Comment by plinkplonk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by plinkplonk | Hacker News Reader

Two things

(1) "Mein Kampf" is just another book for Indians. Sure it is available in bookstores, it isn't particularly popular. Most people have read it, and most think it is a turgid bit of prose.

(2) Why should Indians (or Pakistanis for that matter) have the same level of Hitler Phobia and/or Holocaust guilt Germans have? I thought the German "guilt" was all about how Hitler and co misled their ancestors into The Holocaust and other dirty deeds. Indians and Pakistanis were colonized by the British at the time of WW2 and many of our ancestors fought against the Nazis and the Japanese. (Some of them fought for the Nazis/Japanese trying to attain independence for India from the British).

Nutshell: People who had nothing to do with the Nazis or the Holocaust and for whom the Nazis and Hitler were "people far away" fighting and winning aginst an oppressive colonial power don't have as much of a bad reaction as people who were invaded/ruled/slaughtered by them.

Big Deal.

Genghis Khan built mountains of skulls during his invasions but would Germans blanch if they saw a Muslim with the name "Genghis" or "Timur" or think his name is inappropriate?

As something to chew on, many babies born in the Middle East / Pakistan etc are being named "Osama". An American child with such a name would find social situations difficult I imagine. No such stigma in Pakistan. At some point will we see a headline "Saudis cringe at Osama's popularity in Pakistan"?

To be even more controversial it could be argued that Bush and co "killed a million Iraqis" for no real purpose. Should all Americans hate and abhor W? Stalin and Mao were responsible for more deaths than Hitler Should Chinese be surprised that some few Americans think Mao was "cool"?

fwiw I personally thing Hitler was a charismatic and thoroughly evil person. Most Indians who are aware of actual history feel the same way.

But I am also aware concentration camps were "invented" by the British during the Boer War and the large scale deaths of non combatant Boer women and children in these camps could be called genocide if it happened today. Should we hate Lord Salisbury (and Winston Churchill for that matter) too? I don't see many Britishers being ashamed of them.

In essence, you say that the Nazi cult that some Pakistanis (supposedly) entertain is no big deal, because they are not responsible for the Holocaust. As a German, who as a matter of fact doesn't feel particularly guilty about things his great-grandfathers did half a century before he was born, I'd like to know how you come to such a peculiar opinion. Evil is less evil if you can blame someone else? It's okay to revere mass murderers as long as you're not the one who let them come into power?

Your point about children's names is almost the textbook definition of a straw man, and I think you know it. Many German children are named Joseph, but that name has a long cultural and religious history, and no one in their right mind would associate that with Stalin. I guess the story with the name Osama in Muslim cultures is similar. However, if Pakistani parents name their children Adolf, a name that has no cultural associations in Pakistan whatsoever except being linked to a brutal mass murderer, then that's at least a little bit cringe worthy.

(I wonder if Godwin's Law applies to a discussion that's already about Hitler in the first place, and if a factual discussion about such a topic is even possible...)

"you say that the Nazi cult that some Pakistanis (supposedly) entertain is no big deal,"

There is no "Nazi cult" in Pakistan. Talk about exaggeration.

Yes, for some people Hitler had some virtues (as they do Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Stalin, Che, Lenin, George W Bush) which they think are worthy of being admired.

" I guess the story with the name Osama in Muslim cultures is similar."

You are wrong.

There is a rise in babies being named Osama after 9/11. I thought that was obvious from the context. Sorry if I was not clear enough. Arab and Pakistani teenagers wear T shirts with Osama's picture on them. There are large numbers of people who think Osama Bin Laden is a heroic figure. You (and I) think he is a homicidal maniac. Other people don't.

You can always find some people somewhere who admire the mass murderers of history (including Osama, Mao , Stalin and the British who created concentration camps in the first place), as compared to those whose ancestors were massacred. It doesn't mean much.

Germans expecting all Pakistanis to hate and abhor Hitler as much as they do is like some Pakistanis expecting them to love Osama Bin Laden.

So yes the world doesn't always have prejudices in lockstep with your own, and sometimes admire people you abhor and vice versa. Sorry about that.

It sounds like you know a lot more about the Boer concentration camps than I do, maybe you can clear something up for me. From a quick perusal of Wikipedia it seems as if the concentration camps in the Boer war were intended to be more like prisons, i.e. restricting the movements of those persons held there. Due to incompetence, negligence, lack of facilities/medicine a large proportion of the inmates died. I would not wish to lessen this tragedy, but it does sound like a different situation to what we understand a concentration camp to be in common parlance, i.e. a camp set up with the intention of working to death/explicitly killing those sent there. I think there is a distinction between those two types of camps, and while both are highly unpleasant I don't think they're actually the same thing.

" it seems as if the concentration camps in the Boer war were intended to be more like prisons, i.e. restricting the movements of those persons held there. Due to incompetence, negligence, lack of facilities/medicine a large proportion of the inmates died."

Sounds like what the Germans would say today if Hitler had won the war and founded a strong and dominant Germany? yeah there were mistakes but they weren't intentional. Sure.

The point is that an argument could be (and was) made that such starvation and ill treatment was intentional, as a method of forcing the Boer commandos to surrender. The British were essentially stalemated and could see no way of ending the war. By the accepted norms of war of the time, starving non combatants to death was a crime. But the British won and were a World Power (much as the USA is today), so no one convened the equivalent of Nuremberg. If the Boers had won, (unlikely, but just as a thought experiment) you bet your ass some Britsh politician would have been "criminals".

Let us read Wikipedia though.

"Hobhouse published a report in June 1901 which contradicted Brodrick's claim, and Lloyd George then openly accused the government of "a policy of extermination" directed against the Boer population.

In June 1901, Liberal opposition party leader Campbell-Bannerman took up the assault and answered the rhetorical "When is a war not a war?" with "When it is carried on by methods of barbarism in South Africa," referring to those same camps and the policies that created them."

All that said, do read up on the Khaki Elections and the Boer War. Don't just read Wikipedia. Read your history in some depth and then talk.

" i.e. a camp set up with the intention of working to death/explicitly killing those sent there."

This is exactly what some people, especially the Boers and their allies the Germans thought the British were doing (see above). The British Leader of the Opposition even claimed as much!

Political maneovres aside, What matters is that people died in the tens of thousands. ( A report after the war concluded that 27,927 Boers (of whom 24,074 [50% of the Boer child population] were children under 16) had died of starvation, disease and exposure in the concentration camps. In all, about one in four (25%) of the Boer inmates, mostly children, died.

It is thought that about 12% of black African inmates died (about 14,154) but the precise number of deaths of black Africans in concentration camps is unknown as little attempt was made to keep any records of the 107,000 black Africans who were interned. It is, however, worth noting that Emily Hobhouse and the Fawcett Commission only ever concerned themselves with the camps that held white Boer refugees. No one paid much attention to what was going on in the camps that held native refugees". - Wikipedia)

Is it a lesser number than Jews in the Holocaust? Sure. Was starving non combatants to death (and denying that such things were happening) a "war crime"? You tell me. Victors are never war criminals are they?

> Read your history in some depth and then talk.

Thank you for the advice. I will make sure in future that I never try to engage in a discussion about something of which I am not fully informed.

> Thank you for the advice. I will make sure in future that I never try to engage in a discussion about something of which I am not fully informed.

As long as you keep asking like you did, you shouldn't be afraid to contribute. Just pushing opinions would be another thing, though.

I wonder if Godwin's Law applies to a discussion that's already about Hitler in the first place, and if a factual discussion about such a topic is even possible...

I'm not sure how this didn't occur to me before I posted the article. What was I thinking? Well, I guess I know what I was thinking: it is an observant article about an interesting new (to me) phenomenon. It isn't particularly critical. In fact, the most surprising quality of the article itself is how gentle and non-judgmental it is. And I still think it's one of the most fascinating cultural pieces I've read in a while.

But you're right: Godwin's Law doesn't fail to apply just because one begins at the absurd instead of going through a reductio to get there, which means the probability of a good discussion approximates zero.

Hitler was not fighting against an oppressor - he was upon something greater: conquer Europe, enslave people to get them working for the Germans and kill everyone that he was thinking of as unworthy. Hitler was a racist, he was the oppressor, tried to conquer a bunch of countries and caused the murdering of millions of people.

The 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend' thing might explain that some people like him (there are other reasons, too). But if we look at Hitler himself and rate him on what HE did, then it is easy to see that he is in no way somebody that can be seen in positive light.

Also, when Hitler thought of 'Arier' he was thinking about a white, germanic 'race'. The word 'Arier' was a political tool and redefined as necessary.

"Hitler was not fighting against an oppressor -"

You could argue that the post World War 1 "reparations" policy on Germany was indeed oppression.

But I wasn't talking about that. I meant that for Indians (and Pakistanis) of the time, Hitler was fighting the British, who was their oppressor/colonizer. The struggle for Indian Independence was in full swing when WW 2 broke out.

"if we look at Hitler himself and rate him on what HE did, then it is easy to see that he is in no way somebody that can be seen in positive light."

And yet many Germans did see him in a positive light. And if he had won the war would he still be considered universally evil? Stalin and Mao killed more people than he did yet there are significant numbers of Russians and Chinese who admire them today.

I agree with you that Hitler was evil. I completely agree that Hitler's "Aryan race" meant something completely diufferent from what people in India/Pakistan who admire Hitler think he meant.

I guess just don't see things completely in black and white and/or expect other people to believe exactly as I do, especialy about judging historical figures, and find them "cringe worthy" if they differ in opinion from me.

When I was living in the USA I met many people who thought the Confederates were fighting for a noble cause for e.g. and I didn't "cringe", though I didn't believe that myself. I understand that History is rarely uni dimensional and that other people have different views of History and historical figures than I do.

Europeans don't universally condemn Mao or Stalin. And there are a least a few who admire them.

Why should Pakistanis universally condemn Hitler? And why can't there be some Pakistanis who admire him?

Hitler wasn't that much interested in fighting the British. He was more interested in getting space ('Lebensraum') in the East, getting rid of of the Jews and enslave the 'slavic people'. That's where the war took place mostly, where tens of millions of people died and where Hitler Germany killed millions of jews. He was also fighting a war in the West, but that was not his true aim.

Hitler in Germany is seen as evil. He did not win the war and he never would have won the war. Secondly people in Germany see him as evil not because he lost the war, but because he caused the death and suffering of so many people, was a brutal dictator and so on.

The discussion over the past decades in Germany makes this very clear. The current generation hasn't much positive to say about Hitler - especially those who learned a bit. Older generations loved that he built autobahns and got people to work - before these people then died in the wars. But those people were brought up in a different Germany with different values.

Mao and Stalin? I can't remember hearing here in Germany saying anything positive about them.

'Why should Pakistanis universally condemn Hitler?' Because he was a racist, started a war, caused killing millions of people, his secret policy tortured and killed many people, removed basic rights, installed a one party system, got rid of democracy, installed concentration and labor camps to kill millions of based on their worthyness and their race, his army fought a brutal war killing millions of civillians... I could go on for a while.

> Hitler wasn't that much interested in fighting the British.

Didn't he try to make peace (or even an alliance?) with the British for a long time?

> Mao and Stalin? I can't remember hearing here in Germany saying anything positive about them.

You are right in a main stream sense, but see e.g. http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-Gruppen for the loonies.

I have thoroughly enjoyed your point-by-point rebuttals regarding the historical facts and their many interpretations, etc. However, the crux of your argument is essentially, "Well, you guys (Brits, Americans, et al) admire bad people too and we don't say anything!" And frankly, it misses the mark entirely.

This isn't a question of whose 'wrong' is right or even whose 'wrong' is a little more right. It is a question of 'is it wrong at all?' And it is. It just isn't possible to argue that Hitler effected a positive (or even net neutral) change on the world - hence he is worthy of no admiration, regardless of what nation it comes from.

That's basically what it comes down to - 'Is X praiseworthy?' If X is not, then ultimately it doesn't matter a bit where the praise comes from. To say otherwise is to be an apologist for evil men and evil actions (as being evil makes an X not worthy of praise.)

"the crux of your argument is essentially, "Well, you guys (Brits, Americans, et al) admire bad people too and we don't say anything!"

No that is not my point at all. I said explicitly I think Hitler is an evil person. I am not trying to defend Hitler at all.

My point is what is "good" and "bad" varies from person to person and country to country and is rarely a binary judgement (and history is rarely "black and white" wrt good and bad) and where it is , it keep shifting with time.

Germans cringing because Pakistanis(!) don't see Hitler as completely evil makes no sense to me. Their historical "experience" of Nazism is too different to expect a consensus. Complete with a picture of kids making a swastika (the Swastika is a Hindu symbol of good fortune btw) that article is ignorant and supercilious.

Germans don't cringe about "bigger" murderers. Why should they hold Pakistanis to an unattainable standard? Rank Hypocrisy and sensationalism(imo).

'really bad' is 'really bad', independent of country. What we fear is that there are people in other countries who see him positive for example based on looks and fashion. That would be stupid. What's worse is if there are people who adore him for what he stood for. He stood for death, killing, torture, slavery, war, racism, race struggle. There are no positive values or positive motives to learn from him.

'bad' cannot vary from country to country - Adolf Hitler cannot be seen anything but pure evil.

That the Swastika is a symbol from India, Germans know already.

Moral Relativism leads directly to logical contradiction - how can an action be both evil and not evil at the same time?

Imagine if our judicial branch worked that way, would that lead to a sustainable society? Absolutely not. You couldn't legitimately punish anyone for a crime because what is a 'crime' to you may not be a 'crime' to the perpetrator. And so on, and so on...

Bottom line, if an action is evil, it is fundamentally evil. The nature of an action doesn't change according to who commits it. The day humanity stops "cringing" when faced with apologist behavior is perhaps the day when humanity dooms itself.

> Germans don't cringe about "bigger" murderers.

Yes. But they should.

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