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Kanye West famously said "I like Hitler". He also said more:
This is, of course, insane. But there is a method to the madness, a signal in the noise. It is this: the implications of never forgiving Hitler are nasty.
Hitler did evil of a particularly noxious sort. It's not just that he aroused the passions of the hearts of millions to serve his purposes, it's also how he bent science and reason into doing so much harm. It's like if someone got it into their head to fully manifest the meaning of the word infernal, an ultimate perversion of ordinarily good things.
We do, however, have to let him go. Because to not do so would be to grant validity to the idea of anger, resentment, outrage, even hatred, because Hitler would always remain a valid target for these sentiments. And to believe these sentiments are good and beautiful is just poison.
We don't, of course, consciously think that of these sorts of emotions. But unconsciously, we do think outrage can be good and proper, else we would just have collectively tut-tutted or smirked at Kanye. Few would attempt to mount a defense of hatred and outrage, so what is the point of allowing them to exist in your soul? Can you really look inside you and call your outrage beautiful, regardless of its cause? What is the point of carrying around ugly things in your head?
To forgive Hitler is not a fundamentally novel idea, but it hasn't sank into the consensus yet. Even so, Eva Kor, an Auschwitz survivor, did it. And in a sense, so did World War II veteran Kurt Vonnegut in The Sirens of Titan: a segment of the novel features Martians who are hypnotized into invading Earth. Their invasion is pathetic and swiftly crushed, so pathetic that the Earthlings are ashamed of what they did and the memory of the Martians becomes part of a new religion. That is a way forward for forgiving Hitler and the Nazis: not to see them as evil, but as sick and deluded. Because the sick are a target of pity, not of outrage.
Ah, but I say these words, and even as I say this, I sense a smirk in me at what I myself am saying. It is just a smirk: I cannot question it, I cannot reason with it, I can only amplify it and see what it has to say. And here it is:
And once said, it dissolves. Everything arises and passes away if you will let it. Did you smirk too at what I have said? What did your smirk have to say?
And can you tell me that it was a good thing?
Substack
Obviously, as a Christian, I agree with Kanye's point that we should try to forgive even the worst of our enemies and nobody is 100% evil. Universal love is good.
But given that he can't manage to make that point without spending the same breath ranting about "Jewish people ... pushing with the pornography", and IIRC was pushing holocaust denial stuff in the same interview, it's hard not to suspect this is less a case of genuine forgiveness and more a case of not seeing anything to forgive; and hard not to doubt whether he really does feel love and forgiveness in his heart for the "Jewish people" he feels wronged him. (Probably correctly in the case of some specific Jewish people in the industry; but extending that to "the Jewish people" as a class is the exact opposite of Christian fellowship.)
For me, what Kanye is doing isn’t forgiving because you cannot forgive a person without acknowledging the fact that the person did something evil. The reverse, seeking forgiveness, absolutely requires that I acknowledge that I have done evil. You can’t really forgive otherwise because there’s not any reason to. If Hitler did nothing wrong, there’s no reason to forgive. If Kanye thinks that Jews deserved it, or that it never happened, why would he then forgive?
Ironically, this is somehing that's missed in the cancel culture discourse. Now, sometimes the person does admit they were wrong, and things continue, but far more, it's person does or says x, people get upset about it, then there's the backlash to the backlash, then the 'why won't group y forgive person x', and usually, person x still thinks they're in the right. Now, that might be fine and dandy, but then, there should be no discourse about forgiveness or group y moving on, even if you think person x is correct, or shouldn't be sanctioned for what they said or did.
For IRL example, take Eddie Murphy. He said what could be considered by a lot of people some terrible jokes about gay people and women in his 80's specials, that were hugely popular. So, why doesn't a Tweet along w/ a video clip of some joke from Raw never get any traction? Because Eddie doesn't do that kind of comedy anymore really and he's admitted that stuff was shitty to say. So, there's nothing to cancel, because Eddie admitted what he said was dumb, and everybody moved on, which pushes against the idea that's pushed that you'll be shamed forrever if you ever do anything wrong.
People just have to actually believe you're sorry for saying or doing what you did.
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