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Notes -
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
(this isn't directly about hitler, it's about 'fighting' and 'hate being good sometimes). Does it mean anything to 'forgive' hitler? That makes it sound like animosity towards people is somehow ... innately bad. But present-day animosity towards hitler isn't about hitler, it's (rightly or wrongly) against present-day racism. Crucially, it's possible for this to be justified - if (hypothetically, this isn't anywhere near true ofc) Ye/Fuentes was a serious political movement genuinely threatening jews with a shot at power, then fighting against them and for 'jewish lives', casting them as a born-again hitler, and acting in a manner very inconsistent with 'forgiving hitler' would be justified. And whether you're leading a fiery political campaign for human rights against hitler 2, or doing cold-hearted backroom plotting against hitler 2 ... these are still 'anger', 'resentment', or cold-blooded hatred of hitler. Such things are contingent relations present in human instinct for useful ends, just like hunger, friendship, and bravery. If someone attempts to harm your child, "anger" at that is merely a desire to prevent that harm, or discourage similar harms from happening in the future punitively. Which is valuable! Even today, it's not totally impossible that Hitler 2 will come in 80 years, necessitating the same fight - and if one 'forgives' hitler today, does one ... unforgive him then? So, for most's morals, 'forgetting hitler' is good because hitler isn't relevant to today's politics, the left caring about hitler is borne of specific false claims as opposed to a lack of forgiveness, and 'forgiving hitler' attempts to meld anger with hitler personally, irrelevant as he's dead, and general political distaste using hitler as a vehicle, which isn't in principle wrong.
Whether or not the hatred is "justified," I think the argument would be that hatred is not conducive to dealing with with the problem in a constructive way. Hatred tends to make irrational actors out of people with rational causes, leading to actions that create more problems rather than solutions. I think we can see this in play in the current anti-racist/BLM movements, wherein a zero-tolerance and aggressively diagnosed approach to "racism" is creating a radicalized sense of white identity in some people who thought of themselves as previously race-blind but who now feel under-attack as a racial group.
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