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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
It's possible you may have heard of the Irish hip-hop trio Kneecap (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kneecap_(band)), most of whose lyrics are rapped in the Irish language. They're best-known in Ireland and the UK, but recently they've begun to establish themselves in the US as well, to the point of performing in Coachella and selling out their US tour dates.
Their lyrics are often political, and they've been unabashed in their support for the Provisional IRA, their opposition to the British monarchy and government, their support for the Palestinian cause, and their concomitant opposition to Zionism. Their political lyrics have landed them in hot water with the British establishment on occasion (as they're from Northern Ireland, they're UK citizens even if they "identify as" Irish), with current Tory leader Kemi Badenoch once denying them an arts grant on their basis that the band "oppose[s] the United Kingdom itself" (a decision they successfully appealed).
Recently, the British government discovered footage of the band performing some time ago, during which the performers could be heard yelling "Up Hamas", "Up Hezbollah" and instructing the audience to assassinate their local MPs (it's unclear to me if all of these statements were made during a single gig, or individually during separate gigs). As a result of this, the band are being investigated by British police, because public expression of support for terrorist organisations is a crime in the UK (insert your own "loicense" jokes here). Their fans and many of their fellow musicians have come rushing to their defense. The band now claim that they have never supported Hamas or Hezbollah (doubt.jpeg) and their message has always been one of "love, inclusion and hope".
First things first: as a freedom-of-speech diehard, the idea of arresting and/or indicting Kneecap for yelling "up Hamas" is unconscionable to me. The fact that this "investigation" is happening at all is yet another canary in the coalmine (along with the numerous people investigated or convicted for gender-critical opinions, or the recent fellow arrested for burning a Quran) that freedom of expression no longer really exists in the UK. Probably no one will benefit from this probe more than Kneecap themselves, who made a name for themselves by cosplaying as radicals and going out of their way to be edgy and controversial. Glorifying a pogrom (albeit under the unpersuasive euphemism of "Solidarity with the Palestinian struggle" while grinning ear-to-ear) is revolting, but shouldn't be a criminal offense.
But, as noted by Brendan O'Neill, the double standard among the woke left is shocking. Because of his anti-Semitism and professed admiration for Hitler, Kanye West is now considered persona non grata among the woke left, or elsewhere. (It need hardly be said that probably the only reason he's expressing admiration for Hitler is because of his unmedicated bipolar disorder - but Mental Illness Doesn't Do That, so never mind.) Meanwhile, Kneecap (individuals, to the best of my knowledge, of sound mind untroubled by psychosis) expressed support for an organisation whose founding charter clearly and unambiguously states that its ultimate goal is the extermination of all Jews from the face of the earth - and the woke left eagerly support Kneecap, attending their gigs, joining in their juvenile football chants ("Ooh! Ah! Hezbollah!"), buying their merch, and rallying to their defense at every opportunity. The rules seem so arbitrary to me: you can't express support for Hitler, but you can express support for an organisation which shares most of Hitler's defining, animating opinions (hatred of Jews and desire to exterminate them, homophobia, misogyny etc.). You can't say that the Holocaust was a good thing - but if you want to cheer on the worst antisemitic pogrom since the Holocaust, go right ahead. It seems like some sort of perverse Sorites paradox, or Goldilocks effect: saying that the slaughter of 6 million Jews was a good thing will get you cancelled, saying that the slaughter of 1,200 Jews was a good thing won't get you cancelled. "Experts now believe it may be possible to express support for the murder of as many as two million Jews without suffering any reputational damage, but other sources differ."
I don't understand it one iota. I'm increasingly starting to think that the Holocaust has become completely de-Jewified (for want of a better word) and drained of its specificity, understood primarily as a grave crime because it was a mass slaughter, rather than specifically a mass slaughter primarily of Jews. I wonder if the current generation of secondary school teachers will go out of their way to "recontextualise" the Holocaust by listing off all of the more fashionable groups targeted for extermination by the Nazis: gays, disabled people, trans people (a myth; one of several, like "people have been acquitted for murdering trans people by using the 'trans panic' defense", that trans activists essentially dreamed up from whole cloth and which is now widely believed in woke circles), and then mentioning Jews at the end, as an afterthought. I wonder if the next generation, when asked why Hitler was so evil, will say that he was bad because he hated black people, he hated gay people, he started a war in Europe, and he killed lots of people - all true statements, and yet all statements which rather miss the point of why he was so evil. All of this "recontextualisation" of the Holocaust has the unnerving feeling of salami-slicing to me.
Either the etc. is doing some dangerously heavy lifting here, or this is a really rather woke opinion of Adolf Hitler.
His defining, animating opinions other than hatred of jews were...homophobia and misogyny? Really? Nothing about the militarism, the authoritarianism, the totalitarianism, the expansionism, the sheer magnitude of out-of-his-depth the man was as dictator of Germany, the enormity of ego he acquired over the years?
No, no, he didn't like the gays and thought women should be homemakers.
I presumed it went without saying that, as an Islamofascist terrorist organisation, Hamas is just as militaristic, authoritarian, totalitarian and expansionist as Hitler was, and, in its quixotic, decades-long, suicidal battle against an obviously militarily, economically, technologically and numerically superior opponent, just as out of its depth.
Sure, but then focusing on misogyny and homophobia next to jew-hatred as his "defining, animating opinions" still seems non-central. It's not a big deal either way.
That's fair.
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