“Here’s the thing,” Robinson said. “Whether you’re talking about Adolf Hitler, whether you’re talking about Chairman Mao, whether you’re talking about Stalin, whether you’re talking about Pol Pot, whether you’re talking about Castro in Cuba, or whether you’re talking about a dozen other despots all around the globe, it is time for us to get back and start reading some of those quotes.”

This is the Lieutenant Governor of a state (North Carolina) saying we can get gems from the quotes of genocidal maniacs. This is where we are now.

  • @LegalAction
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    01 year ago

    You can learn names and dates of battles etc., but you won’t understand the driving forces if all you have is “Nazis are bad.”

    Nazis were humans, not some kind of mythological monsters. If they could do what they did, you can too. You need to understand why they did what they did, how the ideology motivated them, or compelled them, because those same forces can work on you as well, and sometimes in ways you don’t realize.

    Primo Levi survived the death camps, and wrote about his experience extensively. Despite being a prisoner, he felt complicit in the Nazi project, just through trying to survive. At one point he recalls being on a work detail, during which he discovered a water pipe that had some water in it. He drank the water, and although he saw another prisoner lusting after the water, he didn’t share, because he wanted to survive.

    That other man also survived the camps and later found Levi, and asked why he wouldn’t share the water. Levi had no answer at that time, but when writing his memoir he said the structure of the camp system was such that it employed even the inmates as agents of their own extermination.

    He ended up committing suicide in the 80s.

    If you don’t understand the psychological and social pressures working on you - which come from everywhere, btw, not just Nazis - you can’t fight against them. You will go along to get along.

    • Flying SquidOP
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      61 year ago

      Why do you need to read Mein Kampf to understand that?

      • @LegalAction
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        -21 year ago

        So you know what Hitler actually said? So you don’t fall for something like “the Germans didn’t really know what was happening”? Yes, they did. It was published, and you can cite chapter and verse.

        Same reason to read anything.

        • Flying SquidOP
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          31 year ago

          No, I don’t fall for that because I read history books. So I don’t have to read Mein Kampf. What’s next, making it required reading in schools?

          Are you really under the bizarre impression that no one who hasn’t read Mein Kampf has any idea of what Nazism was about?

          • @LegalAction
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            -21 year ago

            It’s always worth putting your eyes on the primary source yourself. History texts are not without their own agendas. You’re familiar with 1984, yes?

            • Flying SquidOP
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              31 year ago

              Again- should all schoolchildren be reading Mein Kampf so they can understand the horrors of WW2? Or is there another way to do that?

              • @LegalAction
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                -21 year ago

                I didn’t say school children, and I didn’t say all. I said it was necessary for anyone studying ww2. Here, that’s usually done in university.

                • Flying SquidOP
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                  31 year ago

                  Schoolchildren study WW2. My daughter did. Therefore it is necessary for them to read Mein Kampf, correct?

                  • @LegalAction
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                    11 year ago

                    It’s functionally impossible to assign whole books to middle schoolers. And don’t confuse what you learn in primary education with real study.

    • @pinkdrunkenelephants
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      English
      21 year ago

      You don’t actually need to read Mein Kampf to understand the driving forces of Nazism back then and the fascism we face today. Actually the underlying forces nowadays are too different for Mein Kampf to even be relevant. History doesn’t repeat itself, it rhymes.