८ जानेवारी, २०१४

Hitler's "Mein Kampf" is surging in the rankings on Amazon and iTunes.

Why?

Is this what happens when Mein Kampf becomes available in the privacy of our own iPads? Could it be a cultural curiosity much like what’s happened with sleazy romance novels, which surveys show are increasingly consumed in more clandestine e-form?...

“I think I waited 45 years to read Hitler’s words,” writes one reviewer. Another sums it up thusly: “Curiosity killed me to get this book.”

Similar comments have been made about the erotic smash hit 50 Shades of Grey....

१०५ टिप्पण्या:

Darrell म्हणाले...

People just want something to buy through the Althouse Amazon portal!

Johanna Lapp म्हणाले...

Your iTunes purchase history is forever. As is your browser history. Do you really want a hate-crimes prosecutor (or a plaintiff's attorney in a civil suit) using this nugget against you?

Get a hat that covers your eyes, an opaque paper bag, latex gloves and a stack of one dollar bills if you wish to entertain forbidden thoughts.

DKWalser म्हणाले...

Your iTunes purchase history is forever. As is your browser history. Do you really want a hate-crimes prosecutor (or a plaintiff's attorney in a civil suit) using this nugget against you?

This is just scare mongering. The left is reliably free speech. It would never use or, allow to be used, such things against you. Unless, of course, you're up for a position on the Supreme Court; in which case, such things are fair game.

traditionalguy म्हणाले...

The German Nazi propaganda on the internet and The Sex Magician Schickelgruber's book are both special in their seductive power over human minds.

You have to remember that Nazis are not angry humanist politicians evolved from enlightenment philosophy. Rather they are a supernatural cult of Satan worshipers. So their written works have the benefit of a ghost writer called The Father of Lies.

The interesting thing is that the Obamanites using that same technique on us for 6+ years has made us curious to see from where that propaganda method's success emanates.

In other words, Mack the Knife is back.

gerry म्हणाले...

For a year now, his magnum manifesto has loomed large over current best-sellers on iTunes, where at the time of this writing two different digital versions of Mein Kampf rank 12th and 15th on the Politics & Current Events chart alongside books by modern conservative powerhouses like Sarah Palin, Charles Krauthammer and Glenn Beck.[emphasis added]

Why does the reviewer place a socialist (Hitler's) work in juxtaposition with American conservatives? What an asshole, and so typical of such assholes.

Hagar म्हणाले...

The reviews I have seen say that Hitler set forth exactly what he was planning to do, and in fact did when he got the power to do it. Knowing a little about what that was, I will take the reviewers word for it rather than read it for myself 90 years later.

TosaGuy म्हणाले...

"where at the time of this writing two different digital versions of Mein Kampf rank 12th and 15th on the Politics & Current Events chart alongside books by modern conservative powerhouses like Sarah Palin, Charles Krauthammer and Glenn Beck."

I see what the article's author did there!

gerry म्हणाले...

Oh, and has anyone seen this bit of hate at U.S. News?

Eric the Fruit Bat म्हणाले...

Perhaps the people now buying Mein Kampf are simply trying to complete all the assigned reading they never did in college, same as me.

Oso Negro म्हणाले...

I suspect Germans as the secret buyers. Nothing like "forbidden" to drive sales.

Rusty म्हणाले...


"Hitler's "Mein Kampf" is surging in the rankings on Amazon and iTunes."


Liberals need a blue print.

pst314 म्हणाले...

Did Amazon open an Arabic-language website? ;-)

Bob R म्हणाले...

No "People who bought this also bought..." section.

Alex म्हणाले...

So the meme is Glenn Beck is urging people to buy Mein Kampf?

jr565 म्हणाले...

"This is just scare mongering. The left is reliably free speech. It would never use or, allow to be used, such things against you. Unless, of course, you're up for a position on the Supreme Court; in which case, such things are fair game"

or if you express an opinion against gay marriage or global warming.

jr565 म्हणाले...

Gerry wrote:
Why does the reviewer place a socialist (Hitler's) work in juxtaposition with American conservatives? What an asshole, and so typical of such assholes.

Either that means there aren't a lot of liberal books or writers in the top charts or the author is trying to imply something.

Alex म्हणाले...

It's considered "common sense" among liberals that conservatives are closeted Hitlerites. Just ask any high scrool student.

YoungHegelian म्हणाले...

I'm in the middle of doing a bunch of research on the Hegelian roots of Italian Fascism, and along the way, I bump into stuff on the National Socialist side of the house. I gotta tell ya, if someone wants to wade through the turgid, unfocused, steaming pile of crap that is Mein Kampf, well, then they have my sympathies. It is, in every sense of the word, a bad book.

If you want to read something from Hitler that's more lucid, and actually edited read The Table Talks.

traditionalguy म्हणाले...

Mein Kampf translates as My Struggle.

The struggle he talks about is the Darwinist teaching that all life is a "struggle to survive". Which was Hitler's big point: Germany had not survived in WWI because a Hebrew race of world bankers had betrayed them.

But he mixed that into Madame Blavatsky's occult revelation that seven successive races would evolve to dominate the world including the 4th was the coming Aryan Race that was from Tibet and used the swastika symbol which conveniently was also the Ancient Teutonic rune for the warrior god Wotan. Ergo Germans are the coming Aryan master race if breeding is done right and lebensraum is made available. Jews are no better than Slavs to a Nazi. The Jews had the money and assets to steal after they were extermiated and the Slavs had eastern European and Russian lebensraum.

Illuninati म्हणाले...

One reason Marxists/leftists are so successful in smearing conservatives (and Zionist Jews) as Nazis is because most people have never read Hitler's books, "Mein Kampf" and "Hitler's Table Talk". The more people download and read Mein Kampf the better.

tim maguire म्हणाले...

Funny that so many commenters who bought the book feel the need to explain why they bought it lest someone assume they read so they'd know how to round up Jews and stuff them in ovens.

Sad that their fears are probably justified.

jr565 म्हणाले...

Das Kapital by Karl Marx is no. 24 on the iBooks politics & Current Events Charts. I wonder what THAT means?

Rosalyn C. म्हणाले...

Ann was married to a Jew once. Does she think he had magical powers to be feared?

Sigivald म्हणाले...

I read it in college - in translation and a bit in the original German.

It's better in English, because Hitler was a horrible writer, as he was a horrible thinker.

It's trash, and the more people see that it's trash, the better.

jr565 म्हणाले...

"“I think I waited 45 years to read Hitler’s words,” writes one reviewer. Another sums it up thusly: “Curiosity killed me to get this book.”

And by the same token I'm willing to bet cash that this guy was either calling republicans nazis or surrounding himself with people who did so for the same 45 years he didn't read Mein Kempf.
They don't actually know much about him except that he's evil. Republicans are evil, therefore he must have been right wing.
Or something like that.

Michael म्हणाले...

YoungHegelian: Julius Evola? Casa Pound? Those zany Italians!!

virgil xenophon म्हणाले...

Funny, in the early 50s Mien Kampf was a Book-of-the-Month-Club selection--I still have my parents copy sitting on my book shelves. In those days wasn't THE take-away from WW II that if only enough people had read the book when it was first published and taken it seriously, WW II might have been averted?

Robert Cook म्हणाले...

"The interesting thing is that the Obamanites using that same technique on us for 6+ years has made us curious to see from where that propaganda method's success emanates."

Actually, the Nazis modeled their propaganda model on the American model, initially erected by the Hoover administration and his Creel Commission prior to our entering WWI to foment pro-war sentiments among the previously isolationist American public, and carried on ever afterwards by the public and private sectors for political and commercial ends.

madAsHell म्हणाले...

Here's the lead paragraph from the New York Daily News back in June,2013:

The 60th anniversary edition of George Orwell's novel has generated lofty sales since NSA spying was revealed, going from number 11,855 on the sales list to number 68 in just a few days.

This is from Forbes:

Last December, the FBI recorded a record number of 2.78 million background checks for purchases that month, surpassing a 2.01 million mark set the month before by about 39 percent. That December 2012 figure, in turn, was up 49 percent from a previous record on that month the year before. FBI checks for all of 2012 totaled 19.6 million, an annual record, and an increase of 19 percent over 2011.

My take??....People have lost trust in the government.

Obama's take??...How can we blame this on George Bush?

Peter म्हणाले...

I suppose Mein Kampf might be more popular in the arts worlds if only reading or possessing it were more transgressive.

What value does the art world hold in more esteem if not transgressive? For originality is at best a distant second (and quality does not even place).

And yet (alas) Mein Kampf somehow became absurd without becoming transgressive. After all, just about every public library has a copy, and many have multiple translations. As far as I know, no one in the USA even tries to get it banned.

lemondog म्हणाले...

Oh, and has anyone seen this bit of hate at U.S. News?

Oh no! You mean the Jews aren't to be blamed for something?

There goes my equilibrium....

Gabriel Hanna म्हणाले...

Hitler's Mein Kampf is self-refuting for anyone who doesn't already irrationally hate Jews. I think it should be read by every educated person.

Unfortunately mention of Hitler brings out creationist claptrap such as

'The struggle he talks about is the Darwinist teaching that all life is a "struggle to survive".'

Hitler, in Mein Kampf, explicitly rejects Darwinian evolution,

The consequence of this racial purity, universally valid in Nature, is not only the sharp outward delimitation of the various races, but their uniform character in themselves. The fox is always a fox, the goose a goose, the tiger a tiger, etc., and the difference can lie at most in the varying measure of force, strength, intelligence, dexterity, endurance, etc., of the individual specimens.

explicitly embraces creationism,

Anyone who dares to lay hands on the highest image of the Lord commits sacrilege against the benevolent creator of this miracle and contributes to the expulsion from paradise.

and 'Darwinist' books were banned when he came to power.

Hitler was entirely self-educated and did not have a coherent ideology. You can make the case that Hitler was influenced by anything, because Hitler read voraciously and incorporated many things discussed by educated people from different intellectual traditions.


chuck म्हणाले...

Hoover administration and his Creel Commission

That would be Wilson, not Hoover. Wilson was a pioneering fascist gifted to us by the Democratic Party.

KCFleming म्हणाले...

"Mein Kampf" is Volume 3 of the coveted Obama Trilogy.

KCFleming म्हणाले...

Most people wanted the full set.

RecChief म्हणाले...

"This is just scare mongering. The left is reliably free speech."

Unless, you doubt that is was a video that sparked benghazi, or are skeptical about man made global warming, or believe in Christ, or doubt the need for affirmative action hiring practices, or are in favor of needing an ID to vote.

If on the other hand, you are reliably atheistic or any other religion besides Christianity, or are enthusiastic about abortion on demand, or believe that the federal government is a provider, then yes the left is reliably free speech

gerry म्हणाले...

A surge in sales of Mein Kampf might suggest a distrust in our current government, and since the powers that dominate our lives today cannot seem to create jobs, make the government health system work, eliminate international terrorism, keep Fallujah out of hostile hands, and control the rise of Russia, why not dabble again with National Socialism?

After all, it is socialism, and can be justified by blaming everything on someone else, which is what contemporary progressives always do, anyway, right? So National Socialism can justify seizing control of the levers of the economy, focus the problems of why things are so bad on someone else, and the Progressive elite can use it to prepare low-information voters for the necessary sacrifices that must be made, like the destruction of Israel, another Progressive goal.

paul a'barge म्हणाले...

Funny, I was just wondering ... how many decent people would be alive today or might have living children today had people read Mein Kampf before WW II.

Just saying ...

Strelnikov म्हणाले...

It's the mustache. It's always the 'stache.

Original Mike म्हणाले...

@paul a'barge - How many people alive today would not be, because their parents met in the war?

PB म्हणाले...

Everyone is looking for tips at how to succeed in life, I guess.

Robert Cook म्हणाले...

"Why does the reviewer place a socialist (Hitler's)---"


Hahahahaha!

Yeah, yeah, I know it's been a popular dogma among righties following Jonah Goldberg's book that Hitler and the Nazis were leftists/socialists/liberals or whatever. As Rube Goldberg said, "No matter thin you slice it, it's still baloney."

Robert Cook म्हणाले...

Chuck--

Oops! I stand corrected. I was confusing two alliterative presidents: Woodrow Wilson and Herbert Hoover!

n.n म्हणाले...

Decent people want to know what motivated the normalization of state-sponsored executions.

Larry J म्हणाले...

If you're a serious student of WWII history, reading Mein Kampf gives a rare insight into the mind of one of the major players*. There are countless history books written about Hitler but that's the only one written by him. How often does a truly evil person write a book about his vision and plans? Did Stalin write a book? Did Mao or Pol Pot? Well, Mao had his "Little Red Book" but that hardly seems in the same league as Mein Kampf. You don't have to agree with someone to read their book.

*Churchill wrote his excellent history series after the war but Roosevelt died weeks before the war in Europe ended.

mccullough म्हणाले...

Mein Kampf as Samizdat

traditionalguy म्हणाले...

Darwin wrote a scientific theory that worked by operation of survival of the strongest life forms over millions of years of adaptation to find food and procreate. Hitler had no interest in the science of evolution. His interest in evolution of psychic powers of Races by a stronger will to power.

His will to power included especially killing off the best competitors to mind controlling populations, which included religions, sciences and especially competing secret cults.

His super weapons came a year too late or he would have seemed to be right. I suspect that intrigues power mad Progressives.

Michael म्हणाले...

Robert Cook: And that is why they named their party National Socialists: to throw off future right wing nuts.

gerry म्हणाले...

As Rube Goldberg said, "No matter thin you slice it, it's still baloney."

That Nazis and Communists behaved in myriad similar ways is undeniable. Hitler killed Jews because he sought a "solution" to the problems having the founders of capitalism (the Jews), possibly contaminating the racial purity of Aryan descendants; Stalin murdered millions more than Hitler in the Ukraine by using starvation as his instrument of genocide, to destroy Ukranian nationalism in the grand march towards the collective utopia. Both political systems created necessary villains that posed political/economic/philosophical threats that required brutal and horrific actions as solutions, and in both cases, the political philosophies advocated dictatorial, centrally-planned and politically-approved economic machinery.

That you term the similarities baloney expresses not a winning argument but superlative denial.

Fen म्हणाले...

gerry is on to something. I don't believe people are revisiting Hitler's POV out of innocent curiousity.

Fen म्हणाले...

And ignore Cook. Gently though. He needs to pretend so he can keep mirrors in his house.

Thorley Winston म्हणाले...

I think the reason there’s been an uptick in sales is someone figured out a way to print it on two-ply.

mccullough म्हणाले...

who gets the royalties for this book?

Wince म्हणाले...

Why?

People confuse "My Struggle" with a Bodice-Ripper?

Rusty म्हणाले...

Fen said...
And ignore Cook. Gently though. He needs to pretend so he can keep mirrors in his house.

But he is right on this one. Both Hitler and Mussolini admired American progressives. Especially Margret Sanger.

KCFleming म्हणाले...

iTunes?

Mein Kampf was Hitler's 'White Album'.

MaxedOutMama म्हणाले...

I can't imagine why anyone would assume that reading this book is an endorsement.

My fourth-grade teacher told us all to read it when we were older, so that we would always remember how self-delusive world leaders could be. She said it was all in there, and there for millions to read, and yet the "consensus" - highly convenient - about Hitler's rise to power and consolidation of ever more power ignored it. When our time to confront such things came, she said we should remember to take these batty ideas seriously and not let unnecessary millions die again.

I think that's still a good lesson for us all to learn. All too often polite society is self-delusive society, and elites are circle-jerks of credentialed wishful thinkers who ignore reality in concert.

I think everyone should read the damned book, precisely because I think it is so vile. But it also shows what a petty, cramped worm this man was, and with that you realize how flawed the rest of the leadership of the time was for not recognizing the danger.

Illuninati म्हणाले...
ही टिप्पणी लेखकाना हलविली आहे.
Illuninati म्हणाले...

Illuninati said...
Robert Cook said...
"Yeah, yeah, I know it's been a popular dogma among righties following Jonah Goldberg's book that Hitler and the Nazis were leftists/socialists/liberals or whatever."

The term left comes from the French Revolution and applied to people who sat on the left side of the Revolutionary Assembly. They brought us the Reign of Terror.

The Marxists are similar enough to the original French leftists that the title is appropriately applied to them. The Communists were mass murders who have destroyed Russia for generations. The American left strongly supported the Communists including Stalin and made excuses for the Holodomor as long as possible. When Communism in Russia failed the leftists changed titles but not beliefs. They now like to call themselves Liberals.

On the right side of the French Assembly sat the representatives who favored continuing the monarchy in some form and who wanted to preserve traditional French culture as much as possible with human rights and freedom. They would be similar todays conservatives.

The Nazis with their emphasis on racial purity didn't fit any group in the French Revolution so they are not properly labeled either right or left.

According to Timothy Snyder's book BLOODLANDS one of the main reasons the Nazis gained power in Germany is because the Germans were afraid the Communists were going to destroy their country like they had destroyed Russia. Unfortunately the Nazis ended up damaging Germany as much as the Communists damaged Russia.

KCFleming म्हणाले...

Get with the program, Illuninati.

Your facts are Wrongthinking.

Get some new facts that support Cook. Everyone knows that Nazi socialists were just US Republicans, not anything like Soviet or Chinese commies.

Jesus, you must not have gone to high school in the US.

virgil xenophon म्हणाले...

Can Cook be even more ignorant of history than he has already demonstrated. Mussolini, a fascist if ever there was one, was a card-carrying socialist and was an editor, pre-war, of Italy's largest socialist newspaper, La Stampa. Hitler is on record as quoted in a German newspaper interview circa 1938 when asked where he thought Communism would eventually end up as answering: "Oh, I think they will end up where we already are." And was he ever proven right as Communism in the 70s/80s was NOTHING BUT fascistic crony corporatist inward-looking national socialism--having largely given up on spreading the internationalist revolutionary bit and largely fulfilling Hitler's prophecy.

test म्हणाले...

virgil xenophon said...
Can Cook be even more ignorant of history than he has already demonstrated.


The left's top principle is that the right is racist. Everything flows from that.

Rusty म्हणाले...

Marshal said...
virgil xenophon said...
Can Cook be even more ignorant of history than he has already demonstrated.

The left's top principle is that the right is racist. Everything flows from that.

That and the willful rewriting of history.

Fascism was always a product of socialism. Any biography of Mussolini will tell you that.

If Hitler could have come to power under the guise of communism he would have done it.

Steven म्हणाले...

The labeling of fascist economic policies as "right wing" was done in the 1920s by leftists who claimed that the "third alternative" was a desperate effort to save capitalism from its "inevitable" failure.

The labeling of progressive economic policies as "left wing" is done today by leftists who desperately needed a "third way" to save socialism from its actual failure.

In both cases the economic policies are identical, but the left long ago mastered doublethink.

Gahrie म्हणाले...

Both Hitler and Mussolini admired American progressives. Especially Margret Sanger.

And American progressives and the Left loved them right back. Go back and read the newspapers and journals of the day. Right up until 1939, Hitler had all the right answers.

Gahrie म्हणाले...

Hey Bobbie Cook....

Who was busy writing thousands of pages praising the actions and ideas of Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin in the 1920's and 1930's?

I'll give you a hint, it wasn't Republicans or conservatives.

jimbino म्हणाले...

Mein Kampf is boring.

The Book of Job is a better read, and there God conspires with Satan to torture and kill Jews, among them family and slaves, and cattle and sheep.

And, true to form, God then went on to wipe out entire villages and cultures.

Howard म्हणाले...

OK tools, listen up. Everyone (actually 90%, 10% are mental incompetents) in the US is a liberal. We live in a Liberal democratic republic. Even momma bear Sarah Palin is a capital L Liberal. Glenn Beck is in the 10% group.

Theocrats, Monarchists, Commies and Fascists are totalitarians, tyrants, gods, royals, etc. Trying to make cheap points by linking either right or left leaning liberals is a corollary Godwin event.

In a moment, you will return to the pleasure from endless masturbation of your phallic pride using BHO, AlGore and Barbara Boxer as lubricant.

Anthony म्हणाले...

jr565: Either that means there aren't a lot of liberal books or writers in the top charts or the author is trying to imply something.

What do you mean "either"? People don't want to read the nonsense lefty writers expound at book length, *and* the author is trying to imply something.

John henry म्हणाले...

tim maguire said...

Funny that so many commenters who bought the book feel the need to explain why they bought it lest someone assume they read so they'd know how to round up Jews and stuff them in ovens.


Along with 6mm non-Jews.

Let's not get in bed with the deniers.

John Henry

Illuninati म्हणाले...

jimbino said...
Mein Kampf is boring.

"The Book of Job is a better read, and there God conspires with Satan to torture and kill Jews, among them family and slaves, and cattle and sheep.

And, true to form, God then went on to wipe out entire villages and cultures."

I certainly don't understand the book of Job to promote either genocide or anti-Semitism. Where do you get that? What makes you think Job was Jewish? Is there anything in Job to identify his nationality?

John henry म्हणाले...

The west had to come up with the term "NAZI" to avoid calling the German National Socialists "socialists".

Doing so would have seriously pissed off the Russians.

The Germans always called themselves National Socialists. Hitler, 2-3 days before he killed himself stated loudly and clearly that he was still a socialist.

According to Toland, in his bio of Uncle Adolf the term NAZI came from a play on the party name and the name Ignatz by opponents. Ignatz being a bumpkin, sort of like we might refer to a rube as Gomer.


Don't like me using Uncle Adolf? Well, some still call Stalin "Uncle Joe", right? As did FDR and Churchill.

John Henry

Stephen Taylor म्हणाले...

Let me recommend "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" by William Shirer; read it and you can skip "Mein Kampf". Shirer points out, and illlustrates, how Hitler used his book to tell the world precisely what his plans were, and how he intended to carry them out.

The Shirer book is stunning. I highly recommend it. Very readable, by a journalist who was there for most of the events discussed.

PB म्हणाले...

I think democrats are looking for ideas on how to take things to the next level.

PB म्हणाले...

I think democrats are looking for ideas on how to take things to the next level.

ngtrains म्हणाले...

Roadgeek is right. and as you read the first chapters consider the similarities of HItler taking over the and process on the BO administration gaining power.'

traditionalguy म्हणाले...

I read that a British Army film taken of the liberated Buchenwald Extermination Camp was edited by Alfred Hitchcock in late 1945. On second thought It was stored away and not shown to make Germans fell less guilt and mostly so the Jews would remain hated which Would appease Arabs with oil sands.

But now it has been redigitized and a missing part restored.

Seeing that reality is needed by Cedarford types. Hitchcock was disabled a week from the shock of seeing the works of pure evil.

damikesc म्हणाले...
ही टिप्पणी लेखकाना हलविली आहे.
damikesc म्हणाले...

I read it in college. Horribly boring. There wasn't a point that could be made once that he didn't make a billion times.

Only plus: he didn't remotely hide what he wanted to do.

Actually, the Nazis modeled their propaganda model on the American model, initially erected by the Hoover administration and his Creel Commission prior to our entering WWI to foment pro-war sentiments

Umm, Wilson's admin got us into WW I. You're off by 10 years there.

Wilson, mind you, was an absolute fascist.

SomeoneHasToSayIt म्हणाले...

Why is 'Mein Kampf' left untranslated?

Do we refer to Goethe's famous novel as "Die Leiden des jungen Werthers"?
No. No we don't.

Translated, Hitler's book title could have also served as an adequate title for Obama's so-called autobiography.

It's also possible to mistranslate a title, at least to modern ears and word meanings. Plato's opus is best translated as 'The State', for example.

NotWhoIUsedtoBe म्हणाले...

Cook isn't wrong. The Nazis modeled the Nuremberg Laws on the racial codes of the US South. The US federal government was racist as hell, too. The US won WW2 but still took decades to dismantle those laws, even after the German laws were repealed by Allied soldiers.

Goebels used Madison Avenue ad techniques and Hollywood production values to make better propaganda. I don't care so much about this, because there's a big difference between selling Burma Shave and mass murder.

But segregation and miscegnation laws came for the US. We had the world's first racial state. It's best not to forget that.

jimspice म्हणाले...

Come on AA. Post an affiliate link. You know you're dying to.

Revenant म्हणाले...

But segregation and miscegnation laws came for the US. We had the world's first racial state. It's best not to forget that.

I would recommend forgetting it, since it isn't true.

Laws segregating and restricting Jews, gypsies, and other "undesirable" ethnic groups, and forbidding/restricting their intermarriage with Christians, had existed in Europe for hundreds of years before the United States ever came into being.

Revenant म्हणाले...

The struggle he talks about is the Darwinist teaching that all life is a "struggle to survive".

Darwin is mentioned nowhere in the book, probably because Hitler's claims about "evolutionary law" have no foundation in the theory of evolution. :)

E.g., he claims that mingling "weak" with "strong" is contrary to the "laws of evolution". There are no "laws of evolution".

Revenant म्हणाले...

This is just scare mongering. The left is reliably free speech

The left is reliably in favor of free speech for leftists.

Speech the left disagrees with, well, not so much.

Brian McKim and/or Traci Skene म्हणाले...

Setting aside the fact that NPR probably gives Hitler's crackpot manifesto a tongue-bath on a regular basis (thus setting off a flurry of downloads among the Volvo wagon set), I view this spike in sales as a positive. It's probably a sign of the disintermediation of greedy text-book sales people. How many classes-- at the college level, at the high school level, at even the junior high level-- do you suppose include Mein Kampf in their reading lists? I would say thousands. If these poor students are forced to wade through it (and near as I can tell, Cliff's don't offer no Notes), then they should be spared paying any more than $0.99 for it. Same goes for the Communist Manifesto.

Crimso म्हणाले...

"Shirer points out, and illlustrates, how Hitler used his book to tell the world precisely what his plans were, and how he intended to carry them out."

IIRC, it was Shirer who pointed out that based on its sales, "Mein Kampf" must have been in many (most?) German homes. He saw it prominently displayed in some, as if to dispel any doubts as to the political reliability of the residents. He also noted that Germans argued that they weren't to blame for what Hitler did, because how were they to know what he had planned. He then pointed out the disconnect, and suggested that the vast majority of Germans who bought it never read it.

Shirer's "The Nightmare Years" was quite good also. A memoir of the 1930s, it sounds like it might be boring, but it is anything but. And not all politics, either. Some very amusing and fascinating personal events (famous people he crossed paths with, etc.).

William म्हणाले...

Hitler was such a hideous human being, you would expect him to have been a much better writer. Stalin, early in his career, was considered to have real talent as a poet.......I've read that Keynes' book, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, had far more influence than Mein Kampf. It was a big best seller in Germany. It convinced the Germans that they had been thoroughly hosed at Versailles. Hitler was able to sow seeds in fields plowed by Keynes.......Although the Germans had to pay some stiff reparations, they were, in the final analysis, much cheaper than Allied carpet bombing and occupation by the Red Army.

Crimso म्हणाले...

Damn, I guess mine was the 88th comment. Unfortunate. Might as well have bought copies of "Mein Kampf" for everyone I know.

jimbino म्हणाले...

It's like Lady Chatterly's Lover and Tropic of Cancer. They were banned for so long for no reason that when they were liberated, sales jumped. I know that I went right out and bought them as a teenager, mostly because they'd been banned.

Around the same time, I used to sneak out of the house to go to Wednesday prayer meeting.

As Mark Twain commented, "God's big mistake was in not forbidding eating of the Serpent."

I await a resurgence of sales of Nazi periphernalia on eBay!

David म्हणाले...

John Lynch said...
Cook isn't wrong. The Nazis modeled the Nuremberg Laws on the racial codes of the US South.


That would be the "Solid South," utterly a captive of the Democratic party and the key to every Democrat national election campaign from 1868 to 1960.

So we could say that the Nuremberg Laws were modeled on one of the core beliefs to the Democratic Party, right?

SomeoneHasToSayIt म्हणाले...

And game, set, and match, goes to David.

Gary Rosen म्हणाले...

"Seeing that reality is needed by Cedarford types"

Wouldn't change a thing, our favorite Jew-baiting whitewasher of child molesters has his mind made up don't confuse him with the facts.

Gary Rosen म्हणाले...

"We had the world's first racial state."

Right, before 1776 the entire world was living in happy peaceful multicultural harmony.

How stupid would you have to be to actually believe this? He has to know he's lying for his IQ to get out of even single digits.

Unknown म्हणाले...

I am personally fed up of amazon , as a seller and a buyer , i feel neglected .

I personally have started using http://www.bivver.com , Bivver online auctions .
Prices are cheaper , and i have sold a few things as well .

Robert Cook म्हणाले...

"Umm, Wilson's admin got us into WW I. You're off by 10 years there."

I had the right administration, I just switched the name of the later alliteravely-named President for the earlier one, (i.e., Herbert Hoover for Woodrow Wilson). I acknowledged my brain-fart further up the thread.

अनामित म्हणाले...

Lots of nonsense being posted here.
'Nazi' is just a perfectly natural Germanism; they love to create abbreviations. Kind of a necessity given their language.
Hitler was very enamored of the US eugenics movement. He wrote about it favorably in Mein Kampf. The eugenics movement was part of the Democrat party's platform for years. Planned Parenthood was a spawn of that movement. So was Auschwitz.
The Nazis were indeed socialists. In fact, Hitler was a minor official in the communistic Bavarian Soviet that arose in the chaos post WW1.
To claim that the National Socialist German Worker's Party, their official name, was a right wing party is just plain ignorance. The right wing parties in Germany were focused on reinstating the monarchy.
And no, I shall not provide links...go out and educate yourselves.

अनामित म्हणाले...

As to surge in sales, perhaps the Obama administration is providing all newly-weds a copy. That too was SOP im Dritten Reich.

damikesc म्हणाले...

I had the right administration

You said Hoover.

By any definition of the word, it wasn't right.

I just switched the name of the later alliteravely-named

So, except for the President, you got everything else correct?

Except Creel never worked for Hoover, either, so you cannot claim Hoover had any dealings with Creel in the first place.

I'd think you'd be quite accurate here, given how much Wilson tried to overthrow the Bolsheviks and all...

The Nazis modeled the Nuremberg Laws on the racial codes of the US South.

Yes, because race-based laws didn't exist in Europe. Of course not.

I'll go ahead and humor your claim and ask you to back up your claim with ANY evidence.

Sigivald म्हणाले...

Yeah, yeah, I know it's been a popular dogma among righties following Jonah Goldberg's book that Hitler and the Nazis were leftists/socialists/liberals or whatever.

IT's also true, that they were socialists (and to the extent, especially historically, that "socialist" meant "leftist", it is also accurate - remember that the Soviet Union was also self-avowedly "socialist" and considered so by the world).

Nobody considered the "liberal" in any normal sense, nor does now.

You have to forget "National Socialist German Worker's Party" [and the double connection to Socialist by being a "Worker's Party"], and the Party Platform to make them not Socialists.

You have to forget total State control over means of production - though admittedly not through the Soviet model of nationalization, but ... it's no less socialist when the control over production is via implicit and explicit threat than by appropriation; the fact of control is what makes it Socialist.

And remember I don't mean "socialist" in the modern half-assed sense of "a social safety net and some regulation and stuff" that people wish to pretend is the serious meaning of the word; I mean the sense correct at the time and still best for the term now, of state control over the means of production, though by implicit contrast with Communism, without the abolition of private property.

Arguably the Nazis were more Socialist than even properly Fascist; Mussolini's system had "Industry" on the Council of Fasces on [notionally, at leas] equal terms with the other "corpora"; labor, the Church, the Army.

The only reasons this is "problematic" for people [like you, evidently] are twofold:

First, Soviet propaganda wanted to pretend that the Fascists and pseudo-Fascists were not Socialists to make themselves look better and help people forget about the Molotov Pact.

Secondly, for some odd reason, people on the left keep wanting to call themselves Socialist, probably confusing "socialism" with "social democracy" on the European model, which is much closer to what they actually mean.

Perhaps if, instead of simply trying to mock Goldberg and the WrongThinkers, you knew anything about the subject and its history, you would do better at this?

Robert Cook म्हणाले...

Damikesc:

Don't be obtuse: I was referring to the Wilson administration I just wrote the wrong name. Using the time frame (WWI) and referring to the Creel Commision, it could have been no other. Don't pretend you're not aware of this.

Robert Cook म्हणाले...

"You have to forget 'National Socialist German Worker's Party' [and the double connection to Socialist by being a "Worker's Party"], and the Party Platform to make them not Socialists."

Oh, for heaven's sake! Did it never occur to you that people and organizations use deceptive names all the time, that a name does not a philosophy make?

The whole argument specious and is meant to "prove" that right wing political movements or governments can never become authoritarian tyrannies...because, you know, "the right wing is for limited gubmint and for freedom."

As already noted, paper-thin baloney is no less baloney than thick-cut.

अनामित म्हणाले...

Here is the actual Nazi platform:
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/1708-ps.asp


Sure doesn't sound conservative or right wing to me; with all the profit confiscation, nationalization of industries, and such. Nowhere does it demand a return of the monarchy nor does it call for smaller government and less spending.
Aside from SOME of the race-based stuff it reads very 'progressive'. And, in case I was too subtle, some of the anti-Jewish stuff reads 'progressive' to me too.
I sourced it from Yale, by the way, since I didn't think you would accept my own translation of it.

Face it Mr. Cook, you know nothing about the NSDAP. All you have are your own prejudices and projections.
--------------------------------

अनामित म्हणाले...

RC wrote:
Oh, for heaven's sake! Did it never occur to you that people and organizations use deceptive names all the time, that a name does not a philosophy make?

Ah yes, how true. Like 'Democrat Party'.

अनामित म्हणाले...

Funny how Robert Cook disappears when faced with inconvenient facts.