Mein Kampf - German Best Seller

[DrYouth]

Martyrmade does a great job of making sense of Hitler...

Although it is way off the side of his desk in the Israel story.

I would love to hear Cooper take on WW2 germany straight up.

But that would take years at his pace.

[Fife]

It's not exactly a well-thought out treatise on government. The Doctrine of Fascism by Mussolini fits that bill.

I've never read that, I'd like to hear a podcast about it... Know any?

I heard Barry Soreto is going to launch it in about a month.

[TheReal_ND]

I have a feeling that the majority of people just read it to be edgy.

... at age 15.

Same. It was really tame iirc. But I want to get the Stalag version and reread it with a closer eye.

[Okeefenokee]

MHF book club assignment number one, mein kampf

[Kazmyr]

A book I'm currently reading now has several reading lists, one of which includes Mein Kampf (a little to my surprise initially). Author states that it should be on the list due to it's historical import. I plan on reading it at some point.

It's not like this is some kind of intellectual/literary Reefer Madness or something. I don't think this gets to the level of Dan's "intellectual contagion," either.

[Speaker to Animals]

A book I'm currently reading now has several reading lists, one of which includes Mein Kampf (a little to my surprise initially). Author states that it should be on the list due to it's historical import. I plan on reading it at some point.

It's not like this is some kind of intellectual/literary Reefer Madness or something. I don't think this gets to the level of Dan's "intellectual contagion," either.

It's pretty crazy, to be honest. Hitler might have been a little maniacal.

[BjornP]

Despair, desperation, those things can distort even the strongest minds under extreme stress and yes a loss of safety, loss of optimism, loss of culture and values is extreme stress over time. Germans can form new twisted ideas from MK and that ideology, whatever it is, can easily spread across Europe given the current conditions. Now is it the books fault if this happens? No. The blame lies on the shoulders of European leadership or lack there of over the last 20 years. That is what I'm saying.

Can they? Sure. All sorts of things can happen... under the right circumstances. It's just not very likely. You are assuming that reading MK turns people( or maybe it's just Germans?) into Nazis. MK isn't excatly well-written, so I don't know why you think reading it makes those reading form ideas based on Hitlers literary vomitus. Do you think reading Karl Marx's manifesto turns people into Communists, too?

You're engaging in the same "logic" employed by those ban those books do: You assume that the simple exposure to those ideas, is enough to turn people into Nazis. And on top of that you assume that the responsibility lies with the "leaders" of Europe. Leaders don't control the direction of culture. Culture is organic. The current anti-elite sentiments in Europe are only right-wing because most modern left-wing parties in Europe are no longer working class parties like they used to be, nor show many signs of changing back. And most of the anti-elite don't want to be led by clueless EU bureaucrats, only drones and the mentally vacant need or want to be "managed". Being controlled, feeling devoid of choice, that you're being led someplace and no one gives a shit about wether you want to be led there or not.... That shit belongs back in the old days of Lenin, Stalin, Mussolini and Hitler. But the frustration with that trend does not somehow lead to adopting Hitler's... "teaching" (if we're being charitable) just because it's there. Germans don't actually have a gene for Fascism locked away in their bloodstream.

[Speaker to Animals]

In fact, it's the same kind of mindset the nazis possessed when they decided to burn dangerous books. A bit ironic, really. If you want less totalitarianism, then maybe don't engage in it.. Just a thought.

[TheReal_ND]

A book I'm currently reading now has several reading lists, one of which includes Mein Kampf (a little to my surprise initially). Author states that it should be on the list due to it's historical import. I plan on reading it at some point.

It's not like this is some kind of intellectual/literary Reefer Madness or something. I don't think this gets to the level of Dan's "intellectual contagion," either.

It's pretty crazy, to be honest. Hitler might have been a little maniacal.

Try reading one that isn't edited and annotated by Jews.

[BjornP]

In fact, it's the same kind of mindset the nazis possessed when they decided to burn dangerous books. A bit ironic, really. If you want less totalitarianism, then maybe don't engage in it.. Just a thought.

Yup. Freedom is always most threatening to - and threatened by - those who think everybody else's freedom is a danger to their own.