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Help[Opinions] Re: Ha, you mentioned it!
in reply to a message by Bronislava
It's very strange about Joseph. It's my dad's name and his dad's name, and I've always been "meh it is nice sounding" towards it - and suddenly icky Goebbels makes it simply poisonous. You are right though, thinking about it - I think Stalin and McCarthy have built it up in my subconscious as being kind of poisonous.
I am really interested by what you are saying. By associating Naziism with the symbols and not the emotions we forget that it could happen to us. The symptoms are a lot easier to avoid than the reality. This idea has been slowly crystallizing in me especially over the course of this semester. (Something about obsessively studying genaeology while feeling totally removed from the Nazis strikes me as a bit poisonous. I don't quite know what I mean but it happens to a lot of people.) There is an entire basic mentality that is important to overcome before distancing ourselves completely from the Nazis. You are entirely right that it's not about Hitler. It's about the people who voted for him. Hitler's soul is not a very interesting soul. It is nasty but I can't imagine it was -- or is -- entirely unique. My professor has mentioned several times how odd he finds the Hitler cult. And people in my class still ask these very strange and not very relevant questions - strange specificities of Hitler's life, where would the Americans fall in the Nazi racial hierarchy, what exactly do all of those symbols on that Chart Of Acceptable Or Not Acceptable Jewishness mean. (My professor does not like those questions very much.)
I don't know. It's very strange. The question you raise is very interesting. Now that you raise it, I do not think people would think Nazis were as bad. They would be racist and awful, as well as a frightening dictatorial regime, but of course there would be a couple people who would give them credit for lifting Germany from the depression or whatever, and the taboos around it would not be nearly as great. What if there weren't concentration camps, just the mass killings of Ukranians and things that happened as the Nazis stomped through Europe? or the killing of retarded children? or mass sterilization, like you said?
Ick ick ick.
Another thing I've found over the past few weeks of ruthlessly batting down terrible Hitler metaphors is that people like to associate with socialism with the Nazis. Socialism! Of all of the most irrelevant aspects of
whatever. Not that I am socialist but it seems very strange to me to compare socialized medicine to National Socialism.
Having said that, the Goebbels children bother me along the same lines that the Duggars bother me, and several other very large sibsets that I know. Something to me is so sick about having all of these children. When they all start to look the same. Especially if the parents look alike already, especially if they have recessive genes, and especially if they happen to actually be Nazis. :P The alliteration seems to put the icing on the cake. And so does the strange bellicosity of German names in general. Germanicity is very interesting to me, there is something so extreme about every element of it... anyway.
I am really interested by what you are saying. By associating Naziism with the symbols and not the emotions we forget that it could happen to us. The symptoms are a lot easier to avoid than the reality. This idea has been slowly crystallizing in me especially over the course of this semester. (Something about obsessively studying genaeology while feeling totally removed from the Nazis strikes me as a bit poisonous. I don't quite know what I mean but it happens to a lot of people.) There is an entire basic mentality that is important to overcome before distancing ourselves completely from the Nazis. You are entirely right that it's not about Hitler. It's about the people who voted for him. Hitler's soul is not a very interesting soul. It is nasty but I can't imagine it was -- or is -- entirely unique. My professor has mentioned several times how odd he finds the Hitler cult. And people in my class still ask these very strange and not very relevant questions - strange specificities of Hitler's life, where would the Americans fall in the Nazi racial hierarchy, what exactly do all of those symbols on that Chart Of Acceptable Or Not Acceptable Jewishness mean. (My professor does not like those questions very much.)
I don't know. It's very strange. The question you raise is very interesting. Now that you raise it, I do not think people would think Nazis were as bad. They would be racist and awful, as well as a frightening dictatorial regime, but of course there would be a couple people who would give them credit for lifting Germany from the depression or whatever, and the taboos around it would not be nearly as great. What if there weren't concentration camps, just the mass killings of Ukranians and things that happened as the Nazis stomped through Europe? or the killing of retarded children? or mass sterilization, like you said?
Ick ick ick.
Another thing I've found over the past few weeks of ruthlessly batting down terrible Hitler metaphors is that people like to associate with socialism with the Nazis. Socialism! Of all of the most irrelevant aspects of
whatever. Not that I am socialist but it seems very strange to me to compare socialized medicine to National Socialism.
Having said that, the Goebbels children bother me along the same lines that the Duggars bother me, and several other very large sibsets that I know. Something to me is so sick about having all of these children. When they all start to look the same. Especially if the parents look alike already, especially if they have recessive genes, and especially if they happen to actually be Nazis. :P The alliteration seems to put the icing on the cake. And so does the strange bellicosity of German names in general. Germanicity is very interesting to me, there is something so extreme about every element of it... anyway.
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