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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   35102 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 5, 2025

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Ye, better known as Kanye West has released a song titled "Heil Hitler"
I have to admit, it's quite catchy, especially the unlikely refrain "nigger, Heil Hitler", which definitely has an intriguing ring to it. Whether Kanye is a truly great artist or not, he's nothing if not a skilled craftsman.
I've long since lost the ability to treat anything on the internet seriously and my reaction was limited to squeezing my eyes shut and suppressing a chuckle, but I suspect that the wider audience is also outraged only in a performative, inertial way. I doubt it will end up making any real impact on anything and waves in the social media will likely fizzle out in no more than a few weeks.
I wonder if we're seeing the first signs of postmodern corrosion eating away at the last grand unifying narrative of our age: WW2 mythos, with Adolf Hitler at its center not as mere historical figure, but as the archetypal villain and the secular devil. In many countries the taboo is backed by legal force, but legislation doesn't truly govern things of this nature. The law may end up hollowed out and irrelevant long before someone cares to remove it from the books
Maybe I will live to tell my incredulous grandkids about how we were all expected to perceive one specific 20th century dictator through a prism of quasi-superstitious dread.
Should this really happen, good riddance. Though on the other hand, we might end up remembering having this kind of culture spanning, unifying narrative as kind of comfy compared to total balkanization

Will it be “post-modern corrosion” or will it be time? Genghis Khan Is believed to (1) have caused the deaths of enough people to slightly alter climate, and (2) have been the most-prolific rapist of which we are aware. And, currently, there are a couple of restaurant chains named after him here in America.

I once saw an inflatable, bounce-house type slide made to look like the Titanic. Kids would slide down the tilted deck, onto a landing area made to look like the sea. Fifteen hundred people died in the actual tragedy.

There is typically a loosening of taboo once knowledge of horrible events passes out of living memory. Are those around WW2 going to be different?

(West is certainly, dementedly ahead of the curve, here.)

Genghis Khan is some 800 years ago, the Nazis are 80 years ago. Perhaps in a few hundred years, there will be Nazi-themed restaurant chains called "Adolf Hitler Wirtshaus" which will serve vaguely German dishes which will be invented near the end of this century.

This matches somewhat with the outgroup/fargroup distinction. Genghis Khan is very much in the fargroup outside Asia. You can safely dress up as him for Halloween and nobody will bat an eye, he is playing in the same league as Darth Vader or Sauron.

I think that a lot of factors play a role in determining when a tragedy or atrocity loses its gravity. Raw numbers are one thing -- a single death is more easily shrugged off than a million (but I would argue that this scales only logarithmically, because humans are scope insensitive. Accidents are forgotten quicker than atrocities.

Sometimes, a traumatic event becomes almost permanently imprinted in a culture. As far as Roman occupiers go, Pontius Pilate is hardly one of the worst. Using the death penalty against some guy who has offended local religious sentiments as a favor to the local elites is just how the sausage gets made, hardly a reign of terror. But because the killing of that guy spawned one of the most successful memes of all times, dressing as him for Halloween is probably a bad idea.

For the Federal Republic of Germany, Nazism plays a central role in the founding mythology. Where before Germany had been a Great Power run on Prussian militarism and patriotic fervor, with a tenuous relationship to democracy, it basically reinvented itself after WW2, rejecting its ambitions to rule the world and fully embraced democracy. (While keeping all the Nazis around, but that problem solved itself through time.)

Of course, there is another state in whose founding Hitler inadvertently played a major role, which is modern Israel. As long as these two states are around, they will remember the Nazis as the Big Bad.

The youngest people to claim they have experienced anything from WWII are 91-2 . Doesn't help that the biggest victims are universally hated. Also doesn't help that nazism struggle was intrawhite thing, and white people are at record low share of global population.

I would not call the Jews "universally hated". For example, I don't hate Jews. More generally, while antisemitism has a long history in Christian Europe, and pogroms happened in many places over many centuries, I think "universal hatred" is a bit of an over-simplification. For one thing, Judaism was (sometimes) tolerated in a way which other religions (besides Christianity) were not tolerated. Most Christian rulers would not have suffered a temple to the Norse gods within their realm, for example. I also think that Muslims generally displayed even less of a deadly hatred against Jews pre-1900, there was the 1066 Granada pogrom, but Wikipedia lists few other pogroms.

(Also, there is an argument made that the biggest victim group of Hitler are gentile Slavs, but I concede that the one group he was really fanatic about genociding are certainly the Jews.)

And while you can describe the European theater of WW2 as an "intra-white" thing, I would argue that this is simply because Germany did not have any borders with non-White countries. Nazi ideology has a ranking of "races", with the "nordic race" being the most noble, and the Slavs being the least noble white people (apart from certain minorities), but they certainly consider Blacks to be inferior to even Slavs.

Neither the Western Allies nor the USSR had racism as a major part of their doctrine, so framing WW2 as the proud racists vs the people who reject racism is not exactly wrong.

Universal as you can find it anywhere. There are few corners of the world that haven't had or have any antisemitism.

Neither the Western Allies nor the USSR had racism as a major part of their doctrine

And the water is not major part of the fishes' doctrine. Nazis had to invent white hierarchy because almost all non white people were already ruled by other whites. And you had segregation in USA. Also the (former) USSR has always been and always will be refreshingly racist place. Which is one of the best things about Eastern Europe as a whole. And the USSR also discriminated against jews. Up to the point that I think they had separate math exams for universities.

I wouldn't call antisemitism universal, although it's certainly more common than most forms of ethnic prejudice.

wouldn't call antisemitism universal

Are there peoples or cultures where it's absent? I don't mean uncontantacted people's in remote areas.

East Asia seems not to have adopted that particular prejudice, for one.

In particular, China didn't adopt this particular vice despite being home to small but significant populations of Jews throughout history, with enclaves in many Chinese cities (with the Kaifeng Jews being the most famous of the bunch), while also hosting significant numbers of Christians and Muslims. There has been some suggestion in the official records that the earliest of them arrived mid-Han dynasty approx. two thousand years ago, and there are independent observations by e.g. Persian travellers noting established Jewish merchants operating in China by the Tang dynasty.

Interestingly I have noticed an uptick in a bizarre sort of antisemitism in some of the wackier corners of Chinese popular culture very recently -- some sort of combination of classic Da Jooz tropes imported from the West, combined with the perception that the West is trying to contain China, resulting in various syncretic conspiracy theories about how (((they))) are puppeteering Western institutions to control China (or have in some nonsensical way done so in the past). But on the whole the Chinese remain philosemitic.

Malaysia has.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahathir_Mohamad

I have seen a theory that some of it was intended to create a (nonexistent) Jewish scapegoat for Malay ethnic mobs to distract them from (very real) Chinese and Indians they were currently targeting.

Similarly, "Black americans stop beating up Asians. Your real enemy is the Uzbeks."

Does Malaysia count as East Asia rather than Southeast Asia?

If antisemitism is a response it could be there's been insufficient exposure.

https://doi.org/10.1080/0031322X.2023.2287877

their number in East Asia never exceeding 36,000 (currently around 10,000), Jews there are the subject of both distinctly strong positive and negative views

in a worldwide survey across 101 countries conducted recently by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). The survey, which is discussed in detail below, revealed that, among respondents in China, Japan and South Korea, no less than 20, 23 and 53 per cent, respectively, could be regarded as holding antisemitic views

Pharaoh seems not concerned with the Israelites until they've become too numerous in Exodus 1:9.

Yep, I recall reading somewhere that Asians tend to respect Jews for their disproportionate influence, the thought process going something like:

You're telling me that this tiny minority dominates your finance, media, and government? Sounds like they're doing something right, what's their secret?

They have a more diverse array of “market dominant minorities” so they’re more familiar with the concept in general and yet less familiar with the particular expression of the phenomena re: the Jews. Which explains their thoughts on the subject.

They have market dominant minorities in Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia & more…

Yeah but the ones harboring the market dominant minorities tend to be anti-Chinese and, atleast in the case of Malaysia, also quite Anti-Jews

For what it's worth, there's restaurants (and people even!) in Asia and Africa named after Adolf Hitler on the same "here's a Great Man of History with an iconic aesthetic" logic.

hugo boss really gave his best.

Will it be “post-modern corrosion” or will it be time? Genghis Khan Is believed to (1) have caused the deaths of enough people to slightly alter climate, and (2) have been the most-prolific rapist of which we are aware. And, currently, there are a couple of restaurant chains named after him here in America.

I am not aware of any of these three things being true.

Looking at mass-death events from 800 to 1850 it’s within the realm of possibility the Mongol invasion killed enough people to infinitesimally lower CO2 levels. The second claim is based on genetic testing , coupled with some historical presentism regrading how consensual were the Kahn’s harems and concubines. Third claim amply addressed by other replies.

Also Japan has ジンギスカン料理 (Gengis Khan food) which is basically various forms of grilled lamb.

The restaurant thing is.

https://genghisgrill.com/

https://www.gengiskhanbbq.com/

As far as I know if you want Hitler restaurants you have to go to Asia. Evidently a Stalin-themed Middle Eastern cafe didn't go over too well in Moscow, so this is one situation where the Reds don't have a great advantage over the Heilers.

Is one example enough

https://gkmgrill.com/

Or would you like more?

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