Nazi Propaganda: Out of the Cage
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I think the critical part of that question is how you define goverment.
If you believe governments are ligitimate non-corrupt institutions that are representative of the people and have the citizens - and all the citizens - best interests at heart, then you will likely think banning "bad" ideologies is a good idea. If your thoughts towards government move in more negative directions i.e. you cannot trust the government's moral judgements of right and wrong - you'll likely be against the general case of banning ideas.
Historically speaking governments seem to do very poorly at separating good ideologies from bad ones - i.e. Nazis entartete Kunst, various banned books such as Animal Farm in the USSR. A scroll down the list of banned books (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_books_banned_by_govern...) reveals this fact.
I'm sure there are other interesting pros/cons to this question, anyone else care to give a try?
Nazism cost millions of Germans their lives, led to one of the biggest campaigns of genocide in history and wrecked the economy, social structures and world perception of Germany for decades. So the question about it isn't so much "is this thing dangerous?" as "how can we best keep this dangerous thing from getting loose again?"
(Which isn't to say that banning it is necessarily the right way to do that; many have argued that banning it just gives it an air of uniqueness that makes it more attractive, rather than less. But nobody making that argument would go from there to say that Nazism is somehow morally neutral.)
Or what about the 34 to 49 million deaths at Stalin's hands? Ban Communism?
Or what about terrorism? Ban Islam?
This is a ridiculous position to argue.
No, but the Russians did go through their own cultural reaction to Stalin's tyranny; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De-Stalinization.
Beyond that, by naming the entity doing the banning as "we" you're eliding a key point, which is that in this case it's the people who were responsible for the terrible thing doing the banning, not some outside entity.
Germans decided, through a democratically elected government, to pursue this course. It wasn't forced on them by anybody. It has remained in law over many decades, across numerous changes of government and the reunification of East and West Germany, so it's hard to argue that it's somehow unrepresentative of the general desire of the German people. That's a very different thing than it would be if "we" (which on HN will mean primarily Westerners, mostly Americans) were to, say, tell the Islamic world which parts of Islam they should keep and which they should discard.
From the wikipedia headers: Improved prison conditions, Re-naming of places and buildings, Destruction of monuments, Re-location of Stalin's body.
Notice that no part of that included banning ideas. It was the cession of government endorsement and a de facto fall from popularity. No one will fine or jail you for making a complimentary movie about Stalin. They just won't go see it.
You can sue against the ban of a brutal movie if you think the ban decision was wrong. You can't sue against the de-facto ban of the movies, and our parliament couldn't lift the ban by changing a law. A more-or-less private entity controls them, and many argue that some of not-banned movies are actually worse.
There are laws against Nazi propaganda etc, but for quite a few things they aren't even applied and tested.
Should we ban Islam? I don't know, I know nothing of Islam. But on communism / Stalinism I think it's a disgrace that we conduct business with communist countries that are guilty of repeatedly violating human rights and yes I'm talking about China. It's a spit in the face of all those that have suffered under communism.
And as for countries, doesn't Turkey have something of a track record when it comes to getting rid of unwanted groups, nowadays focusing on Kurds as I recall it? Or is this just some form of propaganda?
I think the people who argue for that are either in power, believe that their ideology is beyond reproach, or have not thought through the implications of it.
Effective? Definitely not. If someone wants to share information they have, they will find a way to share it.
Oddly this reminds me of all the people that think making an SO clone is easy, when the css alone would take days to type out.
[1] the US military had a pair of physics PhDs try to design a bomb sometime in the 60s, and apparently they succeeded, but that is only one data point. Not sure if there is any public knowledge about other states' nuke programs.
Freedom of expression is not a universal value it's just an "I'm American, or an American puppet state" value.
Also, rather condescending to call Europe, Australia, etc., American puppet states.
I think people in China hold very different values to Americans and for the most part they don't mind their government, as shown by its continued existence.
India holds different values again... I'm not particularly familiar with so I won't comment.
I believe governments are legitimate non-corrupt institutions that are representative of the people.
But your conclusion doesn't follow.
I don't want people telling other people what ideas to have.
The banning of ideologies is connected, more or less, to banning movements. In the 1870s, for example, the KKK was declared to be a terrorist organization and disbanded. (Though this change was not permanent.) Was their ideology banned? At least in practice it was, since any demonstration of affiliation with the KKK was essentially painting a target on oneself.
The government in practice is often corrupt; yet it often does what is in people's best interests. It contributes to public safety in many ways even as it undermines and confuses it in others -- we'll have a lot of trouble to find a government that is so clearly in either of the forms you outline. The question of whether a government should ban certain ideologies does come down, in part, to the ideologies themselves. Nazism isn't banned because it is merely "bad" but because its followers did bad things: acts of utter moral depravity. No one wants to see that organization re-emerge.
We need to recognize that social media is now a form of government. Every day Twitter, Facebook, and other arms of social make moderation decisions not based on imminent harm but ideology. They censor based on what is liable to cause offense within their worldview and what will reduce the amount of blowback. This moderation is largely silent. Social media is neither transparent nor a democracy.
If you consider the outcomes of banning an ideology, the argument is quite clear and rational - and not hypothetical - this experiment has already been run, many hundreds of times.
In (very) short, if you limit the spectrum of political thought you achieve two major things:
1) you push the hard elements of that ideology underground. There are no good outcomes from or for an embittered, isolated group of people within a society that spurns them.
2) you eliminate an oppositional force, thus shifting the pole of political thought, and end up with a previously benign set of ideologies mutating away from previously nuanced stances towards more totalitarian approaches. In the absence of traditional reactionary forces and diametrically opposed thought, new axises are found.
Essentially, once you commit to a single ban on ideological grounds you are committed to make further bans, as concept creep occurs, and new categories are found unacceptable. This occurs geometrically, and you fairly rapidly end up sending people to gulags and building roads of bones. It is impossible to go back without capitulation of government, as your own thought police will turn on you, and your eager acolytes will happily fill your shoes. These states end up ending in the fire of war or the ice of economic collapse - there's very rarely a happy exit.
You can ban things, in the form of prohibition, at the expense of enabling organised crime and black markets, but the moment you start banning ideas, you are truly damned.
If there's a historical precedent where there's been a good outcome from banning thought and speech I'm all ears, but I'm aware of none.
It doesn't really matter what the ideology believes, the only thing that matters is what the ideology advises its adherents to do, or not do, to people who do not adhere to the same ideology.
A government of egalitarians intent on censoring, torturing and quartering every racist and sexist it can find, en mass, is no different to the evil that was Nazi Germany.
However, when it comes to extremists, I think you're wrong. You see, this is a war of attrition they are playing, bringing forth the same arguments, discussing the same hateful ideas, only packaged differently, over and over again. And you see, the moderates, the liberals, the ones combating such ideas, get tired and move on, or are silenced through harassment. There is no useful dialog one can have with a far right supporter. And you think debates are healthy, yet they wouldn't give you that privilege if they were in power. The irony being that the liberties we liberals believe in are being used against us.
I don't deny that there are people on the "left" going against free speech. As somebody born under communism, I have a similar level of disdain for extremists of all colors.
That said, you know that old saying "Your right to swing your arms ends just where the other man's nose begins"? Well, I think this also applies to freedom of speech. No freedom should be absolute, not when it goes in conflict with other human rights that are just as important, like the right for fair treatment and for being innocent until proven guilty. This is why the constitution of many countries, including my own, grants the freedom of speech only for as long as it's not hate speech targeted at groups based on race, ethnicity, nationality or religion. And I happen to agree with that.
Maybe the response will be something along the lines of "The Right is so big and covers so many people you can't blame all of them." But you could say the same about the Left. Covers many, many ideologies and sub-ideologies.
> And you think debates are healthy, yet they wouldn't give you that privilege if they were in power.
So we deny them the privilege of debate, because we're afraid that if they get into power, they'll deny us the privilege of debate?
Are we going to say that the settlement of the west by the US was a genocide of American Indians? If so, doesn't that mean the whole ideological basis of America is genocidal and should be banned?
What if some religious ideologues got control of the government and used hate speech laws to band criticism of religion? Or defined abortion as a genocide against the unborn?
I'm not willing to risk allowing anyone to define what is rightthink and wrongthink for my country.
> "Who defines hate speech? Who defines genocide?"
Genocide is the intentional action to systematically eliminate an ethnic, national, racial or religious group. I don't think the definition is subjective in any way.
> "Are we going to say that the settlement of the west by the US was a genocide of American Indians?"
I don't know much of US's history, but there are scholars that believe the decline in population of American Indians was genocidal.
> "If so, doesn't that mean the whole ideological basis of America is genocidal and should be banned?"
What is this "ideological basis of America" that you're referring to? Is it the US constitution? Does the US constitution invite to racism and genocide of American Indians? Are you seriously going to argue that genocide is a matter of interpretation in the Nazi propaganda?
> "Or defined abortion as a genocide against the unborn?"
Abortion isn't genocide by definition.
> "I'm not willing to risk allowing anyone to define what is rightthink and wrongthink for my country."
Really? Because that's the whole point of having a government and by having a government you've already lost that battle. And if you're an anarchist, your energy isn't spent where it should be.
And if somebody else executes their similar ability to reason through and judge ideas, and condemns ideas you think aren't worth condemning, and perhaps even suppresses that speech to the extent of their capacity, and you disagree with them, of course you are perfectly capable of disagreeing with them, resisting them, condemning them in turn, coming into conflict with people whose exercise of power has consequences you disagree with. That's what being a human being is.
> So we deny them the privilege of debate, because we're afraid that if they get into power, they'll deny us the privilege of debate?
Well, yes. Why is that invalid reasoning? If you analyze the content and aims of fascist ideology, what other judgment could you come to? There are people out there who are very outspoken about what they would do to people like you and me if they were in power and we crossed them.
My Little Pony is a known vector of Brony Memetic Disorder. Shouldn't we stop diseases of the mind as well as those of the body?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skinheads_Against_Racial_Preju...
I think the book is badly written because the guy was so full of anger. If you take it at face value the book is a road-map of all the monstrosities that happened once the Nazi party took the power. Every atrocity that took place, from the Holocaust to invading half of Europe and especially the severity of their attacks against Russia is more or less mentioned in the book.
For me the $64.000 question is why leaders of the era weren't alarmed from the writings. Haven't they read the book? They didn't take it at face value? The book was written 15 years before the war erupted. They'd surely have time to prevent it. And then nothing happened.
I thought the reason the book was not taken seriously was because nobody could believe this was his real plan.
If you're American, do you read the campaign biographies of all the major presidential candidates?
This means that it is perfectly innocent to buy the book in this form. None of your friends will think anything weird of you when they see it on your bookshelf, that will just think how intellectual you are …
There certainly are Neonazis in Germany and there are people adoring Hitler in Germany, too. And those people suck and shouldn’t have those opinions. But I don’t think sales of that book have anything to do with that. And modern dangerous fascist ideologues aren’t necessarily super into Hitler …
I'm wondering what sort of annotations to an inane, hateful, book of ramblings can spur intellectual stimulation. Is it worth even checking it out? Is it analyzing Hitler's thought process or what? I just can't imagine it'd be very interesting.
Another thing: those in the Nazi ranks who actually wanted socialism were purged. It's called Night of the Long Knives and it's a pivot moment in the history of Nazi Germany.
It may be confusing because of the whole National Socialism thing. It could be argued that actually that was purely to strike a chord with the type of dissatisified folks who would die for the movement, such as the lower classes that made up the SA.
I'd say number of things links links him to the socialist side, -only he was a national socialist.
If, however, you want to argue in that direction, links to socialism and the party's name containing the word socialism is different from actually being a socialist and implementing socialism.
Its generally accepted that Nazism is a form of fascism. It's ludicrous to say that fascism is socialism and that Hitler was a socialist.
There might be arguments that stem from the the genealogy of fascism through national syndicalism. I guess that's like saying my grandfather was x, therefore I am definitely x.
This is why I feel it isn't too far off to say they were socialists.
Of course, in historic political theory you seem to run circles around me though :-]
Socialism at it's core can be distilled down to how labor relates to its means of production. That's it. If workers themselves own and manage the facilities and materials necessary for employment, that is socialism.
Individual liberty and free markets are not contradicted by the tenets of socialism. It can and has been argued that individual liberties can be strengthened through such a system. Market economies are what much of socialist thought revolves around. Again, socialism is defined by how labor relates to the means of production and that is it.
Neither of the two are required for a functioning capitalist economy. Freedom of speech, religion, movement and association aren't guarantees and is down right outlawed in much of the world that's implemented a capitalist system. You'd be hard pressed to find a single truly "free market" in practice at any point in time.
Yours seems like a judgment stemming from an ideology rather than one coming from a historic perspective. You aren't doing yourself any favors intellectually if you want to continue claiming Nazism is a socialist ideology. It is hard to have a historic discussion with someone whose arguments are based on a feeling rather than documented history and accepted definitions.
If we were to argue by textbook definitions, and only by the definitions created by those in question, then we could have some weird discussions. I mean, capitalists often don't decribe themself as evil either.
For example, North Korea is officially named "Democratic People's Republic of Korea". I dunno what sort of harsh totalitarian regime is democratic and the people's!
Another example: the UK Labour party states it is a democratic socialist party. I don't think the premiership of Blair/Brown can be described as anything like that. I'm sure this is the case for many Labour parties across Europe (except for the UK, as of recent, that is...)
"First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—" "Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— "
Anyone holding what could be close to a socialist thought was killed.
Reminder not to let your ideology cloud your judgment.
It might help to read a history book in an effort to be knowledgable about the past and not just to confirm you worldview, especially if you're making mistakes like this about history.
An explanation of why it's interesting to you specifically would've been nice. That's all I was asking for with my post.
There's a number of things about that which could pique at least some curiosity. Psychology, sociology, economics, politics, etc.
The curiosities are no less because Hitler was stark mad, which I agree with, and because the regime was abhorrent, which I also agree with.
I'm not discussing Hitler and what we can learn from him, however. I'm talking about the book, for which my point stands. It's very poorly written, full of hatred, and appeared of little intellectual use to me from the passages I've read. It's total garbage.
Maybe you and all my downvoters can actually answer my question, which still stands and is reasonable: what kind of discussion do the annotations present? I'm only curious.
For example, in the English translation I tried to read once upon a time the translator mentions that the first half of the book was written while Hitler was imprisoned in a fortress. To some extend I guess that would justify his anger. That, and the fact that his was a fucking psychopath.