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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   27579 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

They said rap should be subversive, well what did they think subversive meant? Vibes? Essays?

Honestly it's a pretty good song, bizarre subject matter aside. This Youtube link is live as of this writing, although it seems like the platform keeps taking new uploads down.

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.

I wonder if 'racism is the paramount evil' would still be a defining characteristic of western ethics if WW2 hadn't happened? I mean, the Transatlantic slave trade and the scramble for Africa still happened, smallpox still wiped out the American Indians. Maybe we would just find some other kind of racial guilt? My assumption is that it all stems from the fact that we're so outbred and WEIRD, not from the particular events of the early 1940s.

I remember conversations my parents and grandparents warned me never to repeat, about how it was the white man that built this country, that it sucked for the Cherokees at the time of course but the trail of tears was necessary and they're doing better about it now than the Navajo aren't they, about how full freedom for blacks was a failed experiment but we can't very well fix it now and anyways Jim Crow wasn't a very good system either. I think the US would have abolished Jim Crow sooner or later; my grandparents who remembered it clearly describe it as definitely on the way out and having some sort of violent struggle would have, uh, not improved race relations.

my grandparents who remembered it clearly describe it as definitely on the way out

C'mon. It required actual military force to desegregate educational institutions in the South. That isn't a system that was petering out on its own accord.

I’m going to disagree here. Yes, we knew about the Indian removals of the 1800s and the slave trade and colonialism. But they weren’t things that people were supposed to feel deep guilt about. Indian removal was seen as perhaps unfortunate, but necessary to build a civilization in America. Hitler changed that because he moved at an industrial pace and we won in time to film the aftermath. He was also a gift to the Military-Industrial complex, as the specter of Hitler somewhere in the world was useful to convince tge populace that they should send their sons to some military adventure out in the world, and for that, we needed a huge military. Anti-racism is also politically useful globally because it gives those nonwhite nations a reason to choose our side — we fought genocidal racism.

Without Hitler I don’t think it happens. Without Hitler racism goes from being the evil to being on par with any number of other political evils that we knew about and don’t celebrate, but don’t punish ourselves over. And there are plenty of other evils to bring up.

Certainly there were lots of people who at the time of the Holocaust saw it as a uniquely terrible crime, even as it was ongoing. For example in July 1944, Churchill wrote to Anthony Eden (concerning the deportation of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz):

There is no doubt that this is probably the greatest and most horrible crime ever committed in the whole history of the world, and it has been done by scientific machinery by nominally civilised men in the name of a great State and one of the leading races of Europe. It is quite clear that all concerned in this crime who may fall into our hands, including the people who only obeyed orders by carrying out the butcheries, should be put to death after their association with the murders has been proved. I cannot therefore feel that this is the kind of ordinary case which is put through the Protecting Power, as, for instance, the lack of feeding or sanitary conditions in some particular prisoners’ camp. There should therefore, in my opinion, be no negotiations of any kind on this subject. Declarations should be made in public, so that everyone connected with it will be hunted down and put to death.

It's worth noting that Churchill does not, in this passage nor anywhere else in writing- including Churchill's six volumes of Second World War, reference Nazi gas chambers disguised as shower rooms. The Holocaust is not referenced at all in any concrete terms either in Eisenhower's Crusade in Europe, nor in Charles de Gaulle's memoirs.

One rule of thumb which never, ever fails is that any claim you can be arrested for questioning is false. It's been like that through recorded history. Why would gas chambers in WW2 be some singular exception to this otherwise completely reliable rule?

Why do gas chambers matter?

The intentional mass killings of civilians by axis forces during WWII were a terrible crime, and many officers in axis forces deserved to be prosecuted. I don’t see why it being done with gas chambers or not(and everyone agrees that many of the killings were not done with gas chambers) is a relevant distinction.

The gas chamber narrative is epistemic violence. It uses force to stop ideas moving from my mind to my mouth. I can't express that I find it implausible. And the force is applied for two reasons, both of which I think are legitimate and fill me with rage:

  1. Allowing the public to question one aspect of the Holocaust narrative would undermine the whole premise, and since that premise is a central part of our faith, the epistemic violence is acceptable collateral damage.

  2. Point deer, make horse: forcing people to mouth absurdities in public outs people who value integrity over loyalty; these people are potential traitors to the regime, making the epistemic violence acceptance collateral damage.

(Let's assume for now that it's false but not possible in polite company to deny it. You can substitute any of the other narratives we're forced to mount (e.g. blank slate theory) in the above without changing the structure of my argument.)

For my part, I turn the whole thing around. Overturning of the structure of society is acceptable collateral damage in making the epistemic violence stop.

It doesn't seem worth noting unless you care about the history of chemical warfare and it's supporters. Churchill had a complicated political history with chemical and gas weapons.

It is worth noting in understanding the WWII mythos that is the subject of the discussion. Why was it not mentioned at all in thousands of pages of memoirs across the most important leaders? There are two theories: the mainstream theory is that this is just a testament to how much Allied leaders were ambivalent towards Jews, therefore also providing evidence they wouldn't wage a psychological warfare campaign to sacralize a Jewish victimization narrative which is the ultimate bedrock to this entire discussion- including the reason a song like this is censored so heavily. The Revisionist theory is that they knew the nonsense story about millions being tricked into gas chambers disguised as shower rooms would eventually be debunked like the very similar WWI propaganda about the Kaiser's death factories.

But @johnfabian is wrong that Churchill's writing represents the Holocaust being viewed as uniquely terrible early on, it isn't mentioned at all in many volumes of writing across thousands of pages written by the most important belligerents who otherwise have a strong incentive to feature that story to justify their own frame of the war.

The Dream, 1947 The Dream was Churchill’s fanciful short story about conversing with his long-dead father in 1947. In it he explains all that had happened since his father died in 1895. The full text is available. Referring again to the Holocaust, he spoke of the two World Wars:

“Papa,” I said, “in each of them about thirty million men were killed in battle. In the last one seven million were murdered in cold blood, mainly by the Germans. They made human slaughter-pens like the Chicago stockyards. Europe is a ruin. Many of her cities have been blown to pieces by bombs. Ten capitals in Eastern Europe are in Russian hands…. Far gone are the days of Queen Victoria and a settled world order. But, having gone through so much, we do not despair.”8

That wasn't hard to find.

So we're talking about one of the biggest events of WWII, and certainly the most unusual event, with millions of men, women and children allegedly being tricked into gas chambers on the pretext of taking a shower and murdered. It's the event that forms the foundation of the contemporary anti-Christ mythos around Hitler.

And you couldn't find a single concrete reference to that in Winston Churchill's six-volume The Second World War, as I said, so you instead point to a single vague reference in a dialogue during a dream-sequence in a short story, which doesn't mention gas chambers or even Jews. Certainly my point still stands very, very tall. The fact you have to reach so hard to find a single reference of this world-changing event (which doesn't directly mention it in any case, it's just a literary allusion) from someone like Churchill proves the point very well.

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That fits the ambivalence theory. I don’t see anything in that statement that suggests he sees “the stockyards slaughter house pens” as worse than the ruin of Europe or the destruction of Eastern European capitals.

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I’m going to disagree here. Yes, we knew about the Indian removals of the 1800s and the slave trade and colonialism. But they weren’t things that people were supposed to feel deep guilt about. Indian removal was seen as perhaps unfortunate, but necessary to build a civilization in America.

I think Crowstep is right. In Canada, since they don't have nearly so much slavery to feel guilty about, they DO feel guilty about their Indian First Nations stuff, to a crazy degree, like confessing to genocide about deaths due to disease at residential schools.

It's even worse - we had our flags at half mast for like 6 months because a ground penetrating radar found "disturbances" under ground. We now know it was roots, rocks - no excavation has or will take place.

The whiplash from "celebrating canada day is evil" to "elbows up! I love Canada!" has been a lot to take in

A big chunk of the US white population just feels a lot less guilty about slavery than Canadians would.

A big chunk of the US white population just feels a lot less guilty about slavery than Canadians would.

I mean I have no slaveowner ancestors, and I have at least one ancestor that fought on the Union side of the Civil War. Why the hell would (or should) I feel any guilt over it? I imagine most white Americans that aren't direct descendants of slaveowners would feel similarly.

I mean, a pretty decent chunk of white descendants of slave owners are proud of their confederate ancestors.

It's a form of overcompensation you usually see on losing sides.

That might just be due to the US's cultural influence. They feel like their white people must have done something horrible to feel guilty about, since that's the message they're hearing pushed all the time, even if it's really about the US and not Canada.

Also not to be all 'Da Jews' but there has been a group of people with huge cultural powers who have had a particularly large grudge when it comes to pushing the moral cause of WW2 and ushering a lot of identitarian talk of reparations et Al to the forefront. Talat Pasha doesn't exactly get the same negative branding and even Stalin and Mao haven't been as effectively pariahed

even Stalin and Mao haven't been as effectively pariahed

I think those two are helped by the sheer number of intellectuals who either fell for live propaganda about how great life was in the USSR, or who are generally pro-socialist/pro-communist and would rather not draw attention to such high-profile failure states.

It's not so much intellectuals, but there are some right-wingers who believe Russia's actually a great wellspring of social conservatism. I know some of them personally. The overwhelming majority think Russia's a terrible, dictatorial place -- but there are a few who think the performative, nationalistic Orthodoxy of the government (as opposed to the quiet piety of the babushka) is an actual representation of Russian culture.

It's psychologically very hard to justify a worldview if there isn't somewhere where it's put into practice. So the deep desire to see your worldview reflected somewhere is what drives both the 20th century Soviet-boosters and the 21st century Russia-boosters. And it also drives, say, evangelicals to believe Trump is a great Christian man, despite his personal conduct and his lack of repentance!

as opposed to the quiet piety of the babushka) is an actual representation of Russian culture.

This is also, statistically, not a very good representation of Russian culture- Russia does not have a high church attendance rate, even by European standards, and the more religious former Soviet countries are the ones which like Russia less(Georgia, Ukraine, remoter ‘stans).

Continuity of their states also probably impacts it. If Chinese Communism had fallen with the death of Mao he's probably viewed a lot differently versus now where he's definitely controversial but cannot be effectively completely nuked without undermining nation building.

Seeing the recent unexpected shift in online discourse to describe Trump as being similar to Mao, I wonder as well if his crimes are soon to be spotlighted more than they used to be...

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