from Biblical scripture.

Hagee himself, in the same March 2003 sermon in which he made such preposterous and viciously anti-Jewish claims, admitted that there's nothing in the Bible to support his claim that the Antichrist will be German, gay, a "blasphemer" and "partly-Jewish; it's not justified by the very Biblical scripture Hagee claims serves as the font of all his religious views. Whatever the actual technical nature of any legal argument over current copyright law is, Hagee's claim seems to violate the spirit if not the letter of the law.

Is Pastor John Hagee's promotion--of the concept of a coming gay, "Partly Jewish" Antichrist figure whom Hagee predicts will make Hitler "look like a choirboy" by slaughtering 1/3 of the Earth's population--appropriate to a 501(c)(3) educational nonprofit ? If one argues that such a message is 'educational' then the question arises - well, what's the lesson ? Perhaps the didactic point is to demonstrate the continued existence of anti-Jewish animosity. But, such a lesson plan would be a bit tautological given that it would be perpetuating or even creating those attitudes.

It's hard to know how else to interpret pastor Hagee's promotion of a version of the notorious "Protocols" - if that's supposed to be educational, maybe the lesson is twofold - for American Jews it might be that they should consider fleeing the country while they still can. As a parallel educational track, perhaps Pastor John Hagee's claim that God sent Hitler and the Nazis, as "hunters", to persecute Europe's Jews and so drive them towards Palestine, where according to Pastor Hagee God really wanted them to live, as well as the pastor's forecast of a coming "partly Jewish", demonic and massively bloodthirsty world ruler and Hagee's promotion of a satanic Jewish banking conspiracy theory, are all part of an educational plan, on the part of the 501(c)(3) nonprofit John Hagee Ministries, to convince Christian Americans that Jews are associated with the Devil, horribly bloodthirsty and also prone to engage in sneaky worldwide financial plots to get rich off hard-working peoples everywhere and, especially, through exploiting the American middle and lower economic strata least able to cope with fluctuations in currency values. But is fomenting viciously anti-Semitic views "educational" ?

The issues inherent to John Hagee Ministries' censorship, and the challenge it poses to the healthy functioning of American Democracy, are profound. Corporate charters, whether for profit or nonprofit corporations, are in theory at least granted by states or by the federal government and originally the idea was that corporate entities, which initially were granted charters of limited duration, would be granted corporate charters on the basis that their corporate mission would in some way serve the collective good.

The admixture of religion with non-profit corporate status can be, as illustrated by John Hagee Ministries' attempt at censorship, corrosive to democracy. Pastor John Hagee has, through JHM, engaged in extensive political speech but, with this recent attempt at squelching critical treatment of that political speech, Hagee has at the same time claimed immunity from criticism.

By acceding to the request of John Hagee ministries and censoring videos critical of Pastor John Hagee, Hagee's sermons, and CUFI YouTube has in effect agreed with John Hagee Ministries' assertion that JHM has copyright protection over Hagee sermons which promote heavily anti-Jewish slurs, stereotypes and conspiracy theories and which also serve as pro-war propaganda, militating for a US attack on Iran.

However, there are currently, on YouTube, probably over a hundred videos which feature the sort of footage that Hagee's lawyer claimed John Hagee Ministries had demanded YouTube pull because the videos violate JHM Ministry copyright. If you do a simple search on YouTube, on the name "Hagee", the 3rd video you'll get is a YoungTurks production which features my "God Sent Hitler" video in its entirety, but I don't consider that any infringement, on my own artistic claim to copyright, by the Turks because I suggested that they use my video in whatever way they wanted to - that was the point. Here it is:

A lawyer working for John Hagee Minstries has stated that the nonprofit Ministry asked YouTube to take down ALL video with footage that John Hagee Ministries might lay copyright claim to, but so far only a portion of all the YouTube videos with such Hagee footage have been removed from YouTube's website, and among those videos have been some of the most heavily educational, videos with the most structured analysis on Hagee's political and hate-speech and concerning Hagee's Christians United For Israel group and its events.

YouTube also pulled Max Blumenthal's and Thomas Shomaker's 10-minute mini-documentary that Blumenthal and Shomaker shot at the July 2007 Christians United For Israel Conference in Washington DC, and CUFI allowed Blumenthal and Shoemaker to shoot that footage - thus, Max Blumenthal has an extremely strong claim to co-ownership, with Thomas Shomaker, of the copyright to "Rapture Ready: The Unauthorized Christians United For Israel Tour". And, I feel I have strong fair-use claim to my videos that YouTube has erased from its site because 1) they were educational; most were, in effect, mini-documentaries advancing public awareness of the bigoted, anti-Jewish (and anti-Muslim) nature of Hagee's public speech and the extent to which Hagee's CUFI amounts to a pro-war lobbying group, and  2) I didn't derive profit from those videos.

Here are two more of my videos that Hagee and YouTube have censored:

http://www.vimeo.com/1265039
http://www.vimeo.com/358554

A story from a news service called Cutting Edge News reported yesterday, July 7th, that:

In a statement to The Cutting Edge News on Independence Day, Hagee spokesperson Juda Engelmayer confirmed, "John Hagee Ministries, through its copyright attorneys, issued a request that YouTube remove any and all copyrighted materials belonging to John Hagee copyrights." He added, "The request was accepted.". . .

According to information obtained by The Cutting Edge News, Hagee's attorneys set forth criteria for videos to be removed by YouTube. These included: "1) Any and all pre-recorded material garnered from works owned and distributed by JHM or John Hagee Copyrights; 2) Any material depicting a JHM or John Hagee copyrighted service or performance of the service or sermon, and 3) Any material that is no longer free use material by having been effectively made into a derivative work using materials mentioned above."

Regardless of public statements from JHM ministry lawyer Englemayer, YouTube enforced JHM's alleged copyright protection highly selectively and so the question is: did Hagee's ministry provide YouTube with a specific list of videos to censor ? YouTube itself would have no reason to create such a selective list, which includes many of the most heavily viewed and controversial educational videos on Pastor John Hagee and CUFI.

I haven't yet been able to re-post another educational mini-documentary of mine, censored by Hagee/YouTube, in which I demonstrate, in factually and logically rigorous terms, that Pastor John Hagee lied to Jewish bloggers, in a 2007 conference call, by claiming that his support and the support of Christians United For Israel has nothing whatsoever to do with end-times prophecy and with Christian apocalyptic dispensationalist eschatological views.

John Hagee Ministries is claiming, in effect, that Hagee can disseminate political propaganda, hate-speech and even bald-faced lies which cannot be directly criticized because no one can directly show Hagee's 'copyright protected' political propaganda and hate-speech to a wider public. This amounts to a massive abuse of 501(c)(3) status - nonprofit, educational corporate status cannot and must not be a license for the promotion of factually dubious political propaganda and hate speech.

Should nonprofit 501(c)(3) ministries be able to distribute copyright protected material claiming that Jewish bankers rule the world and are plotting to attack America ? That's the claim Hagee's ministry seems to be making: under Hagee's nonprofit 501(c)(3) ministry Hagee can say just about anything - he could demand that Jew and Muslims be ground into hamburger or that the entire Middle East be nuked to vitrified glass and such speech, apparently, would be copyright protected. Should it be ? To ask is not to advocate censorship in any way but, rather, to raise the question as to whether or not such hateful political speech should be immune from public criticism which references the exact nature of that speech. And, should that speech be publicly subsidized ? Again, the question has nothing to do with censorship.

Regardless of the legal minutia, John Hagee Ministries is in effect claiming that John Hagee, for his 501(c)(3) "educational" nonprofit broadcast ministry can advocate for a US war with Iran, making highly fanciful claims about the alleged threat Iran poses, in sermons that get broadcast literally around the World (that reach up to 100 million households Globally), and assert that "God sent Hitler" to drive European Jews towards Palestine (where God really wanted them to live according to Hagee) and that Jews are not "spiritually alive" but that no one has a right to show what John Hagee is saying, and how he is saying it, to the rest of the world.

Indeed, though Hagee's ministry hasn't tried to suppress this video documentary of mine (yet) Hagee's claim of copyright infringement would seem to extend to my 10 minute documentary showing that in 2003 John Hagee gave a sermon, which Hagee's ministry then mass marketed, in which Hagee proposed that Jewish bankers (the European Rothschild family in fact) were plotting, as part of an international conspiracy, to attack American patriotism and wreck the American economy by devaluing the US dollar. In effect, Hagee's ministry is claiming that Hagee's promotion of a version of "The Protocols Of The Elders of Zion" is protected by copyright too.

In caving to the demands of John Hagee Ministries, YouTube has censored what clearly is political speech, and the absurdity of it includes the fact that John Hagee Ministries broadcast the "God Sent Hitler""Jews aren't Sprititually Alive" Hagee sermon literally around the world.

Furthermore, Hagee's Ministry currently sells the "God sent Hitler" sermon and the video version of the sermon is even more gratuitously offensive than simply the audio track of Hagee's "God Sent Hitler" sermon; in the video version of the "God sent Hitler" sermon, which Pastor John Hagee gave sometime between September 24, 2005 and January 1st, 2006 (in the sermon, Hagee mentions that the year is 2005 and also refers to Hurricane Rita - which made landfall Sept. 24, 2005), Hagee, while claiming the Nazis were "sent by God" to hunt down Europe's Jews, pantomimes before Hagee's church audience a Nazi holding a rifle and aiming it - at Jews. That would be "copyright protected" too, according to claims made by Hagee's ministry.

JHM Ministries has so refrained or neglected (so far at least) from censoring my 10-minute video documentary showcasing US Senator Joseph Lieberman's comparison, in a tribute the Connecticut Senator gave at Hagee's 2007 CUFI conference, of Pastor John Hagee to Moses. But in time the ministry may get around to it. [vote this story up on Reddit, Digg, and Buzzflash]