since she had previously expressed an odd indifference to Nazism.
Yeah, not having a fit about left wing propaganda about a bunch of guys who'd all be dead now anyways is 'odd'. I also don't give a shit about what Genghis Khan did, the fact that he entertains me is more important than your moralistic jackoffery.
I would hardly refer to the many nuanced accounts of German history between 1933-1945, and the popular interpretation and application of their lessons to be seeding, or driven largely by left-wing propaganda. However, there should be a valid concern over thoughtlessly vilifying the German people as a whole, and without regard to their actions. But then again, I would consider a small percentage to be completely innocent, since their crimes ranged from passivity to active participation, and were components of a larger organic entity. Because the crimes of Nazi Germany are analogous to very few precedents, I too have been dismayed with how top-down processing in scholarship has led to the frequent error of constructing and distorting facts to make the analogy device more apt when efforts to make parallels with Nazi German behavior are attempted. The problem is, of course, that this sort of intellectual clumsiness often leads to the wrong conclusions, with the Munich Agreement analogy, for instance, being partially to blame for some rather appalling and disastrous errors in judgement. But the allure of the Munich Agreement analogy (and the like) persists in analyses, because they serve as a mechanism for rationalizing an overwhelming volume of information and difficult to ascertain patterns of behavior. And although their use is usually driven by well-meaning intentions, a careless and repeated employment of false analogies in scholarship diminishes their impact on human behavior, which leads to the worrisome consequence of an altered rate of recidivism, and is greatly troubling to those that desire a linear progression in norms, laws, and politics---either domestic or international. This lamentable state of scholarship can partially explain your troubling position on Nazi Germany, which you seem to consider trivial, possessing an entertainment value, and greatly misrepresented. Which is somewhat of a legitimate position, but with the incidence of interstate (and intrastate) war, democide, sectarian conflict, and politically sponsored campaigns of murder, I think it's incumbent on responsible individuals to document and convey through different mediums the horrifying and exceptional extent of the deviance of Nazi Germany. So we must care deeply about the instructive lessons of Nazi Germany, and Genghis Khan for this matter, because as a global society, we cannot afford the recurrence of such events in any palpable form. But at the same time, we must be ever mindful of how we make reference to them.
Although I doubt that you harbor sympathy for the Third Reich, and are cognizant of the contours of its extraordinarily deviant conduct, I suggest you be careful with your casual treatment of Nazism, because it's unbecoming, and more likely to cause offense than transform. Causing offense in discourse, of course, shouldn't be avoided, but there are boundaries that many heed---which you have an evident disdain for in spite of your obvious intelligence. Further, I imagine many of us have predecessors that fell victim to Hitler's global campaign of murder, so I ask that you try to at least be sensitive to these haunting memories, and make a sincere attempt to understand the reasons why your ideas have been so poorly received.
Edited by Rol82, 30 October 2010 - 07:22 PM.