Even Hitler Knew You Can't Repress Ideas by Force

submitted by [deleted] from reason.com

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[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

No, they weren't trying to repress ideas by force. Book burning was a group activity to invite people to publicly reject certain ideas. Burning books itself is clearly stupid, it's not hard to get more of the same, even illegally. Printing presses are a thing. It's like bra burning: a public ritual.

National Socialists did want to control the narrative because they considered the masses mostly passive, and this susceptible to 'bad ideas', but they knew they couldn't actually eliminate those ideas from the world, at least not without destroying the appeal of them.

[–]carn0ld03 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

"Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty."

  • Plato, "The Republic"

Which only confirms that the Nazi's indeed repressed ideas by force and it is only coincidence that many of those ideas were spiritually destructive. However, given the naturally chaotic state of democracy, as embodied in post-great war Wiemar Germany, and it's many similarities to what is occurring across the western world today, it's no mystery to me as to why they came to power.

"Even a broken clock is right twice a day"

  • Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach and Charles L. Dodgson

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I don't give a shit what some dead faggot who believes in floating abstractions thinks, that's a shit argument with no evidence, go fuck your sister.

[–]carn0ld03 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

"Who are you, that you do not know your history?"

— written by John Gonzalez and performed by Roger Cross as "Ulysses", Fallout: New Vegas (2010)