Monday
06Aug2007
LET HITLER SPEAK?
Monday, August 6, 2007 at 09:32AM
The question is simple enough; Are some words so dangerous that they must be locked away? I was reading that the Germans are having a debate as to whether Hitler's "Mein Kampf" should be published openly for the first time since 1945. Hitler's deranged thoughts against reality are freely available here in the UK and in fact it is a BIG seller amongst those poor oppressed Palestinians, who seem to find solace in the contents. But do YOU think that this book should be published again in Germany? Would that be a sign of a modern confident progressive nation or a disturbing return to the past?
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Reader Comments (63)
Of course it should be published in Germany. And they should abolish the crime of holocaust-denial as well. Democracies should not have political censorship.
I agree Peter. I didn't realise it was still banned.
No book or publication, no matter how bad either content or reputation, should be banned.
The people who ban such publications as 'Mein Kampf' should be asking themselves how secure their democracy is, if they cannot allow an attack on that same democracy to be sold or read in their country?
From what I remember it was by reading Mein Kampf that Churchill was able to come to the correct position on how to handle Hitler. He took him at his word while the conventional wisdom what that "common sense" would surely prevail.
It should be published and the connection should be made between what people believe and what they will do in support of those beliefs.
Surely the banning of 'all things nazi', was really the Germans way of mitigating their culpable embarrassment and guilt for the crimes of that era.
As we have seen so often, denial is often the only way to cope with the guilt of the worst of crimes, but it is only hiding that guilt, it is in no way true penitence.
I have to confess that I was unaware that it was banned.
I'm not surprised it was out of print as it is utter rubbish - I read it at school (we had an English translation in the school library!).
As Peter points out, democracies should not have political censorship. Of course, we do have political censorship in Britain - which is why I question whether we are still a democracy or just a plebiscitarian plutocracy.
>>The people who ban such publications as 'Mein Kampf' should be asking themselves how secure their democracy is, if they cannot allow an attack on that same democracy<<
Actually, the book was banned not by the Germans but by the Allied High Command after WWII. Successive German governments continued the ban, as any party advocating its removal would be immediately attacked by the others - it's nothing but insitutionalised PC.
At the moment there are few countries less likely than Germany to have their democracy subverted by a fascist dictatorship - certainly not Britain, and most certainly not the US.
On the subject of banning, David, do you support continuing censorship on your site? Just yesterday we saw DSD deleting certain comments of Frank O'Dwyer on one of your own threads.
>>Surely the banning of 'all things nazi', was really the Germans way of mitigating their culpable embarrassment and guilt<<
LOL. It wasn't the Germans who banned all those Nazi things, Ernest, but - inter alia - the British!
Maybe it was just their way of mitigating their culpable embarrassment and guilt over appeasement.
And the banning didn't stop at Mein Kampf - under Allied command, it was even forbidden to wear a brown pullover or brown shirt in the post war years.
Some of these military laws also remained in force suprisingly long. When I lived in Berlin in the 1980's , the US forces still officially had the power to shoot anyone found not carrying ID!
Noel,
Isn't the deletion of insults etc, really akin to washing graffiti from a wall? - and as such to be welcomed. Hardly censorship...
To leave such remarks in situ is just pandering to trolls and other such annoyances, whose main aim appears to be disruption of a thread.
That O'Dwyer does not behave in a similar fashion on his own blog, would suggest that he comes here 'looking for a fight'.
Noel,
Hi. I hadn't been following the thread concerned until I saw it this morning and concluded it was all heat and no light!
As for the issue of what you call "censorship" let me spell out my views. I FULLY support whatever any fellow ATW writer does. Frank et al are big enough to withstand a deletion or two, and if that's the only censorship encountered you'll all do very well. I allow unmoderated comments on the basis that no liberties are taken. However when it all becomes personal, then it's just a waste of time. There have been times when I have deleted some truly vicious ad hominem comments and I have happily banned as many moonbats as cross my path. But in the main, we do not delete, we do not ban, we do encourage healthy debate. Nobody is perfect, least of all me, but all I want is a place where you can challenge, argue, debate but do so civilly and in a way that does not just turn people off. That applies to writers as much as guest, obviously, and I'm sure we all try to do this most of the time.
Noel,
The immediate post war bans are readily understandable, as there was a large faction of nazis ready to continue the battle.
My remarks were really aimed at a mor latter day Germany, where the sense of guilt was, and still is, quite palpable.
Hitler of course should be published for the reasons that Mike and Peter state.
Besides, it's not like Hitler crossed a line and asked an ATW writer a disrespectful question.
;-) <--- for the hard of humour
Ive recently found out how censored our own book shops are - for just one example neither borders nor waterstones have "the rage and the pride", a book which has sold over a million in europe.
Thats more important to us, or should be, than if one stinking book isnt published over there, as its systematic and largely unknown over here.
Having deleted what i viewed as a purely pointless ad homimem comment towards me on someone elses thread Im in no position to comment on what people view as within their own limits to 'withstand'. I regreted deleting it immediately. At the time the thread had, become a ludicrous off topic argument rammed with arbitary deletions to suit.
However, Im no longer in a position to comment on whether it was <worth> the deletion or not because i forfeited that right when i enacted my own deletion! However I would think the same applies to other commenters here who support some deletions.. but not others.
It is ridiculous to accuse Frank of being 'mean' or 'rude' or even more laughingly of using mean spirited sexual innuendo, whilst allowing the same to roll off keyboards elsewhere, to pass without comment.
Its totally barmy to keep uniquely singling out Frank. On this issue he has unfairly become a scape goat. And no, Frank and I do not always see eye to eye on issues and have indulged in some heated exchanges, like many here. Weve also had occasion to be very much in agreement.
Apart from being very smart and like all good ATWers in search of a good argument, he is nothing if not entirely bloody *consistent*. For that Ive come to fully respect the guy.
I think it can be published now. And it is perfectly understandable why it viewed as dangerous immediately after the war. People who had just been through the raw horrors of that war were traumatized and wanted to avoid promoting the hatred of the German Nazis Regime. However, the best defense against such a regime is to avoid censorship and expose it to the light of day.
Of course a few with an odd view of history place emphasis not on German culpablity, but rather on isolated post-war acts by the British and Americans (with the usual anti-Western flourish). Very very strange. Even Mr. Cunningham would have to admit that he was able to enjoy his time in Berlin in the 80's because of the airlift accomplished by western democracies despite references to certain "on the books" laws that had no real impact on the lives of Germans. I highly doubt he tried to tunnel into Eastern Berlin at that time, although his rhetoric might have made him more at home there.
As for the deleting of Frank's comment, I am sad I missed it. It was probably quite funny (as I would admit some of his shots against me have been over the course of time).
Mahons,
It surely didn't come close to your ode to McCann's mother that was gone moments after you wrote it some time back.
Alan: You refer of course to the Brigadoon of ATW comments. A loss to the intellectual world on the scale of the destruction of the Library of Alexandria.
>>A loss to the intellectual world on the scale of the destruction of the Library of Alexandria.<<
LOL !!
How was your summer, BTW? Coney Island again?
Speaking of Coney Island, it seems that urban development will soon engulf even that mecca of amusement.
http://www.timeout.com/newyork/article/5138/tall-order
Noel: Not bad. We decided against Coney Island and went straight to the Bush Theme Park in Crawford, Texas. The roller coaster there, like his approval ratings, just continues to drop.
If the new EU treaty is ratified, then the chances are that, rather than Germany easing its restrictions, that we will see the same ones introduced here.
Mein Kampf is of historical interest, but so turgid to be almost unreadable, and can hardly be seen as a threat in itself.
People need to remember that the monstrous ideas of racial supremacy and purity that the nazis put into effect did not originate with them, but rather came from the eugenics movement, and also remember the plutocrats that helped him into power, such as Standard Oil with its tie-in to IG Farben. Those guys never hanged at Nuremburg.
>>ideas of racial supremacy and purity that the nazis put into effect did not originate with them<<
True Richard, and, going by some of the comments one sees here, certainly didn't end with them either.
Noel,
you're missing the point if you're equating attitudes that are commonly described as "racist" or "xenophobic" with the evil of eugenics.
The echos of the nazis' extermination plans are not heard in common folk bewailing the number of foreigners, but at international conferences on the "population problem" where they intellectualise the benefits of mass sterilisation, and speak with praise of China's one child policy.
Richard
Didnt Bloomsbury Group members & liberals Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, and W.B. Yeats believe in eugenics?
Mahons,
"As for the deleting of Frank's comment, I am sad I missed it. It was probably quite funny"
Well the deletion was far funnier than the comment itself. Since the comment mainly consisted of quoting DSD's own heartfelt wail against censorship (complete with cries of 'fascist' and starred out profanity), his deletion of it was hilarious.
In fairness to myself, however, nobody could have predicted that the eejit would go delete happy and if I had known I might have written a genuinely insulting comment for him to delete. As it was, I was cut off in my prime. It was as if J K Rowling got run over by a bus before she had a chance to complete the deathly hallows. Who knows what may have been, or what other gems are among the ATW out-takes.
(Besides, in any case I simply posted it again, so it was The Comment That Lived. Now, how do I get rid of this stupid scar...)
the ATW out-takes
ROFL
Alison,
just put "bloomsbury" and "eugenics" into google - there's an interesting BMJ article there, but I can't post the link.
A lot of these sensitive, intellectual types despised the breeding masses, and when you bring in the "progressive" ideas of the Fabian Society, you start forming a picture of those who progagated the ideas that the nazis put into practice, and after the war ended and the true horror of their idealistic vision was exposed, they just discarded the name "eugenics" and carried on.
Yes and snuck it into their writings. Woolfe in particular had no time for the working class. Ive also been reading about how they and others within the sort of liberal elites then felt betrayed by the working class when they didnt rise to the Revolution. Instead they then transported their politrical agenda onto immigrants eg via identity politics etc.
Richard,
Just substitute Hollywood for Bloomsbury, an you have a latter day version of the same 'elite', with opinions of the working classes as equally repellent as those of Woolfe and her cronies.
Fascism was all the rage then, now it is communism.
Maybe it is natures way to have such an elite, a 'drone' clique, living off the efforts of others, and all the while despising them...
Marie Stopes was also big on eugenics - didn't stop her being voted into the list of British "Heroes" on the BBC, though.
Didn't stop Hitler ordering her books to be burnt either.
Lovely lady - cut her own son out of her will for marrying a girl with glasses.
Ernest,
I don't think you can compare a self-consciously intellectual elite such as the Bloomsbury set with Hollywood, and I think you need to distinguish between the artistic/cultural crowd and the ones that really wield the power. I'm not sure why you think Hollywood is raving about communism, I would say it's just pumping out prole-feed, without any overt political message.
Alison,
I'm not sure I'd join the dots quite like that. It's true that the working class "let down" their would-be revolutionary leaders, because by and large working class people are socially conservative, but the Fabian philosophy is not one of revolution, quite the opposite, incremental changes, gradual social engineering etc, and I guess after a century of this, we must be close to the promised land - strange smell of sulphur in the air, though.
Richard,
Re the Hollywood set. Maybe 'prolefeed' in their professional personae, but very communistic in their 'out of the limelight' guise...
Just indulge my puny intellect and dont make jokes involving my family again Frank. I'm sure a great wit of your standing can come up with ways to confound and confuse me without mentioning them.
Ernest,
are you telling me when the camera fades at the Oscars, they all join hands for "the Internationale"?
Richard,
LOL, not quite, but the likes of Streisand and co, and not forgetting Hanoi Jane Fonda, all seem to believe the communist line. Of course in America they aren't called communists, they are liberals or even socialists.
Quite a few consider Castro a personal friend, the list is lengthy, and includes the likes of George Clooney, and other icons of the screen.
OK, Ernest, I'll bite:
"Quite a few consider Castro a personal friend"
in addition to George Clooney, who exactly?
Oh, yes, and while your compiling the list, you can provide the evidence for the Clooney-Castro link.
DSD,
"dont make jokes involving my family again Frank."
What makes you feel entitled to make such demands?
I have never made jokes "involving your family", but I will of course do so if the mood strikes me. I may make a joke involving your family tonight over the dinner table. I might post a joke involving your family to my blog. I may choose to create a site dedicated solely to jokes about your family.
You see, perhaps one day you will be the dictator of a very small country, and then your diktat will matter. Until then, I will do as I please.
"The reason people like Rotty and I arent coppers or soldiers is that we dont choose to allow other people to decide what right and wrong is for us."
- dangerouslysubversivedad
Who has the publishing rights? Who stands to make money from it? Who does from the sales in other countries?
Maybe the proceeds should go to consentration camp survivers, including not just the Jews but the other groups as well.
Aileen: I didn't have this off the top of my head. Apparently the copyright is with the Bavarian (regional?) government, although the Netherlands has a claim.
DSD: Not for nothing but by using a nickname (as I do) instead of a real name, one's rerlations are hardly exposed to any real offense on this site.
Alan: Ernest sometimes shoots first.
Frank: maybe I am being more dense than usual, but what is your blog? The DamnableO'Dwyer.com?
Mahons, sadly no, I think Monica must have registered the domain ahead of me, and thatnastyatheist.com was also taken. You can find my other ravings by clicking on my name, but to be honest I hardly ever post there these days.
Monica dipped into her ammunition fund to register that domain? Your own personal swords into ploughshares moment.
>>Who has the publishing rights? Who stands to make money from it? Who does from the sales in other countries?<<
Interesting questions, Aileen. A search thru Google shows that the world rights are generally with the Ministry of Finance of Bavaria, although certain countries, such as the UK, were also sold publishing rights by Hitler personally, and they are free to publish and sell in turn to other countries.
The Bavaria Govt is against publication in Germany and has never licensed publication anywhere else. The fear is generally that the book would be a big hit among Germany's Far Right groups. As it is, their level of intelligence and education - apparently this is universal - is such that they're unable to read smuggled English translations.
Another reason given is that publication would inevitably be used as a stick by anyone in the mood for a bit of Kraut-bashing. Imagine the mileage certain Israeli groups, for instance, would get out of it, It would be real handy when trying to haggle down the price of the latest German submarine.
For enquiries re. its content, I suggest you consult Mahons who is at least physically closer to it.
Noel: I read that a few times and I am not sure what you mean about me being closer to it (I can't imagine it is some hostile comment, but it gives me pause).
Germany's current relations with Israel seem to be pretty good and I am uncertain as to the motive for the speculative swipe at Israel (and really isn't the suggestion about Jews haggling a little medieval?).
>>I am uncertain as to the motive for the speculative swipe at Israel<<
Actually, it was mentioned by the German Foreign Ministry no less in the context of the proposed publication, and they normally don't indulge in speculation.
As for the haggling, there were some rather medieval things said until Germany gave (well, handed over well below market price to be paid in interest-free instalments over many years) its latest top-of-the-line submarine to Israel last year, you know, the one capable of bringing nuclear warheads into the Persian Gulf.
I think Hitler's childish confused ramblings should not be censored or prohibited from publication, as long as there is a market for it.
However, never having lived in Germany, I am ignorant as to the "national psyche" about the Nazis as it is these days. I can imagine that for many decades, Germany as a nation was profoundly shocked and ashamed at what sort of evil force the electorate had allowed into power. I wonder if Germany, though, has seen its share of the rapid sociological changes that have taken place here in the last 15 or so years, and to what extent the horrors of their past are being forgotten, especially by the younger generations.
Just musing here, but you know, sometimes I feel so annoyed and outraged at the shame of the social disintegration and humiliation of my own once-proud country under the scourge of multiculturalism, that I deeply wish the BNP would get into power, just for a few years, to sort it all out. Then I wonder to myself, is this the same sort of feeling that propelled Hitler into power? He was a remarkable orator and politician; his fierce words gave his nation hope and pride once more after the humiliation of WW1 and the ban on re-armament. Germans wanted to feel proud of their country once more, just like I now long to feel proud of mine once more. It was always a great mystery to me how the Germans ever elected him, but these days in Britain, I am beginning to understand how it might have happened. There seems to be a lesson there: beware of politicians!
Noel - I am not aware of the submarine transaction or the rhetoric that may have accompanied it.
I am also confused by your comment on my being closer to the content of Mein Kampf (if that is what you meant) and I'd appreciate an explanation.
Sorry mahons, I was in a bit of pique about the absurd claims you made at 2.16.
(as if me - in response to someone's rather patronising remarks about the Germans having to ban the book - pointing out that it was actually the Allies who banned it could be interpreted as shifting focus from Germany's guilt for the war, for Godssake!, and then rambling on to claim my remarks on this banning - which I am apparently alone here in finding good - is actually anti-western and pro East Berlin!)
But actually I put it all down to delayed Coney Island Blues, and now that youve explained it was in fact a stay in Crawford Texas that unhinged you, things are even clearer.
Anyway, I should have said "closer to the NYT"
Tell me, do you think that practically any move by Germany towards normalisation, esp. in relation to its past, will not generate "some concern" in the West and in Israel?
Shit, "some concern" was expressed when democracy was extended to the East, when it lifted the constitutional ban on its troops going beyond its borders (peace-keeping in Kosovo), then on its troops bearing weapons (in Afghanistan). "Some concern" was, believe it or not, also expressed by the NYT the last time I looked at it, when there were a series of articles and "opinions", well over a full page in total and including the front page, on a non-story about some German ministry moving into some new building in Berlin once occupied by some 3rd Reich body (how insensitive this was, how the fact that their retention of some buliding fixtures indicated a creeping revisionism, how their removal of others indicated a cheap attempt to deny the past!)
Do you also think that this past weighs very heavily on German-Israel relations, and is very much in Israel's favour? Or that Israel doesn't well know how to exploit this, and - quite sickingly in my view - regularly uses it to gain real advantages that have nothing to do with the Holocaust or its victims and everything to do with political, military and economic benefits for itself today?
'Alan: You refer of course to the Brigadoon of ATW comments. A loss to the intellectual world on the scale of the destruction of the Library of Alexandria.'
A typically pithy response from the Philip J. Fry of the blogosphere, whose intellectual and comedic loss to this site would be akin to discarding a joke from a cheap Christmas cracker.
Very thoughtful and interesting comments by Tom Tyler at 9:37, by the way.
Pity everybody can't be that honest.