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