The opening of my latest column at EveryJoe:
“German authorities will allow the republication of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, after decades of censorship.
“Decent people can argue that the book is too dangerous to be published. But the fact is that Mein Kampf is too dangerous not to be published.
“The great fear is that Hitler’s ideas are not dead and that his book could trigger another horribly pathological social movement. Nationalism and socialism still appeal to many, and combinations of the two ideologies attract new adherents every day in Europe and around the world. (See “The Revival of Nazism in Europe — It’s Not Just Racism.”)
“Mein Kampf
Last week’s column: Why Humans are Born Fit for Freedom (Part I).
With all due respect for the subject matter, there’s something comical about the whole debate. Germany now stands at a sufficient remove from World War II to have re-armed and unified, but apparently not at a sufficient remove to confront the ideas that made an armed and unified Germany dangerous to its neighbors in the first place. If the ideas were that dangerous, wouldn’t it have made more sense to have grappled with Mein Kampf before re-arming and unifying the country?
As it stands, Germany implicitly seems to be suggesting that we’re one book away from the revivification of the Fourth Reich. If that’s really so, I’d feel safer if we dismantled the German military, divided and quartered the country, and re-issued Mein Kampf–in that order.
In virtue of the fact that they’re now allowing publication, perhaps I should have put things differently in my post: I’m referring to the Germans who don’t want the book published, and who censored it all this time.
Wonderful article about an incredibly sinister topic. I remember how creepy it felt to download a pdf of ‘Mein Kampf’ for my own research. But if a society does not confront the evil contained in such books – and as so cogently pointed out here: a constellation of related books – it becomes intellectually arrested: a protected child insulated from pernicious realities instead of a mature adult rising to the task of its own defense.
Excellent article. You made valid points in how ideas, bad ideas have consequences. It seems that many want to label Nazism as come kind of comical, farcical anomaly. I think this is due to the fact that we live in a culture, and a time where ideas aren’t taken seriously. The Western world is in slow decline because of it. The type of censorship occurring in Western Europe is astounding. Considering what happened in Paris, one would think there would be some serious soul searching. However, it appears they are hunkering down even more. They willfully evade the Islamic threat; anyone who questions the complete takeover of a religion that is profoundly anti-human, and against anything that is Western, is viciously attacked.
What saves us is our Constitution, despite the efforts of both political parties to neuter it.
Thanks, Scherie. Perhaps not coincidentally, my next article is on the controversy over extremist speakers on campus, including Islamist ones.