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George Orwell's review of Mein Kampf (1940)

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Re: George Orwell's review of Mein Kampf (1940)

#181
post #138
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well they pretty much got Crimea, don't they ?

Crimea also has been historically part of Russia/USSR until 1954. (I'm French, just stating)

Alsace and Lorraine have been historically part of the Germanic world (though it is quite true that the populations preferred to remain French). Can I take it that you won't have strong grounds to object if Merkel sends a few divisions over the border?

Re: George Orwell's review of Mein Kampf (1940)

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you that this argument has little to do with conservatism vs. liberalism, but to state "Conservatism doesn't send people to concentration camps" is ignoring some glaring realities, unless you want to be really selective about the definition of a concentration camp. Is Gitmo a concentration camp? How about Manus Island? Azouli Prison? These "detention centers" are full of people put there by both conserva…

You should detail the logical relationships between theses and people acting on them because -isms don't send anyone anywhere, people do. To say they do without offering a road map is loose thinking.

It is nonsense to say that. If you think "Nazism sent people to concentration camps" is not a valid thing to say, then replace "Nazism" with "Jainism [0]" or "postmodernism".

Nazism entails the belief that a group of humans is inferior to other humans and that they can be destroyed. The arrow "someone is Nazi" -> "someone sends people to concentration camps" follows from their ideology. It would be absurd to say that Jainists or postmodernists send people to concentration camps, because nothing about their beliefs suggests a destruction of other people!

Saying that people's -isms "don't do anything" is dangerously morally relativist. Don't pretend that meaningful things cannot be said about the consequences Nazist beliefs might have. -isms are an important categorization of what kind of software people are running on their brains. It is useful in distinguishing what kind of destructive behaviour that software can result in.

[0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jainism

Re: George Orwell's review of Mein Kampf (1940)

#183

From a timing perspective, this was published in March, 1940. Some other noteworthy events with their dates: * Germany invades Poland (September, 1939) * Britain, France, Canada, Australia and New Zealand declare war on Germany (September, 1939) * Soviets invade Poland, which is later split (October, 1939) * Nazis begin euthanasia of ill and disabled in Germany (October, 1939) * Soviets attack Finland (November, 1939…

The "euthanasia" actually began in September 1939. October was when the law was passed, which was backdated to September 1st. This isn't just to be pedantic, I'm currently reading The Third Reich trilogy by Richard J. Evans, and this is an instance of the Nazi emphasis on appearing as though they had a legal basis for their actions, even well into the dictatorship. It's one of the most bizarre parts of the story to m…

I don't think the Nazis felt as secure from internal challenge in Germany during their rule as they appear to have been in retrospect. In any case, whether it was really unnecessary or not, they seem (from the little I've read about this) to have been past masters at controlling potential domestic opposition using the rapier rather than the bludgeon, using a combination of bribery and conciliation, isolation and media control, divide-and-conquer, obfuscation and legal hoop-jumping, and judicious applications of extreme violence. Instead of flattening German "civil society" outright, they won the tug of war with it, dragging it along with them instead of having it pull them back. There was in fact open (though of course not, in the end of the day, effective) opposition to T4 from inside Germany, notably from the Catholic Church which was one institution the Nazis had to handle with some care, and Cardinal van Galen was invoking the German Penal Code against it as late as 1941. So legal changes were probably all part of the minuet.

I also don't think it's inevitable that the T4 perpetrators would have been punished if the Nazis had lost power at some point in, say, early 1941. The western world had been increasingly heading in that direction before the war, and to a large and increasing extent it's arriving back there now, as evidenced by, for example, the mysterious absence of Down's Syndrome children in many places these days. Come to think of it, many of the people implicated in T4 didn't in fact end up facing justice after the war either.

Re: George Orwell's review of Mein Kampf (1940)

#184
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually don't foresee another Hitler rising, because the first Hitler ruined it for all future Hitlers. I think what was most damning was the manner in which Germany lost the war. If I thought it was mainly Hitler's values and racism, I would not feel as safe. Hitler bet big on war and he lost in spectacular fashion. I think he forever associated that style of leadership with catastrophe.

If Hitler had managed to fight England and Russia separately, he could easily have won. That's the true lesson here.

If Hitler had just left Stalin alone the latter would have been happy to let the capitalists destroy each other, and Germany could have conquered all of western Europe.

The USSR was initially part of an anti-fascist pact but made amends with Germany after the western allies' betrayal of Czechoslovakia.

Re: George Orwell's review of Mein Kampf (1940)

#185
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's almost as though "left" and "right" are meaningless terms that are just use to split the people into two camps for battle against each other.

I think they are good signifiers for significantly different economic/political beliefs. However, fanatacism in politics ends up looking pretty similar regardless of starting point.

I think that they are actively hurtful, they shut down rational thinking. Ideas that actually make sense tend not to cluster well along left/right axis, but are scattered all over the spectrum.

Re: George Orwell's review of Mein Kampf (1940)

#186

In 1937, Pope Pius XI published a kind of "review" of the ideas in Mein Kampf and the actions of the Nazi Party. Mit Brennender Sorge ("With Burning Anxiety") remains the only papal encyclical ever principally published in a language other than Latin. That is, the official edition was published in German and other translations were derived from the German rather than a Latin original. Apparently, the Pope's harsh cri…

"Fascism" and "Catholic right-wing" were synonymous at the time. Hitler had signed a treaty with the Holy See to basically allow them to control schools in Germany in exchange for a thumbs up for the regime, and this meant the Vatican was backtracking. Hitler thought they were allies; and the Vatican was important for Nazi power, so yeah, that move pissed him off.

Re: George Orwell's review of Mein Kampf (1940)

#187

"Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it." George Santayana Somebody asked, why this document is so high up-voted. I would say, we can't up-vote it enough, when we have the chance to learn from history and especially from the dark sides of history and from people like George Orwell. Chance is very big, that a new era of darkness could fall on humanity, if we don't stop it at the right time (and no…

I actually don't foresee another Hitler rising, because the first Hitler ruined it for all future Hitlers. I think what was most damning was the manner in which Germany lost the war. If I thought it was mainly Hitler's values and racism, I would not feel as safe. Hitler bet big on war and he lost in spectacular fashion. I think he forever associated that style of leadership with catastrophe.

> I actually don't foresee another Hitler rising, because the first Hitler ruined it for all future Hitlers.

He only "ruined it" for all future Hitlers in the next ~100 years. A lot of peace and prosperity we have enjoyed in the last 60 years can be attributed to people remembering and recovering from death and destruction of the II World War. There are only few people alive today who lived during WWII, soon there will be no one with first-hand memories of what has happened then. You can already see a new wave of nationalistic trends. For many young people today, Hitler is no different than Napoleon, Alexander the Great or Genghis Khan - some dude who killed a lot of people some time ago. They can't relate to them in any way.

Re: George Orwell's review of Mein Kampf (1940)

#188

With what we know today we could see Orwell picture of Germany was incomplete. People did not want struggling at the time. After the Great depression created by the banks bubble and having everything they could produce taken by countries like France as payment for WWI GERMANS WERE ALREADY STRUGGLING. Germans were dying in winter because the coal was sent to France as payment. And this is not like winter in Morocco. I…

I imagine Orwell knew much of that stuff which was to a large extent predicted as inevitable by Keynes both in his 1919 book The Economic Consequences of the Peace and before. It often surprises me how much suffering could be avoided if people just understood Keynes stuff and used it. WW2 and much of the recent depression could probably be avoided and with pretty much no downside. It's kind of mass unnecessary suffering through wilful ignorance or something like that - dunno. I guess some of the ideas are hard to understand and most people couldn't explain the concept of insufficient aggregate demand leading to lower jobs and investment and hence lower demand still in a feedback loop unless it gets broken some how. But it's not that hard I would like to think. Though I have not heard that concept repeated and dealt with by many of our current leaders. Maybe human brains are not built to grok that stuff even though you can pretty much put it on one sentence?

Re: George Orwell's review of Mein Kampf (1940)

#189
post #160
post #153

I wonder if hitler is studied in political sciences. Especially his speeches, rhetorics and strategies, and why they worked out how they did. I hate to feel that hitler is somehow still a little controversial today. I don't really want to watch his speeches or read what he was saying because it's a little depressing and painful to think about, but understanding how he politically convinced people, and the underlying…

I don't think we're safe from politicians exploiting fear and selfishness to push dangerous policy at all.

well I guess we're more wary

Re: George Orwell's review of Mein Kampf (1940)

#190
post #138
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well they pretty much got Crimea, don't they ?

Crimea also has been historically part of Russia/USSR until 1954. (I'm French, just stating)

Not quite. It was part of Russia from 1783 till 1918 (or so) then it was Part of USSR. But let's make it 1954 as you wrote, so it gives 171 years.

Before 1783 Crimea was part of Ottoman Empire (Crimean Khanate), from about 1449. That makes 334 years.

And before that Mongols ruled there from about 200 years.

And even before it belonged partly to Kiev Rus' and Bizantium for another 300 years.

So basing solely on the years (assuming that what you mean by historically) it looks like Crimea should go back to Turkey or split between Ukraine and Greece, surly not to Russia.

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