Althouse: "Can you annotate the devil?"

February 25, 2015

"Can you annotate the devil?"

"This book is outside of human logic."

42 comments:

Michael K said...: It's turgid mush but Orwell like it.; 2/25/15, 9:35 PM
Michael K said...: Liked it !; 2/25/15, 9:35 PM
William said...: I've never read the book, but my sense is that it's probably pretty dull. Lenin, Mussolini, and Woodrow Wilson all wrote heavy tomes that were considered influential , but who nowadays reads them......Incidentally, Mussolini's autobiography was, in fact, written by his mistress who was Jewish........I read Churchill's book about his early life. It was quite good and actually written by him. Having read it, I had no wish to lead a cavalry charge or administer India. There's another book besides Mein Kampf that most modern anti-Semites take their inspiration from. Good luck on banning that.; 2/25/15, 9:40 PM
David Smith said...: I was young when I read it, but at that time it seemed, as Michael K so aptly put it, "turgid mush". It certainly didn't turn me into a Nazi, an anti-semite or an authoritarian tool.

OTOH, equating Hitler with "the devil" - something utterly other, rather than "the banality of evil", something all too human - seems to me a dangerous error.

He was charismatic, was backed by rich and powerful factions who used him for their own purposes, and caused immense harm. In many ways that could describe any number of players on the world stage today, some of them active in U.S. politics.

Read, mark, and inwardly digest.; 2/25/15, 9:44 PM
traditionalguy said...: "Do what thou wilt" was the motto of Hitler's earliest teacher, and Mein Kampf was simply his presentation of his will to all who wanted to know his will. So it has value to understand what not to will, such as extermination all of the non-Austrians.; 2/25/15, 9:45 PM
Revenant said...: “This book is too dangerous for the general public,” library historian Florian Sepp told the newspaper.

The German public of the early 20th century was dangerous. The *book* is nonsense on stilts. You have to start out hating Jews to take it seriously.; 2/25/15, 9:48 PM
David said...: If the book is too dangerous for the public to see, Germany is in a boatload of trouble. Personally, I hope there is an English translation of the annotation. I'd like to see what they say. I'll bet there will be some interesting moral and verbal gymnastics.

When I tried to read Mein Kampf years ago in English, I found it unreadable. Kind of like Ulysses that way. I've recently finished Mary Chestnut's "Diary from Dixie," the lightly annotated and Southern friendly 1905 edition published by Appleton. It's an edited version, not the whole thing. I'm about to follow that up with Vann Woodward's heavily annotated version from the 1980's. The contrast in the annotations should be interesting. But I'm glad I read a lightly annotated version first. I learned a lot about the attitude of Confederates during the war, especially their pessimism (realism) about the outcome as early as late 1862.

A few years ago I also read the Autobiography of Rudolph Hoess, the first commandant of Auschwitz. It was surprisingly well written, and very revealing as to how he became a Nazi. (Hoess was an enlisted man with a German unit in Palestine when the war ended. He lead his entire unit on foot back to Germany from Palestine, without losing single man. That and his experiences in the chaos of Germany in the 1920's told a lot.)

Primo Levi wrote the introduction to my version of the Hoess biography. Too bad someone of his quality is not around to parse the new Mein Kampf and its annotation. Of course there was nobody like Levi, so that is an empty hope.

If this book becomes available in English, I certainly shall read it.; 2/25/15, 9:49 PM
David said...: "The *book* is nonsense on stilts. You have to start out hating Jews to take it seriously."

So maybe it's more dangerous than we think. Jew hatred seems to be making a comeback.; 2/25/15, 9:50 PM
David said...: I agree with the comment about classifying Hitler as the devil. That lets him, and the society that followed him, off entirely too easily.; 2/25/15, 9:52 PM
Hagar said...: I do not wish to hear the world's evil; I do not wish to see the world's evil; and I do not wish to smell the world's evil.

None of the above will keep the world's evil from finding you.; 2/25/15, 9:53 PM
D. B. Light said...: I'm generally opposed to book burning or banning, but this is a tough one.; 2/25/15, 9:56 PM
mccullough said...: I doubt most nazis even made it through 50 pages of this book. Landsberg Prison Blues would have been a better title; 2/25/15, 10:16 PM
clint said...: Banning the book gives it entirely too much importance.; 2/25/15, 10:17 PM
buwaya said...: Its not unreadable, but I suspect its English translators didn't do their best by it, not the one I had anyway.
Its not really illogical either, if one accepts its premises.
And there is, on occasion, a bit of humor.; 2/25/15, 10:24 PM
traditionalguy said...: Many of the Jews of Europe had been systematically persecuted, pogromed, expelled, Ghettoized and even some murdered when bad weather hit, for 1500 years in Europe's Catholic based communities. The old instinct to get jealous of Jews would spring up for any reason. Even Martin Luther who was a German Catholic until he started the "Faith Alone" Reformation, wrote worse Jew hating diatribes than Hitler.

But Hitler's will to systematically hunt them down for capture and killing when it was put into industrial practice in a way stopped the nonsense.

By having killed them all except for one Jew from a family and one Jew from a town who survived into 1945, those refugees vulnerable and had no homes left to go back to in a savage continent, and they made their way to Israel.; 2/25/15, 10:26 PM
buwaya said...: Just found a bunch online. BTW, if any German wanted it the original German version is available. In this day and age it does seem a little odd to make a fuss about printing it on paper.
There is a translation by Murphy on Gutenberg that seems rather good.; 2/25/15, 10:52 PM
YoungHegelian said...: Yes, Mein Kampf is turgid & well-nigh unreadable. For an easier read covering Hitler's thoughts his Table Talks are a better deal (just like Martin Luther's Table Talks are more readable than much of his prose, too).

In the business world, there's a saying "Plan the work. Work the Plan". In the history of political writing, there has been no work by a politician that outlined in such detail & honesty what he was going to do. Persecute the Jews -- check. Invade Russia --- check. Impose a whole new top-down life on the German people -- check. If only Stalin had believed that Hitler truly believed what he wrote in MK, the course of WWII would have gone much differently.

But, still, I'm amazed that German Jews think that the open publication will change much of anything. Anyone who ever wanted it could find it in German or in translation.; 2/25/15, 11:11 PM
Freeman Hunt said...: Isn't Mein Kampf itself sort of an annotation of the actual devil?; 2/26/15, 12:00 AM
Guildofcannonballs said...: Outside human logic implies inside animal logic, which is racist. Or, I suppose one could say Hitler had a god's logic, if one liked stupid shit.

You can call Hitler one of the most worthy denizens of Hell imaginable, and you'd be accurate, but don't dare you call him a chimp or ape.

Maybe inhumane, racist chimp talk is what made Hitler into evil personified, Adolf Hitler.

Of course if true this makes Hitler double/ultra more human than the human*.

*Hat Tip Rob Zombie; 2/26/15, 12:40 AM
rcommal said...: Heavily annotated: LOL! Now, there's a something-something: specifically, a thing turned right upside down on its thick head--creaking, blithe and oblivious, all at the same time.

Never underestimate the banality of willful ignorance, say I.; 2/26/15, 12:57 AM
Guildofcannonballs said...: " Follow
David Burge
@iowahawkblog

As if this Australia trip wasn't epic enough: see you at the Steel Panther concert Saturday night.

Reply
"; 2/26/15, 1:25 AM
Guildofcannonballs said...: Hitler would have hated Twitter.

Twitter would have prevented Hitler's plans, hence--prevented--"Hitler," before tracks were a top-notch track-sniffing dog's sense of intuition away.

The most beautiful thing is that many who claim the title of Liberal, an honorable label, are in actuality what my Social Studies teacher said oh-so-many years ago: You don't know what you are.

He (the teacher, please make more of an effort to appreciate the flow and stylings I am giving you at a smaller-charge-than-you-think-now-but-just-you-wait rate) was right.

These people are dumb sheep; leading them from evil takes infinite good only Jesus provides, not my mostly-right ribald declaimings.

By raising Jesus, raising His name, the great Scott Walker has shown, again, that the Koch's forging process, begun not yesterday but not "a hundred" years ago neither, has strengthened this Walker American-wise to proportions even those unprone to proportion praising recognize*.

*When you spell recognize wrong thing "recognate recognate recognate."; 2/26/15, 1:38 AM
Guildofcannonballs said...: Looks like I am Hitler, as far as many people whom I was raised in WI with subscribe to their thoughts actionwise via posters.

My sister and her kids sat and stood and sang in solidarity with the Singers there.

She is a better person by almost all rights than me in ways that matter. Her children (I've none but an aborted soul) are not only okay but superlative. By your standards and mine. Athletics and scholarship came naturally but, being from WI, greatness in niceness and decency shines most forth to me.

Hitler was all about me too; Hence Hitler is I.; 2/26/15, 2:27 AM
rcommal said...: Oh, bullshit in terms of the assumptions (though not, actually, in terms of the proposition, assuming that it's possible that there are enough people out there to resist the pull of belonging):

"Twitter would have prevented Hitler's plans, hence--prevented--"Hitler," before tracks were a top-notch track-sniffing dog's sense of intuition away.

Again, just sayin'; 2/26/15, 2:50 AM
rcommal said...: And, to rephrase:

Ta hel wit y awl

---; 2/26/15, 2:54 AM
Guildofcannonballs said...: I am highly saddened that Father Martin Fox was made unwelcome at this location on the web.

I am sad I have to leave my best friend to go to work everyday, and I am sad I earn 1000 miles from home.

Obviously nothing I can do can influence, help, or make right.

Again as Hitler, I am sad.; 2/26/15, 3:16 AM
rcommal said...: NotquiteunBuckley,

Here's a notion that might shock you:

Father Martin Fox absolutely can be welcome [welcomed] again here at Althouse. I get why, and so should he. But he does have to admit some stuff and give up some conceits.

I say that as an acute observer (and as one who, while not banned from this site, in fact will never be welcomed again, no matter what, because, unlike for Father Fox, there is and never will be a constituency desirous, and I do know it.); 2/26/15, 3:35 AM
Guildofcannonballs said...: Okay Okay Okay.

By pomand* the "sock" is "off".**

https://cumulus.hillsdale.edu/Buckley/

*popular demand

** as a nod toward the punctuation NON-FRANCE INFLUENCED; 2/26/15, 3:58 AM
Guildofcannonballs said...: I kinda hate myself for mitigating the effects of all the non-Jews that suffered during WW2.

I want Bibi to Nuke ISIS not IRAN.

I love Steel Panther,,,.; 2/26/15, 4:20 AM
Hammond X. Gritzkofe said...: I recommend "The Road to Serfdom" by Friedrich Hayek. Overly pedagogical in tone, but shorter and more frightening than "Mein Kampf."

The latter, if you managed to get through it, would probably leave you disgusted or amused.

No book should be banned.; 2/26/15, 5:30 AM
rhhardin said...: Kenneth Burke did the necessary lit crit job on Mein Kampf in "The Rhetoric of Hitler's Battle" in the 30s.

Reprinted in The Philosophy of Literary Form.

Also worthwhile in the same book, "On Musicality in Verse."; 2/26/15, 6:00 AM
rhhardin said...: Kenneth Burke, supra, incidently showed that Mein Kampf is not beyond human logic but well within it.

You can find the same logic in newspapers today.; 2/26/15, 6:30 AM
buwaya said...: Reading it again - got much less sleep than I should - see what you did, Althouse? In the light of much more experience, as I read this originally as a teen -
- Everybody should read it, at least the early parts. Its an interesting and I think a well told story, a life that could well have gone otherwise. A lot of the trouble seems to have come from the ethnic nationalist fad of post-1870, which made a big impression while very young. Who knows what crazy romantic nonsense is doing to some talented kid today?
- His description of communist rhetorical and activist tactics is eeriely familiar - there's your Alinsky right there. And the call to adopt the same. The same sort of thing is going on right now, on Twitter, etc.
- The Vienna milieu of the lower classes is straight early industrial revolution social dissolution of recent country people. We've seen this very, very often now. Austria was decades behind Germany in this. The role of economic uncertainty and instability of employment seems critical. This is a major issue here and now.
- His description of class characteristics, anxieties and the fear of falling from the petty bourgeoise to the working class is very much as Orwells, see Wigan Pier. Both as a general observation and to explain his own development.
- He was an interesting and perceptive social observer. He learned what buttons to push, and what not, and lays them out here in some detail. It seems his rhetoric worked because he'd learned what worked from the bottom.
- He seems to have been a very honest fellow, not giving much impression of an unreliable narrator.
There is a very great deal here that's pertinent to us moderns. Well worth reading.; 2/26/15, 7:23 AM
Tibore said...: "David Smith said...

OTOH, equating Hitler with "the devil" - something utterly other, rather than "the banality of evil", something all too human - seems to me a dangerous error."

I don't mean to derail since the thread topic is the perception of the written word, and by extension a matter of "free speech" vs. morality, but this is such an important point I feel the need to digress.

All too often, we inflate evil to comical levels. We end up making it so outré, imagine it to be so much larger-than-life that we risk missing the very real evil-next-door by mistaking the bland faces and soft demeanor for meaning no harm. We oftentimes have such a ridiculously outrageous sense of what evil looks like, sounds like, and does that when we see very real, very genuine instances right in front of our eyes we find ways to vaccilate because it doesn't seem to meet our expectations.

Need we recall the various ethnic cleansings in the former Yugoslavia as an example? Or Rwanda? And more?

Heck, our sense of what's evil is so messed up that we could have a comic-book level of it happen in front of our news-camera eyes and dismiss it as "Bush League". Yes, that's a sideways criticism of Obama, but it's also a self-critique because some others, myself included, had that exact thought when ISIS first started their atrocities. Obama's actual mistake was calling them that well after it was obvious they were more, but in the beginning it's what many of us thought it was: Another Zarqawi-type group that's going to burn out it's welcome and perish under the weight of its own excesses. Ooops.

But anyway, yes: It's banality, as Hanna Arendt coined the phrase, that is the real face evil usually wears. And we all too often risk letting slide right past us very genuine instances for want of finding something that matches our colorful illusions. Again and again we make this mistake, and again and again people suffer because of it. Even beyond Hitler, characterizing anything as "The Devil" is a very dangerous error to make. Hitler never had to be "The Devil"; he just had to be himself. And unfortunately that holds true for far too many others these days.; 2/26/15, 8:03 AM
Tibore said...: Oh, and back on topic re: Levi Salomon's quote "This book is outside of human logic."

That's precisely why it must be republished: So that we have something to point at and tell the upcoming generations who get farther and farther away from that evil and tell them "You want to know evil? You want to see what humanity is capable of when it not only loses its moral compass, but purports to replace it with something else? Read this. Then go study what acts Hitler committed due to that mindset."

It and the entire mindset of Nazi Antisemitism is outside of what most people perceive as human logic. But it's not outside of twisted, inhumane logic. Worse yet, it presents itself as a human understandable explanation of why the world is the way it is. And that's why republishing is so important: It's precisely because it's insidious that it needs to be known. Keep it out of humanity's grasp, and someone will either rediscover it on their own, or reinvent it. Worse yet, they'll think it novel and not evil, for the reasons given in my prior post.; 2/26/15, 8:15 AM
buwaya said...: And, right there, are the reasons he decided to hate Jews. As he said, he started with liberal sympathies, being inclined toward the tolerant bourgeoise attitudes of the times, and they were indeed tolerant by European standards. Austria wasn't Russia.
- Shielded by heavy euphemisms of the times, there seems to have been something of a Rotherham - type situation in Vienna, and as per Hitler it was Jews running it. I think he may have been correct. It also fits in very well with his narrative of family dissolution, etc., which would have left young women vulnerable. This stuff really is poisonous, and needs to be actively suppressed by the authorities.
- Jews were running the communist groups he opposed. At the time this was true. It was also true in the US into the 1950s (see Ronald Radosh et al), and still is to some degree in the US, as well as for left wing groups of all sorts. Nazi propaganda that equated communists with Jews was out of date by the 1930s, for Russia anyway, but had more than a bit of truth in it for a long time.
- He was frustrated in public arguments, with communist Jews, that sound very much like internet squabbling of today, which is often like speaking to stones. I totally get it. Its much worse in person I suppose. And he wasnt the sort to accept this with good grace. People who imagine that the point is to convince ones opponents are going to be disappointed.
He put it all together and got into a perpetual rage on the subject. That's personality. I suspect if he had stayed in Linz, or gotten into college, he would have found something else to rage about.; 2/26/15, 8:33 AM
Peter said...: Just as there once was nothing quite as effective in promoting even the worst book than "banned in Boston," attempting to ban Mein Kampf in Germany is worse than futile. I assume full-text versions of it can be found on the Internet?

Suppression of Naziism was appropriate during the Allied occupation of Germany after WWII, and might have been appropriate for some years after it ended but it's hardly that can be sustained indefinitely.

Post-Gutenberg, has censorship ever successfully suppressed anything?; 2/26/15, 9:44 AM
ken in tx said...: Ethnic secular Jews were influential in Soviet Communism up until Stalin denounced them as Cosmopolitans and started purging them.

BTW, I have a personal rule that I do not make additional posts to correct obvious typos or misspellings. It's an annoying waste of time and megabytes. I figure most people are smart enough to figure what was meant. I recommend this rule.; 2/26/15, 12:26 PM
Brando said...: It wasn't the book that was dangerous, it was giving absolute power to the Nazis that was dangerous.

Had the authorities actually punished the Nazis when they started breaking the law to intimidate their political foes, and had the other parties' legislators not voted to give Hitler his dictatorial powers initially, they would have remained a ragtag group of thugs in the margins.; 2/26/15, 1:10 PM
Brando said...: It's the attitude that leads to banning books that is far more dangerous than the ideas in any book.; 2/26/15, 1:12 PM
Lydia said...: Everything old is new again, at least for Jews -- from the Wash. Post:

Although authorities [in Germany] struck deals with online sellers such as Amazon.com to prohibit sales in Germany, new copies of “Mein Kampf” have become widely available via the Internet around the globe. In retail stores in India, it is enjoying strong popularity as a self-help book for Hindu nationalists. A comic-book edition was issued in Japan. A new generation of aficionados is also rising among the surging ranks of the far right in Europe. The neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party in Greece, for instance, has stocked “Mein Kampf” at its bookstore in Athens.

The article also mentions that the book was never officially banned in Germany; only its reprinting was. That at least meant it suffered from official opprobrium. Now that's been lifted.; 2/26/15, 1:48 PM
Beldar said...: Sunlight as disinfectant in its most powerful form.

Those who found "Mein Kampf" inspirational were always hopeless.

A far larger circle on the Venn diagram is those who found it puerile and impenetrable and tedious (although maybe it sings in the original German, I dunno). As a historical source material, it's interesting mainly for how awful it remains.

The most powerful, least-read, book of the 20th Century, I've heard it called, and I suspect that's right.; 2/26/15, 8:08 PM