
Seventy years after Adolf Hitler’s death, how Germans see him is changing - jimsojim
http://www.economist.com/news/christmas-specials/21683971-seventy-years-after-adolf-hitlers-death-how-germans-see-him-changing-what
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PhasmaFelis
> _But they would never accept such rhetoric in their own politicians, for it
> would remind them of Hitler’s demagogic charisma. [...] “Because of Hitler,
> the palette of contemporary German political rhetoric is deliberately
> narrow, cautious and boring.”_

That sounds 100% positive to me. Treating politics as public theater has never
done anything good in the world.

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ntumlin
A little background on the quote about eggs of Columbus:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_of_Columbus](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_of_Columbus)

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Animats
"Look Who's Back", mentioned in the article, isn't just a book. It's a movie.
The trailers:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtW1Lq5c04E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtW1Lq5c04E)

The part where a young Goth woman shows Hitler how to use Google is very
funny.

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BogusIKnow
The book that completely changed my view on Hitler was 'Black Earth: The
Holocaust as History and Warning' by Timothy Snyder. It explained a lot of the
inner logic of WWII and the Holocaust.

~~~
nyolfen
snyder is a revisionist

~~~
fiatmoney
"Revisionist" covers a lot of ground. Which of his claims do you take issue
with?

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tmalsburg2
Decent summary of the contemporary German identity. However, I find it futile
to debate the effect of publishing Mein Kampf when everyone who is interested
can download it from the internet.

~~~
braythwayt
I don’t know if it’s futile. Some things exist purely as symbols of what is
tolerable and what isn’t.

Here in Canada, we have the Internet, and with the click of a mouse I can find
lots and lots of web sites explaining that the holocaust is a giant conspiracy
and didn’t happen.

Nevertheless, it’s against the law for me to print them in a book and sell
them in Canada. We know that people can read all that stuff, but there’s a
statement being about what is and isn’t legal to publish.

It’s not so much the information that we are trying to block, it’s the signal
I would be sending if I opened a bookstore and started selling copies of my
book in broad daylight. The meta-signal of selling the book in public is
telling people that holocaust denial is no different than any other point of
view.

Canadians believe there is value in blocking the meta-signal, even if the
signal itself flows somewhat freely across the country’s borders.

Not everyone agrees, of course. I imagine that most Americans regard Canadian
hate-crime laws as being a horrible infringement on civil liberties, right up
there with gun control and socialized medicine.

I’m not trying to convince anyone to abandon their principles and adopt the
Canadian approach, I’m just pointing out that there can be a value in banning
the publication of a work even if the work itself is available on the
Internet.

Whether that value outweighs the other considerations in play is, of course, a
public policy decision.

~~~
slavik81
> Nevertheless, it’s against the law for me to print them in a book and sell
> them in Canada.

Citation needed. We're not on the Wikipedia list of countries in which
Holocaust denial is either implicitly or explicitly illegal. [1]

As a Canadian, I've long been proud that we have been willing to refute bad
arguments rather than just imprisoning those who make them.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_denial#Laws_against_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_denial#Laws_against_Holocaust_denial)

~~~
aikah
>
> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_denial#Laws_against_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_denial#Laws_against_Holocaust_denial)

I happen to live in one of these countries (which name is easy to find out,
continue reading...). While I certainly do not deny the Holocaust, on the
contrary, I'm against these kind of laws. Should politicians decide what the
historic truth is? because it can go both ways.

So in that country of mine, some politician (well I should say the president
of that country) wanted to force school teachers to make pupils learn that
colonialism "had positive effects on the colonized people". So where does it
stop? shouldn't we let this to researchers or specialists to decide whether or
not that's true? why should a some politician,who isn't an historian, be able
to decide in their place?

~~~
Mithaldu
> politician wanted to force school teachers to make pupils learn that
> colonialism "had positive effects on the colonized people

> So where does it stop?

Your example is the government forcing the teaching of falsehoods, which is
wildly different from forbidding the distribution of hate speech.

~~~
Latty
I can claim anything is a falsehood, and I can claim anything is hate speech.
The ability to deny ideas is the ability to deny all speech. (There are some
things we can clearly distinguish as truly wrong speech - 'kill that man',
'there is a fire' when there is no fire, etc..., but ideas and history? That
needs to be free game).

~~~
specialist
_I can claim anything is hate speech._

Yes. An important part of learned helplessness (playing the victim) is
ignoring broadly accepted definitions.

 _The ability to deny ideas is the ability to deny all speech._

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope)

"In logic and critical thinking, a slippery slope is a logical device in which
a person asserts that some event must inevitably follow from another without
any rational argument or demonstrable mechanism for the inevitability of the
event in question."

~~~
Chris2048
Not sure this is a slippery slope. "It might not happen" isn't really a
refutation to caution - the word "ability to" doesn't have the concreteness of
outcome that a slippery slope requires.

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brillenfux
Well, Hitler himself said: "You will not get one true word out of me". I don't
think there's much more to see than a useful (for some) narcissist.

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nqzero
is there a simple workaround for the economist paywall ?

~~~
idlewords
Subscribe.

~~~
erikb
hehe

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golemotron
I wonder if anyone else has noticed that this is really another case of the
Streisand Effect.

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bawana
Trump. Hitler reincarnated.

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guard-of-terra
Considerably worse thing with Russia and Stalin, because of the sorry state of
modern Russia people are filled with ressentiment and even more susceptible to
that kind of second thoughts. Much more polarising.

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tomp
The fact that holocaust denial is banned (in EU, even as an idea!) only sends
the signal that the government fears it might be true.

I mean, they don't even ban creationism!

~~~
Asbostos
I think it's worse than that - it distorts our record of history. In another
couple of hundred years, if people want to find out what happened, they'll see
how it was banned and realize that most information that we did publish must
have been biased. They could reasonably assume that it's largely false since
no serious well funded attempts to refute it were allowed. So they could
conclude that they have no idea what really happened. They might conclude as
you did, that it might not have happened, otherwise information about it
wouldn't have been subject to so much suppression.

We should probably make the same conclusion today. Since when have legally
enforced official versions of history been trusted over free and open
research?

~~~
felipeerias
So we should be allowing holocaust denial here and now, because otherwise
people in the future might turn out holocaust deniers?

Holocaust denial has been refuted again and again. The reason why it keeps
surfacing is not because of academics are still arguing about the facts. The
facts don't matter: holocaust denial is one of the ways in which a very
dangerous ideology searches for an entry point into the mainstream.

~~~
tomp
> Holocaust denial has been refuted again and again

So has been the "flat Earth" theory. Yet we don't ban it.

I think the reason it keeps resurfacing is precisely _the fact it is banned_
\- unbanning it would make it much less interesting.

Also, although you and other commenters keep repeating how "dangerous" it is,
noone has been able to actually articulate as to _why_ it's dangerous.

~~~
felipeerias
Holocaust denial is a form of Nazi apologism. It keeps resurfacing because
there are still many neo-fascist groups trying to bring their message to the
mainstream. Lifting the ban would only help them reach a wider audience.

(Do you really need an explanation as to why Nazism is incompatible with
democracy?)

~~~
tomp
Evolution denial is a form of Church apologism. It keeps resurfacing because
there are still many religious groups trying to bring their message to the
mainstream. Lifting the ban would only help them reach a wider audience.

(Do you really need an explanation as to why theocracy is incompatible with
democracy?)

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swang
Off-topic (but not really): This article/site takes almost ~8 seconds to load,
then another 7+ seconds for the page to calm down (tracker loading etc). Then
there are nearly 40 trackers trying to figure out what you're doing.

Dear Economist, I am closing the window.

~~~
singold
And it also shows "rolex values your time" oh the irony

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jensen123
Much of what I read about Hitler in the mainstream media seems kinda black and
white. This paragraph of the Economist article, for example "Woven into the
prose are crude Social Darwinism and anti-Semitism that resonated even beyond
Germany, as well as hints of the author’s murderous potential. Having been
gassed by the British in the first world war, Hitler writes: if some of the
“Hebrew corrupters of the people had been held under poison gas, as happened
to hundreds of thousands of our very best German workers in the field, the
sacrifice of millions at the front would not have been in vain.”"

It is of course not mentioned that initially the Nazis simply wanted the Jews
to leave Germany. Hitler himself said that if some other country would accept
them, he would send them on luxury cruise ships. But of course, countries like
the UK or US did not want lots of Jews to immigrate to them.

~~~
jensen123
I'm being down-voted. I wonder why? Maybe most people prefer to believe some
pleasant lie (that their own country was "good", for example) rather than
seeing some unpleasant truth? Or maybe I simply didn't explain myself very
well.

For example, in response to the Evian Conference in 1938, Hitler said: "I can
only hope and expect that the other world, which has such deep sympathy for
these criminals [Jews], will at least be generous enough to convert this
sympathy into practical aid. We, on our part, are ready to put all these
criminals at the disposal of these countries, for all I care, even on luxury
ships."

Back then, didn't the British Empire control like 25% of this planet's land
mass? Surely, there must have been some space for Jews to settle? But no, they
did not allow that. And the US was a big country back then, too, but they did
not allow many Jews to immigrate, either.

Seems to me that Hitler was correct when he basically pointed out that the
concern of the US, UK etc. for the Jews was basically just empty talk. Please
don't get me wrong here - the nazis were nasty, but the UK, US etc. back then
were pretty bad, too. There have been plenty of apologies etc. from the German
government over the years, but I wonder if the UK and US governments have ever
apologized for their incredibly inconsiderate behavior towards the Jews back
then?

~~~
hussong
Maybe you are being downvoted because you seem to have no problem whatsoever
with the idea of exiling millions of people solely based on their ethnicity /
faith?

~~~
jensen123
I guess maybe you're right and that is the reason why (people making
assumptions). However, I've never said any such thing, and no I don't think it
would have been ok by the Nazis to simply exile the Jews back then.

