Re: Nkrumahism, The Can Of Worms I Opened–Ehrlich The Failed Prophet

It is regrettable when individuals consciously turn facts upside down in order to misinform the general public. Mr. Baidoo has shown that he has an unquenchable capacity for conscious distortions of facts. If not, how on earth could Mr. Baidoo have turned my Paul Ehrlich (1854-1915), a famous German scientist, into Paul Ralph Ehrlich (1932- ), an infamous American ecologist, then shamelessly turning around to claim that he set a trap for us and we fell into it. What a naiveté of an unconscionable writer?

We have consistently told Mr. Baidoo we had more to say about Paul Ehrlich once he produced an article on him. We have also consistently told Mr. Baidoo that we came across Paul Ehrlich when we studied him in our General Biology, Anatomy & Physiology, and Microbiology classes (WE IMPLORE READERS TO PLEASE GO BACK AND READ EVERY SINGLE EXCHANGE WE HAVE HAD WITH MR. KOBINA PHILIP BAIDOO, JR. ON GHANAWEB FROM 2014 TO THE PRESENT).

In fact, nowhere did we mention the American ecologist Paul R. Ehrlich in our exchanges with Mr. Baidoo. For instance, in our article “Why Kobina Philip Baidoo, Jr.’s Approach To Nkrumahism Is Questionable,” published on Ghanaweb on January 30, 2015 (see also Modernghana and Spyghana), we specifically mentioned Paul Erhlick (sic) in Paragraph 21 without the middle “Ralph” as a distinguishing feature of Paul R. Ehrlich, the American ecologist. In other words, we always made sure to distinguish our Paul Ehrlich from Mr. Baidoo’s would-be Paul R. Ehrlich (as in his present article). For the avoidance of doubt, we shall quote ourselves here for additional clarification:

”What does Mr. Baidoo, Jr. mean by mentioning Rachel Carson, Paul Ehrlick, Al Gore, Kenneth Galbraith, etc, without citing their works and critiquing them? Is he also implying he has inferiority complex?...”

So, if we may ask, why is Mr. Baidoo again getting himself wrapped up in his circling delusions, given that we have consistently made him aware that the Paul Ehrlich we had been interested in discussing was PAUL EHRLICH, not PAUL R. EHRLICH?

Why is Mr. Baidoo bringing up Paul R. Ehrlich when our intention was to discuss Paul Ehrlich in the larger context of Hitler’s “Mein Kampf,” the Holocaust, and discrimination against Jews, since our Paul Ehrlich was a German Jew?

This is not to say we were and are unfamiliar with the scholarship of the Malthusian demographer and ecologist, Paul R. Ehrlich. For Mr. Baidoo’s information, we have studied the latter and some of his works in one of our Global History classes some years back in the larger contexts of the British (and American) Industrial Revolution, and the impact of the thinking of the classical economists (John Stuart Mill, David Ricardo, Thomas R. Malthus, Adam Smith, Thomas Joplin, Claude Frédéric Bastiat, etc.) on such scholars as Mr. Baidoo’s Paul R. Ehrlich. Our class had to write a term paper on some of the chapters of Paul R. Ehrlich’s “The Time Bomb” as well as of “The Population Explosion” (with Anne H. Ehrlich).

Here we are Mr. Baidoo. Mr. Baidoo never set any trap for us but for himself because he enjoys, thinking it will give him another opportunity to redeem himself from the enlightening exposure we have been giving readers, as we unmask his trains of palpable fabrications, lies, mis-representation of facts, analytic errors, and mis-paraphrasing of authors (source materials) on Ghanaweb (Readers should visit the “comment box” under Mr. Baidoo’s recent Ghanaweb articles to see this for themselves). What did we actually want to say about our Paul Ehrlich?

Well, it was not Paul Ehrlich’s discoveries in the area of microbiology per se, particularly his discoveries in Gram (hematological) staining, immunology, antiserum, histology, chemotherapy, Salvarsan (Compound 606 or arsphenamine), and so forth. To make a long matter short, we had wanted to deal with the question of how Hitler’s Third Reich made Paul Ehrlich’s scientific work difficult, eventually removing his name (and scientific contributions to science) from landmarks, books, etc.

And as we said elsewhere, we had wanted to discuss this in the larger context of “Mein Kamp,” the Holocaust, and discrimination against Jews. But Paul Ehrlich died from a heart attack and not as a result of the Holocaust. On that score, we had wanted to bring out the little-known facts of some Jewish leadership’s contribution to the European Holocaust just as some African chiefs and kings did both in the European Slave Trade (the so-called Transatlantic Slave Trade) and the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade. We are referring to the Judenrats in the case of the Jews (see Molefi Kete Asante’s essay “Henry Louis Gates Is Wrong About Africa’s Involvement in the Slave Trade”).

More important, though, we had wanted to raise and to discuss the following texts in conjunction with Paul Ehrlich, the Holocaust, colonialism, Nazism (“Mein Kampf”), and the Herero and Namaqua Genocide (the first of such in modern history; the German Holocaust had its historical or colonial roots in the German extermination of the Herero and Namaqua of South-West Africa, present-day Namibia). Here are the texts (all by leading Jewish scholars, authors, historians, and political scientists):

1) The Transfer Agreement: The Dramatic Story of the Pact Between the Third Reich and Jewish Palestine (Author: Edwin Black. Black’s other publication “War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race (Expanded Version) shows how American eugenics and corporate philanthropy helped contribute to Nazi eugenics (see Josef Mengele)

2) 51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis (Lenni Brenner)

3) Zionism in the Age of Dictators (Lenni Brenner)

4) Perfidy (Ben Hecht)

5) Jews for Sale?: Nazi-Jewish Negotiations, 1933-1945 (Yehuda Bauer)

6) The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering (Norman Finkelstein)

7) The Unheeded Cry (Abraham Fuchs)

8) The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust (Tom Segev

9) Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (Hannah Arendt)

Additional references:

10) Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur (Ben Kiernan)

11) The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide and The Colonial Roots of Nazism (this one deals with the Herero and Namaqua Genocide; readers may also want to read the Whitaker Report (United Nations, 1985)

12) Hitler’s Black Victim’s: The Historical Experiences of European Blacks, African and African-Americans During the Nazi Era (Clarence Lusane)


Honors and Titles (Paul Ehrlich; courtesy of Wikipedia)

1) 1882 Awarded the title of Professor

2) 1890 Appointed Extraordinary Professor (Humboldt University)

3) 1896 Given the nonacademic Prussian title of a Medical Councilor (Geheimer Medizinalrat)
4) 1903 Awarded Prussia’s highest distinction in science, the Great Golden Medal of Science (which had previously been awarded only to Rudolf Virchow)

5) 1904 Honorary professorship in Gottingen; honorary doctorate from the University of Chicago

6) 1907 Granted the seldom-awarded title Senior Medical Councilor (Geheimer Obermedizinalrat); granted an honorary doctorate from Oxford University

7) 1908 Awarded The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his “work on immunity

8) 1911 Granted Prussia’s highest civilian award, Privy Councilor (Wirklicher Geheimer Rat with the predicate “Excellency”)

9) 1912 Made an honorary citizen of the city of Frankfurt a.M. and of his birthplace Strehlen

10) 1914 Appointed full Professor of Pharmacology at the newly established Frankfurt University.


The foregoing represents the substance of what we had intended to share with Mr. Baidoo (and our readers) on our Paul Ehrlich, summarily the connections among the Holocaust, Nazi mistreatment of Jews (Paul Ehrlich included), German extermination of the Herero and the Namaqua (before the Jewish Holocaust took off; we should not exclude the Roma/Gypsies, the handicapped, homosexuals, capitalists, and “communists”) and the colonial roots of Nazism (in Africa), economic development, “Mein Kampf,” “black”/African suffering under Nazi Germany (see Dr. Lusane’s book), and so on. So, Mr. Baidoo, as you can see you could not have set a trap for us. It is therefore our submission that you set the trap of analytic delusion for yourself. We will plead with you not to take us along with you, for we are more than comfortable in our own niche. Mr. Baidoo may also have to understand that this author is in tune with the analytic center of his informed consciousness.


No amount of fabrications, lies, and distortions can displace that center of informed consciousness. Mr. Baidoo should have known this a long time ago before taking on the commitment he has set for himself. Put another way, it looks as if Mr. Baidoo has not learnt anything of value about the character of his target(s). He should take a ride to Ancient Egypt where our ancestors engraved the following words into our collective memory: “Know Thy Self.” Knowing himself well will certainly have prevented him from setting a trap for himself in the first place. Put simply, Mr. Baidoo will never win the debate with us if he continues to behave and come across as fraudulently as has been in his poorly formulated arguments. Against this background, we shall encourage him to keep his loser Paul R. Ehrlich and his awards while we keep our winner Paul Ehrlich and his awards, for Nkrumah was a true winner in every sense of the word, not a loser.

In conclusion, Mr. Baidoo may have to revise his tattered notes so that he can finally put Paul Ehrlich where Paul R. Ehrlich does not belong. Does Mr. Baidoo have any clue why Nkrumah is ranked among the world’s greatest political leaders?

Go and ask Paul Ehrlich!

We shall return…