Mein Kampf as "livre philosophique"

[philthecow]

Yesterday the only substantial reading I did was a ten-page segment of Mein Kampf for my German Studies class.

Then I went out and beat up some Jews.

Just kidding. But it strikes me that Mein Kampf is an interesting book to discuss both in terms of its potential persuasive power and in terms of its iconographic power over time. Our professor

Comments

[midge7227]

i feel like if anything Mein Kampf would provide good insight which could, you know, stop the same thing from happening again. i mean, most people acknowledge that it happened (though of course there are more than a few doubters) and that it was generally bad, so i feel like not allowing people to read Hitler's book would be taking away valuable insight into our culture that could be super useful, if that makes any sense. and any book can be misused - i think north korea was using "the diary of anne frank" for a while to prove to schoolchildren that americans were like nazis and bush was like hitler. so yeah...you dont have to agree with Mein Kampf to read it, and any book can be used for less-than-okay purposes if someone really wants to use it...and that's the basic crux of my argument, only it was muddled by my brain.

[deaminerva]

...but does it really still have that iconographic hold over people that it did in the 1930s?

I'd look at the Holocaust Deniers conference held in Iran (and the seemingly increasingly noisy "scholars" and people pushing these claims), and I'd say yes.

That said, I think banning 1 book that is clearly offensive presents a slippery slope and means that those societies are more inclined to ban other books they consider 'offensive' but might actually be a part of useful discourse.

[polyhymnia]

Freedom of information is much more theoretical than actual. This is true, sadly, throughout the world, including Europe and the US.

Read BoingBoing.net regularly for a while, and you'll see lots of examples.

[philthecow]

Note the quotation marks. I love quotation marks.

But yeah. It's unfortunate that freedom of information is a really unsexy cause which most of the activists don't care about, or maybe something would be done.

[philthecow]

Oh, I know the virtues. I also know the problems.

1. It's way unsexy.

The rest of the problems pale in comparison.

[justice_fishy]

So, that'd make sense as to why you slapped me yesterday Lauren...I keed, I keed.

As for writing it, I think it's like Dianetics...(ha! Godwinning Scientology!)...at least in terms of popularity. I'm too sick to really think of anything constructive to say...I guess...