Friday, January 08, 2016

Wickedness Increases

Demand for reprint of Hitler's 'Mein Kampf' overwhelms publisher - Reuters
Reuters reports: "Heavy demand for the first edition of Hitler's 'Mein Kampf' to be printed in Germany since his death is taking its publisher by surprise, with orders received for almost four times the print run. The two-volume political treatise, which was written between 1924 and 1926 and posits a global Jewish conspiracy, is regarded as one of the Nazis' main propaganda tools. It has been re-issued as a 2,000-page annotated version after its 70-year copyright expired."

Comment: This will not end well. I wonder if historians will look back on this as a perfect storm of unrelated events leading to a spike in xenophobic violence?  First Germany is flooded with thousands of refugees and migrants from the Middle East, many of whom are unfamiliar with European culture and mores.  Then, quite unexpectedly, the academic community publishes Hitler's manifesto for the first times in years, exposing a public filled with millennials unfamiliar with the raw power and Satanic appeal of racial hatred. The people who decided to publish Hitler's book are not the people who manage the migrant crisis, there is no coordination or subversive agenda at work. The timing, though, is unfortunate and will no doubt lead to a resurgence in antisemitism and xenophobia.  The only real silver lining is that the German economy is strong and there is no worry that economic hardship will lead to a new era of nationalist sentiment. Right?

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