"... the glory of war over peace; disgust with the messy bargaining and limited successes of reformist, parliamentary democracy and, with that disgust, contempt for the political class as permanently compromised; the certainty that all military setbacks are the results of civilian sabotage and a lack of will; the faith in a strong man; the love of the exceptional character of one nation above all others; the selection of a helpless group to be hated, who can be blamed for feelings of national humiliation. He didn’t invent these arguments. He adapted them, and then later showed where in the real world they led, if taken to their logical outcome by someone possessed, for a time, of absolute power. Resisting those arguments is still our struggle, and so they are, however unsettling, still worth reading, even in their creepiest form."
From "Does 'Mein Kampf' Remain a Dangerous Book?" by Adam Gopnik (The New Yorker).
In this short article, Gopnik uses variations on the word "creepy" 5 times: "not so much diabolical or sinister as creepy.... The creepiness extends toward his fanatical fear of impurity.... Creepy and miserable and uninspiring as the book seems to readers now.... Putting aside the book’s singularly creepy tone.... it contains little argumentation that wasn’t already commonplace still worth reading, even in their creepiest form."
That suggests that, if we readi the book, we will feel an instinctive revulsion against the writer, even as the writer was endeavoring to inspire revulsion against designated others. Is it good to rely on this instinct to deliver us from evil?
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45 comments:
"Is it good to rely on this instinct to deliver us from evil?"
That's a loaded question. Clearly creepiness shouldn't be relied upon solely. But it's an instinct that has served us well over time and still has value.
Is there anything creepier than Hitler? Not likely.
He died with a conscience as clean as a cat's.
Imagine that. A degenerate gambler with broken luck will take the world down with him.
Kenneth Burke, in the 1930, "The Rhetoric of Hitler's 'Battle'" in The Philosophy of Literary Form took the book as informative, not dangerous. Let's look at how this poison works.
It's nto hard to spot the same poison in the criticism.
They are trying to launder many of the ideas in Mein Kampf, get the stink of Hilter out of them, because they are using them.
.
https://twitchy.com/2013/01/23/matt-yglesias-joke-falls-flat-hitler-did-have-some-good-ideas/
The problem is that many do not have that instinct as illustrated many times in the 20th century. Sadly, many on the left and right are still blind to the creepiest among us.
Is the feeling of creepiness caused by raw instinct, or by an understanding of how the writer's arguments led into a much larger pattern of tyranny and terrible oppression? I think it's the latter, and that Gopnik is suggesting that we rely on recognizing the patterns and mode of the argument rather than just a "creepy" vibe.
"Creepy" seems like a rather small word to describe Hitler.
Creepy is that guy fondling himself at the bus-stop, or the Uncle who hugs a little too close.
Or the politician that likes to sniff the hair of young girls.
I see what I did there.
- Loren
I have not read Mein Kampf but reading the article and it’s excerpts takes me to a different conclusion than the article’s author. I don’t see creepiness. I see the anger and resentment of the marginalized. Hitler was speaking to others like him. In Germany at that time there were many would respond to that message emotionally. To call it creepy magnifies that marginalization. A different perspective would be to see it as a cry for attention. I am here. See me. James Baldwin. Invisible Man comes to mind. Of course my perspective only comes from what I read in the article not the book itself.
Now: Eva Braun was creepy.
Behind every evil man is a creepy woman.
I think Shakespeare said that first.
- Loren
Evil spreads as public virtue. Look for the most virtuous people, say the woke left.
Hitler was less crazy than people imagine Why Hitler started the war, just bad economics and bad anthropology.
Amusingly recognizeable situation in Mein Kampf, Hitler argues with the Jews and the next day he comes back and the Jews refuse to admit that Hitler won the argument yesterday.
To me, 'Mein Kampf' remains a useful book. For my struggle with insomnia.
Gavin deBecker. The Gift of Fear. Theres a reason for the vibes. Think about it.
Displacement is an overlooked process. In times of anger or grief, somebody has to be blamed and if the real perps are unavailable--for any reason including you don't blame the Big Shots in the uniforms of a proud history--then somebody else is going to get the blame. And you are, in effect, marginalized; separated from all you expected to have, from all you expected to be, from the future you expected.
Lots of anger looking for a place to land and....Hitler used it.
This is wokeism. The big modern movements were supposedly just as bad as the bad old pre-modern days. Until recently, "modern" meant: more in favour of parliamentary democracy than not, opposed to absolute or lawless government, opposed to decision-making (purely) by military conquest, and so on. The modern movement or movements, like all successful movements, spread and succeeded partly by crude and violent methods, but there is lots of evidence that a peaceful, lawful regime that protected the rights of a lot of people, indeed was committed (in principle) to human equality, was always the plan.
Now we hear from people who identify as victims despite modern progress. For them, supposedly, modern life is just as bad as if nothing had changed at all. Machiavelli deliberately unleashed a nasty, competitive world. He thought the medieval Church deserved to be overthrown, but even beyond this, human beings ought to reject a life of severely constrained choices. In the Prince he encourages wolves to rule sheep, but he wrote a short book in a vernacular language, so he provided plenty of ammunition to sheep who can read. In his discussion of armed prophets, he encouraged "everyone" to demand something like real benefits from leaders, not just the propagation of some book that was used to justify violence and centralized control. The great liberals, beginning with Hobbes and Locke, were inspired to establish a type of government that could use force to keep the peace and support commerce, but could also be persuaded to give up any kind of demanding official religion. Unfortunately, Machiavelli may also have inspired leaders like Hitler and the Commies. Look: an armed prophecy can be successful in a modern or post-modern world.
The woke say a supposedly fair system delivers results that are observably unfair, racist, etc. This is probably a kind of cry to have something like an official religion, or a way of life: the combination of private life, commerce, and science (although presumably the woke love science) is somehow lacking. Even more than the hippies of the 60s, they seem prepared to throw out the baby of decent, lawful liberalism because they hate the bathwater of a kind of immoral neutrality.
To me, the quoted passage at the top of the post was a carefully written dog whistle to Gopnik's Trump-hating Leftist readers.
Is it good to rely on this instinct to deliver us from evil?
I guess we could burn all the creepy books.
Is it good to rely on this instinct to deliver us from evil?
Is it good for people to knee-jerk reflexively parrot that line about Godwin's law?
Awkward is another popular millennial euphemism to describe normal behavior of older generations that makes them uncomfortable out of their bubble.
That suggests that, if we readi the book, we will feel an instinctive revulsion against the writer
If it does, it shows a complete ignorance of history.
First of all, Hitler published Mein Kampf in 1925 and 1926. In the book Hitler is quite forthright about his plans and goals for Germany and the German people. He then rose to power after free, democratic elections.
Here in the United States there was a significant amount of support for Hitler on the Left right up until he invaded the Soviet Union during World War II.
The subtext of the passage above is that the writer is able to spot the creepiness in Hitler's writings. All of the points he makes about Hitler were also true about Napoleon. I don't think Gopnik is the kind of guy who can spot the creepiness in Napoleon.....His passage is also somewhat applicable to Frederick the Great. Frederick wrote a treatise that detailed his objections to the philosophy of Machiavelli and how it was necessary to govern in accordance with Christian principles. Frederick didn't believe a word of it. His anti-Machiavellian stance was, in fact, a Machiavellian move. He gained the friendship and support of Voltaire.....Artists and intellectuals more often than not are blind to the flaws of enlightened despots. The smart despots like Napoleon and Lenin can usually gain their support. There's a certain amount of creepiness in Gopnik's failure to recognize the creepiness of tyrants other than Hitler.
He then rose to power after free, democratic elections.
He was appointed by Hindenburg, who didn't like him. If Hindenburg had refused... well, that is a different line of history.
I read a shortened version of Mein Kampf when I was in my early teens, found it in the basement shelves of the town library while browsing. I thought Hitler had interesting things to say about manipulating people and crowds, but in retrospect, they weren't all that original. Never had the slightest urge to become a Nazi. Never had the slightest urge to become a Communist either. In my opinion, the Communists had no understanding of human nature. The fascists were probably better in that regard.
“ To me, the quoted passage at the top of the post was a carefully written dog whistle to Gopnik's Trump-hating Leftist readers.”
I thought the article would get around to directly accusing Trump, as is so common today, but it didn’t. I did think we were meant to hear an implicit antiTrump theme.
I'm trying to imagine reading Mein Kampf on the Boulder-Denver Express bus. How to come up with sufficient performative revulsion. It would tax the talents of Marcel Marceau or Charlie Chaplin.
The book isn't dangerous. Creating the conditions that led to Hitler is dangerous. If you don't want Hitler, don't create Weimar.
You wrote 'readi the book.'
It cost the U library money every few years to replace MK, which was more often stolen/hidden/destroyed than checked out, I think.
I assumed only a short jump to Trump, but from the Prof's 1014 dispatch I am wrong.
I'll read all comments now, and come back.
Hitler is easy to denounce, his horrors ended with his suicide.. Now do Marx.
Hitler died 77 years ago. Worrying about Mein Kamp is a little like worrying about the Communist manifesto.
But its the New Yorker. They aren't big on thinking. They're more into emotion.
Yes. It's dangerous.
Burn it along with the subversive 'Green Eggs and Ham.'
'I did think we were meant to hear an implicit antiTrump theme.'
You're describing the writing of every single liberal writer.
They just can't let it go.
Trump broke them.
A long time ago I read Mein Kampf. I read it in English, and for good measure I read it in German. As I say, it was a long time ago and the details get blurry with time, but one salient point has remained with me. Mein Kampf is as clear a statement of Hitler's intentions as can be imagined. Eradication of Jews, subjugation of Slavs, Lebensraum, it's all in there in explicit language. Why so many in the neoliberal West ignored it for so long as Hitler rose to power is a mystery. Creepy is definitely an apt word.
Is Mein Kampf dangerous to read? A question asked every few years. Should it be banned? It's been banned in Germany since the end of WWII. Well, after a quick search, until recently. Amazon banned it's sale in 2020. Know what happens when you ban the sale of a book? Demand goes up- especially from those who would take the "wrong" lessons from it.
I read Mein Kampf in High school, (graduated 1973) as did most of my friends. Many of our parents had fought in WWII leaving us with interest in what started it all. I also read Das Kapital, The Communist Manifesto, The Blue Book of the John Birch Society, and many other tracts. Last 2 years of HS I was in Manhattan every Saturday and took the free copies of newspapers printed by the Black Panthers and the Communists and other fringe groups and pored through them. Quite an education. The end result being I've never voted for a Democrat/Liberal. Neither want nor need others deciding what's best for me. And that's what all leftist philosophies boil down to, a central group deciding what's best for everybody, and Nazism is a leftist philosophy despite leftist denial of their fellow travelers. As Gahrie said, here in the United States there was a significant amount of support for Hitler on the Left right up until he invaded the Soviet Union during World War II. They turned on a dime to start urging the USA get involved in a war they were previously against. This was when some thinking leftists, a rare breed, started questioning their beliefs. Up until the breakup of the USSR, almost all leftist or other anti-American movements in the USA were controlled from Moscow, either directly or indirectly. KGB archives have proven this.
Reading Mein Kampf or any other political tract is a totally neutral activity. Lessons learned are based on each individuals background. If you've had an abusive background with controlling parents, you'll take one lesson from them, a background where you had some freedom and parents who disciplined lightly, another. And the religion you were brought up in, if any, adds another layer to what you'll get out of them. No way to tell in advance whether or not allowing a particular individual to read it will prove dangerous. But freedom requires we allow people unfettered access to it.
I wonder if fascism would be so ill thought of today, if Hitler hadn't used it to launch an ill-fated war of aggression. I used to think it was the combination with mass-murderous anti-semitism that gave fascism such a bad rep. But nowadays I think even the holocaust would have gotten a pass, if he'd kept Nazism in Nazi Germany.
Of course, he couldn't do that, since Stalinist Communism was gearing up to do exactly the same thing he did, with Germany at the top of the target list.
He was appointed by Hindenburg,
Because he had just been elected to the Reichstag as a member, and was the leader of the majority party, the NAZIs.
In the words below you can see Hitler slide from being the young man who was an artist and a liberal into being the monster who murdered six million Jews and millions of dissenters, Slavic peoples, Gypsies, and homosexuals. But his first words are not creepy, the slide is gradual. So the slide is a warning to those of us who come after him. Watch out for a slide from liberalism into an attack on liberal values, into a feeling that one must adopt the evil tactics of an evil adversary.
The slide didn't seem of much importance in 1910. "The fact that, side by side with my professional studies, I took the greatest interest in everything that had to do with politics did not seem to me to signify anything of great importance.
Hitler's political interests did matter, however. He rose to power rose to power by adopting the propaganda tactics which he had decided the Jews were using to destroy the Germans and thus he became the monster who know. He used those tactics first and foremost against the Jews but then, also, against all social reformers and dissenters and against the Slavic peoples, the Polish Catholic clergy, the Gypsies, the homosexuals. Nor did he stop with cancelling those he disagreed with but went on to put them in camps and then, as a final solution, to execute as many as he could in the camps. Yet Hitler began as a liberal. The point about Hitler is that when his liberals views were challenged, he gave them up rather than deepening them. He called his losing battle to keep humane values "Mein Kampf", (My Struggle) because he came to think that liberal values hide the truth and one must struggle past them to become a Nazi. Undoubtedly, national socialist values and liberalism were at war in him before they became a world struggle.
Auden said this against Hitler:
"Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame."
Hitler slides into being a moral monster. In his own words.
"I wanted to become a painter and no power in the world could force me to become a civil
servant.
"During my struggle [mein kampf] for existence in Vienna I perceived ... that the aim of all social activity must never be merely charitable relief,... but it must rather be a means to find a way of eliminating the fundamental deficiencies in our economic and cultural life
"I am grateful that I was thrown into a world of misery and poverty and thus came to know the people for whom I was afterwards to fight.
"I was now working independently as draughtsman, and painter in water colours. ... I was master of my own time and could distribute my working-hours now better than formerly. I painted in order to earn my bread, and I studied because I liked it. Thus I was able to acquire that theoretical knowledge of the social problem which was a necessary complement to what I was learning through actual experience. I studied all the books which I could find
"My ideas about anti-Semitism changed ... in the course of time, ... that was the change which I found most difficult [in my struggle, mein kampf.]
"... [At first] I thought that [the Jews] were persecuted on account of their Faith. ... I considered that the tone adopted by the anti-Semitic Press in Vienna was unworthy of the cultural traditions of a great people....[Then I noticed that] in the Press, in art, in literature and the theatre. ... One needed only to look at the posters announcing the hideous productions of the cinema and theatre, and study the names of the authors who were highly lauded [and see that they were Jewish] ... in order to become permanently adamant on Jewish questions. Here was a pestilence, a moral pestilence
[Then Hitler alleges that the Jews controlled the Social Democrats as well as the arts and were responsible for the brutality and inhumanity of the Social Democrats.]
"The tactics of Social Democracy consisted in opening, at a given signal, a veritable drum-fire of lies and calumnies against the man whom they believed to be the most redoubtable of their adversaries, until the nerves of the latter gave way and they sacrificed the man who was attacked, simply in the hope of being allowed to live in peace. But the hope proved always to be a foolish one, for they were never left in peace. The same tactics are repeated again and again, until fear of these mad dogs exercises, through suggestion, a paralysing effect on their Victims. ... [Social Democracy] praises every weakling among its adversaries ... they highly commend those who are devoid of intelligence and will-power.
" ... These tactics.... must lead to success, ... unless the other side also learns how to fight poison gas with poison gas
"... the Social Democrats never troubled themselves to respect and uphold the original purpose for which the trade unionist movement was founded. They simply took over the Movement, lock, stock and barrel, to serve their own political ends. ... the Trades Union Movement was transformed, .... from an instrument which had been originally fashioned for the defence of human rights into an instrument for the destruction of the national economic structure....
I had dark presentiments and feared something evil.
I had before me a teaching inspired by egoism and hatred, mathematically calculated to win its victory, but the triumph of which would be a mortal blow to humanity.
Meanwhile I had discovered the relations existing between this destructive teaching and the specific character of [the Jews]. Knowledge of the Jews is the only key whereby one may understand the inner nature and therefore the real aims of Social Democracy....
"I now realized that the Jews were the leaders of Social Democracy. In face of that revelation the scales fell from my eyes. My long inner struggle [mein kampf] was at an end.
One of the creepiest things about the Intertubes is how much it exposes a wide streak of "Hitler was bad but he had no choice!" ideology among presumably educated people.
Blame Marx, blame Lenin and Stalin, but never credit Hitler with his own motivations, goals, and mental and psychological imperatives. Pretend that there was some reasonable end point at which he would have given up his world-historical ambitions, if he hadn't felt so darned threatened.
That's just ignant.
“To me, 'Mein Kampf' remains a useful book. For my struggle with insomnia.”
Perhaps, but 'Mein Kampf' reads like a best seller as compared with “Das Kapital.”
And either book is a page turner compared with most academic writing.
“The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power.”
-- from "Further Reflections on the Conversations of Our Time" by Judith Butler.
(Wanna join that “conversation”?)
The question of whether Nazism was left- or right-wing is ultimately fruitless, and Hitler would probably be amused at the debate.
There's a lazy and historically uninformed trope around, that German Nazism and Soviet Communism were twins. If so, they were not identical twins, merely fraternal. The proof is in their ends-- the warrior death cult fever provoked the world to vengeance, while the warped bureaucratic-humanist cult was outwaited, and ended with a shrug.
I think Gobnik is clearly writing for a leftist audience. His implied thesis is that Hitler's book could possibly be banned because
it might appeal to a loose collection of the left's enemies: Trump supporters, deplorables , conservatives, Republicans, etc.
All of the left's imagined fascists enemies, whose ideas are to be deemed "creepy"
There's a lazy and historically uninformed trope around, that German Nazism and Soviet Communism were twins. If so, they were not identical twins, merely fraternal.
Think of them as the Mughal emperor's sons fighting against each other for succession after their father's death. The real hatred between them was caused precisely by the fact that they were competing in the same ideological lane.
"Think of them as the Mughal emperor's sons . . . "
I'll try, but I'm not sure who then was Pop.
See y'all tomorrow.
Not like you, Professor Althouse, to be so careless with words.
Gopnik is not seeking to inspire revulsion against Hitler.
The quick dictionary definition of "creepy" is "causing an unpleasant feeling of fear or unease."
Revolting, on the other hand, is "causing intense disgust."
On your own reading, Gopnik is seeking to inspire fear or unease.
Inspiring revulsion is different, and more dangerous because it more strongly invites, though it does not require, seeing the object of revulsion as inhuman, something that Gopnik is clearly not doing. Indeed, his point is the opposite--that Hitler is recognizably a human of a kind we all know too well.
Still, your question is a good one. It's certainly possible to imagine a distinction between inspiring or inviting revulsion based on an individual's documented responsibility for the murder of millions of innocents and doing so based on a religious minority's alleged racial characteristics. The first could be an necessary incitement to right action when fear or unease is not enough, while the second is a kind of crime. Is the distinction strong enough in practice to license the first while preventing the second? Don't know.
I have Martin Van Creveld's Hitler in Hell on my computer and have had it there for some time. I only got as far as the second year of the war. The book is the purported memoirs written by Hitler in the afterlife. It's strange to hear it called a novel, but that's what it is. Hitler is still evil -- Creveld is an Israeli military historian -- but much of the craziness has been taken out so that makes him seem more rational and less overwhelmingly evil. I don't know if that was Creveld's intent.
Literary sensation Knausgaard, though, does have much sympathy for the sensitive, struggling young Hitler, and that is certainly unsettling. Perhaps, though, the fact that evil people weren't always evil or radically different from the rest of us makes them even more terrifying.
When people use the word "twins" metaphorically, they are very rarely saying the two things compared are literally twins, though they may want to make the emotional argument that both are really, really awful to the point where there isn't much difference. I think the realationship between Nazism and Communism is more complicated than twinship, but understand what people are implying.
P.S. You know who really loved tattoos?
Hitler
Second on Hitler in Hell (and van Creveld's other books and blog "As I Please").
I can see twinning Hitler and Stalin, but Nazism and Soviet Communism are siblings from a litter, not twins.
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