The Doofus Known as "Hitler"


syrakusos

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Discussing Islamic contributions to Western civilization, Wolf Devoon complained rhetorically: "I never understood why people attribute such tremendous power to a doofus who was enabled by Hindenburg and Ludendorff." The problem is complicated on several levels.



First, among American conservatives is an admiration for Hitler. It might be the strong appeal of the true neo-nazis: "Hitler went too far, but ..." It might be the grudging respect of muscle mystics who believe that under the Nazis, Germany "became strong".



Second, perhaps deeper, is the "great man" theory of history. Hitler was a courier in World War I and could easily have been killed by a sniper. But would there have been a Standard Oil without Rockefeller, a Northern Pacific without Hill? In fact, Germany had a plethora of nationalist-socialist idiots including, for instance, Julius Streicher, whom Adolph Hitler briefly imitated as he was getting his act together.



As for "national socialism" consider the essay "The Rising National Individualism," by Herbert Adolphus Miller, The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 19, No. 5 (Mar., 1914), pp. 592-605. By "National Individualism" he meant the tendency for nations to insist on their own culture, as opposed to international socialism. Miller then does describe "national socialism" in the Bismarck model of "sharing for our own people." In that context, Adolph Hitler and Julius Strieicher must be placed with Metaxas, Mussolini, and the other fascist leaders of his time, including Woodrow Wilson and Herbert Hoover.



That last is not mere libertarian rhetoric. In Huxley's Brave New World, clones were named Hoover. One of the viewpoint characters was "Benito Hoover." (BNR includes very many such names of collectivist leaders of the time, such as Mustapha Mond no less than Polly Trotsky and Lenina Crowne.)



So, if Adolph Hitler had been killed in the trenches, we might hate Julius Streicher or Arthur Seyss-Inquart or Inonnis Metaxas who in an alternate universe launched World War II by invading Italy...



The third and metaphysical problem is that of the "impossible" as outlined by Stuart Hayashi on both RoR and here on MSK's OL. It might be said - Hayashi does not get into this - that we cannot imagine what a world where the South won the Civil War would be like because we live in a different world than that. I am not sure that such an argument is unassailable, but I do note that science fiction and historical fiction and fantasy fiction alike all pretty much describe people and places that are just like us except that their clothes are different. In other words, I have yet to read or see a truly "alternate" universe.



All of that being as it may, why do we care about the doofus named Hitler. And more to the point, really, why do you care about the doofus named Obama.



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First, among American conservatives is an admiration for Hitler. It might be the strong appeal of the true neo-nazis: "Hitler went too far, but ..." It might be the grudging respect of muscle mystics who believe that under the Nazis, Germany "became strong".

In over fifty years of being aware of American conservatives I've not seen a whiff of this. Try overt anti-war American nationalists, who are almost extinct since Pearl Harbor. I've had direct experience with the nationalists, now tell us about yours with the "conservatives." Unsupported your statement is simply wrong until it is, but since it's contrary to my experience it's crap to me until then.

--Brant

sink or swim; right now it's "Glug, Glug!"--save yourself!

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Michael has done this often enough I think he lives in an alternate reality. A shame, I use to read everything he posted with interest, now it's rare when I read something he posts. He just went to the edge of credibility too many times.

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What American conservatives are you hanging with, Marotta? Do they wear white robes and hoods?

What speculative fiction have you read, other than Brave New World? And how exactly do you get that everyone and every place in BNR is just like us except the clothes? Please expound what specifically you are comparing and contrasting to arrive at that conclusion.

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It's a little soon to help out MM isn't it?

--Brant

now I have to read your stuff instead of his first

edit: none of these links seems to support MM

Edited by Brant Gaede
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admirers of Hitler

. . .

Arnold Schwarzenegger? http://fff.org/explore-freedom/article/hitlers-mutual-admiration-society/

. . .

I think there's a lot of covert resentment. People think it, speak of it privately.

Wolf,

I could dig into the others you listed with varying results (I find this stuff interesting), but I followed the Schwarzenegger thing when it blew up. Schwarzenegger once said at the beginning of his bodybuilding career that he admired Hitler's drive and oratorical skills. It was beefhead hyperbole to make waves for his growing public persona as free publicity. Not necessarily the expression of a true Hitler fan.

When political enemies later made a kerfuffle of this, especially as he had been denying he ever said it like the good hypocritical politician he was, he openly said he despised Hitler. He even said he despised Hitler when he was denying his former publicity stunt.

Here's a more recent article explaining that mindset. But growing up with a father who was an actual Nazi must have given him a perspective on Hitler we don't get from over here.

Still, I want to pick a bone with MM's claim that conservatives hold admiration for Hitler as if this were a trait peculiar to conservatives. (I believe this claim applied to crony capitalists of all stripes is a lot more accurate.)

In the article you linked to about Schwarzenegger: Hitler’s Mutual Admiration Society by Hornberger, there was a mention of the parallels between Hitler's economics and the New Deal. It's true that lots of companies supportive of the New Deal made out like bandits doing business with Hitler. Look into their pedigree and you see Democrats by the ton.

I suppose I could spend some time on this to name names and provide links, and I actually did start. After skimming through several articles, I was in the middle of this article when I stopped and thought what in hell am I doing? I have a butt-load of stuff to get to. :smile:

That article gives a lot of names to look up, so I'll just let the reader Google and do his or her own research. Here's an easy one to get folks going: Thomas Watson of IBM. Flaming Democrat through and through.

Could it be that he was secretly a conservative?

:smile:

Michael

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Up to a point, Hitler was a Wunderkind. He manage to get back German territory seized unjustly by the French and to do it without a shot being fired. The Wunder stopped when Hitler invaded Poland and touched off another European war which eventually became a World War.

If Hitler had stopped with the restoration of the Rhineland to Germany and the unification with Austria we would have been regarded as the greatest German statesman in history. But he did not stopped and the rest is history.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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What American conservatives are you hanging with, Marotta? Do they wear white robes and hoods?

What speculative fiction have you read, other than Brave New World? And how exactly do you get that everyone and every place in BNR is just like us except the clothes? Please expound what specifically you are comparing and contrasting to arrive at that conclusion.

As I was writing that, I did not want to get into more. I did point also to "muscie mystics" a group that Rand used into include anyone of any political stripe who believed that possessing material things makes you powerful - and the liberals would be easy entrants to that clan. I just kept it to conservatives. It is not that they hang pictures of Hitler in their dens. It is that they say what Ba'al did. "If Hitler had done this. If Hitler had not done that." Among liberals the admiration for Hitler is voiced as fear for his power. Also, of course, on the left, they venerate Che and Mao and the whole gang. Conservatives have no monopoly here and I did not mean into imply that they did. I only narrowed my narrative. Sorry...

As for that, Ayn Rand was brilliant in pointing out that the premises of a society and its government define the long-term trends and lasting policies. America was founded on the right values. We endure. The Nazis had the wrong values. They could not have lasted. The communists in Russia also would have collapsed earlier but for support from the West.

Long ago, I read the Toland biography of Hitler. One recurrent theme was finance minister Hjalmar Schacht getting the German economy right-side up, just to have the Hitler gang overturn it again. They had the wrong premises. Their powerful war machine bankrupted them. Ours did not do us much good, but, again with the right premises, we could better afford the inefficiencies. The German V-rockets were powered by alcohol from potatoes. Each one launched at London made the German people hungrier.

Ba'al is wrong. (The conservatives and liberals are wrong.) Invading Russia was the least of Nazi Germany's problems. The USSR could not conquer Finland. The Nazis dismissed all of the best minds and many of the good ones from their universities and businesses. Even Kurt Goedel was brought to the USA at the last minute. An "aryan" by their laws, with no "racial" taint, he was excluded for his "Jewish ideas." Quantum mechanics was dismissed as Jewish physics. And some people thought that the Nazis could build an atomic bomb... With what? Goethe's Theory of Color?

Still, I want to pick a bone with MM's claim that conservatives hold admiration for Hitler as if this were a trait peculiar to conservatives. (I believe this claim applied to crony capitalists of all stripes is a lot more accurate.

As I said to DeeDee, it is not peculiar to conservatives and I did not intend to convey that. I only did not bother to go into the other wing. Also, I liked the word "kerfuffle." I take it as a baseball word. You are too new to Chicago to have learned that from Harry Carey.

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Also, I liked the word "kerfuffle." I take it as a baseball word. You are too new to Chicago to have learned that from Harry Carey.

Possible.

A social imbroglio or brouhaha. An organizational misunderstanding leading to accusations and defensiveness.
I spend half my time these days on tbe phone with HR, ever since Bob started that kerfuffle with his flaming e-mail to everyone in the sociology department.
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As I said to DeeDee, it is not peculiar to conservatives and I did not intend to convey that. I only did not bother to go into the other wing.

Michael,

I humbly suggest that good writing would bother at least a little.

When you level a scathing damnation against one side of a well-worn dichotomy and do not mention the other side, a natural insinuation occurs in the mind of the reader.

That's reality. That's the way the human mind works. This will not go away by hugging a technicality.

That's the canvas a writer paints on. The way I learned it, working correctly with that canvas is part of the writing toolset.

You either use that inherent insinuation to set up a payoff for the reader, or you use it to damn the side you wrote about. Ignoring it leads to reader confusion and, ultimately, readers not taking you seriously.

Michael

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To say if Hitler had done this instead of that, then . . . is not admiration for Hitler but wonderment he could have been so wrongheaded if not stupid. He had tremendous will power, not brain power. But to say he had tremendous will power is not admiration--necessary admiration--of Hitler for that. It is, above all, merely factual. The Soviets stopped trying to kill Hitler in the middle of WWII when they realized he was their asset. There was no admiration for him in that.

Stalin did admire (?) what Hitler did to the Jews and was preparing to do the same (?) when he went and died. ("The Doctors' Plot.") He had had a railroad spur built that dead-ended overlooking the Caspian Sea where rr carloads of dead Jews were to be dumped into the water below. (This is based on a Discovery or History channel show I watched years ago, which is not adequate documentation.)

--Brant

Edited by Brant Gaede
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Second, perhaps deeper, is the "great man" theory of history. ... But would there have been a Standard Oil without Rockefeller, a Northern Pacific without Hill? In fact, Germany had a plethora of nationalist-socialist idiots including....

In Huxley's Brave New World, clones were named Hoover. One of the viewpoint characters was "Benito Hoover." (BNR includes very many such names of collectivist leaders of the time, such as Mustapha Mond no less than Polly Trotsky and Lenina Crowne.)

The third and metaphysical problem is that of the "impossible" as outlined by Stuart Hayashi on both RoR and here on MSK's OL. It might be said - Hayashi does not get into this - that we cannot imagine what a world where the South won the Civil War would be like because we live in a different world than that. ...

The situation is ambiguous. It is probably true that broad historical events do not depend on specific individuals. The Renaissance, the computer revolution, or any other social event probably would have developed in about the same ways regardless of one or a few "key" individuals.

Those individuals nonetheless exist(ed). So, we can enjoy the biographies of the individuals who created great values.

A different discussion centers on the theater of action. In science, personality only carries you so far: absent the facts, you have no further range. Politics is all about personality. But personalities cannot change facts. Ultimately, the successes and failures of Steve Jobs or Carly Fiorina depended on their ability to identify facts, and then to build a consensual action plan based on those. Many people have good ideas. Getting others to go along with those perceptions is a different skill entirely.

The error that I see is giving undue focus to those social skills over the ability to see the facts. More deeply the nature of that social aspect is revelatory: what you consider powerful says a lot about you. "What if Adolf Hitler..." loses its dramatic narrative when changed to "What if Bernie Madoff..."

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The error that I see is giving undue focus to those social skills over the ability to see the facts. More deeply the nature of that social aspect is revelatory: what you consider powerful says a lot about you. "What if Adolf Hitler..." loses its dramatic narrative when changed to "What if Bernie Madoff..."

Depends on context. Madoff has his context which is trivial compared to Hitler's. If you exchange contexts you're just dumb. It's so dumb I've never seen it. Your example is therefore spurious; a lot's not being said about anybody for nobody's talking. You're sort of like how Ayn Rand could sometimes be: say much to cover up how little it is. She always got all dramatic making for fun reads, but here you don't even have the "little." I'll grant you this: "What you say is powerful says a lot about you" is practically an Ayn Rand quote. She was obnoxious with this; you're irritating. I know you find this paragraph irritating too, but I'm just returning your "you" to you. Delivery refused.

--Brant

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And Ayn Rand adored Hickman, and accused those who expressed outrage against him of having committed worse crimes themselves -- the "crime" of being average and of resenting bold, daring, individualists heroes like Hickman.

I think that the odds are that if we were to dig into the pasts of Pup or MM, or almost anyone really, we'd probably find some similarly whacked out nutty shit.

J

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It seems to me that all Marotta is saying is that he disagrees with the notion that Hitler could have been successful had he chosen to use his potential for good instead of evil. It also seems that he mistakenly equates other people's higher measure of Hitler's (wasted) potential as an admiration for the evil deeds he committed.

If I am right, then I have actually understood Marotta, and that is a scary thought. (Just kidding, Mike.)

If I am wrong, then I apologize for speaking for Marotta. (Yeah, just kidding about that too, Mike.)

:smile:

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Seems simple to me. Hitler was a pawn moved by Ludendorff and Krupp, made queen when they moved him to the first row.

Is Obama any different? - a pawn made queen by Rubin and Blankfein. http://americablog.com/2013/02/whats-up-with-obamas-bromance-with-lloyd-blankfein.html

That was MM's point in post #1, IMO.

El linko esta rompio < sad HS Spanish.

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Seems simple to me. Hitler was a pawn moved by Ludendorff and Krupp, made queen when they moved him to the first row.

Is Obama any different? - a pawn made queen by Rubin and Blankfein. http://americablog.com/2013/02/whats-up-with-obamas-bromance-with-lloyd-blankfein.html

That was MM's point in post #1, IMO.

That's true of just about anybody who gets "big." Obama had to be black, actually mostly white and Arabic with a little black, and make a good enough appearance. I don't get "Rubin and Blackfein." It looks like confirmation bias for your more general thesis. Big, dominant media made Obama possible--plus liberal guilt. The viciousness of the left to get and keep and expand cultural and political power is analogous to the viciousness of the communists as per their Marxist commonality. They used to try to be intellectually dominant, but if any of that remains it's only in academia where they put on a front of how smart they are and no one else is worth even mentioning or acknowledging in any respect except maybe as "deniers."

--Brant

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Seems simple to me. Hitler was a pawn moved by Ludendorff and Krupp, made queen when they moved him to the first row.

Is Obama any different? - a pawn made queen by Rubin and Blankfein. http://americablog.com/2013/02/whats-up-with-obamas-bromance-with-lloyd-blankfein.html

That was MM's point in post #1, IMO.

That's true of just about anybody who gets "big." Obama had to be black, actually mostly white and Arabic with a little black, and make a good enough appearance. I don't get "Rubin and Blackfein." It looks like confirmation bias for your more general thesis. Big, dominant media made Obama possible--plus liberal guilt. The viciousness of the left to get and keep and expand cultural and political power is analogous to the viciousness of the communists as per their Marxist commonality. They used to try to be intellectually dominant, but if any of that remains it's in academia only where they put on a front of how smart they are and no one else is worth even mentioning or acknowledging in any respect except maybe as "deniers."

--Brant

I accept the possibility of confirmation bias. Good point.

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Seems simple to me. Hitler was a pawn moved by Ludendorff and Krupp, made queen when they moved him to the first row.

Is Obama any different? - a pawn made queen by Rubin and Blankfein. http://americablog.com/2013/02/whats-up-with-obamas-bromance-with-lloyd-blankfein.html

That was MM's point in post #1, IMO.

That's true of just about anybody who gets "big." Obama had to be black, actually mostly white and Arabic with a little black, and make a good enough appearance. I don't get "Rubin and Blackfein." It looks like confirmation bias for your more general thesis. Big, dominant media made Obama possible--plus liberal guilt. The viciousness of the left to get and keep and expand cultural and political power is analogous to the viciousness of the communists as per their Marxist commonality. They used to try to be intellectually dominant, but if any of that remains it's in academia only where they put on a front of how smart they are and no one else is worth even mentioning or acknowledging in any respect except maybe as "deniers."

--Brant

I accept the possibility of confirmation bias. Good point.

Since money obviously rushes to power we could get into one of those interminable chicken and egg arguments and then argue who was the sadist and who was the masochist as the chicken and egg thingy goes completely rotten.

--Brant

lover of pain--not!

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