Hey guys,
The Hitler group would like you all to see this anti-Nazi short firm made by Disney during WWII. We will hopefully show a shortened clip of it on thursday but it is worth your time to watch the entire cartoon. Please post any questions or comments you have and we can discuss them in class.
Thanks,
Group Hiter
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The more that I think about it the more I believe that Hitler being portrayed in a personable way is actually a positive. My reasoning is that if he and the Nazi's are solely portrayed as horrible monsters then we obscure the fact that he was elected. We risk missing sight that he was a brilliant man, a well trained orator etc. More importantly, we lose the lesson that this heinous chapter of our (humanity's) history has taught us that we need to be aware because we too can find ourselves having elected a "monster" of our own.
ReplyDeleteCertainly what Hitler did was inexcusable. But he did not have to try too hard to convince many to follow him along because antisemitism and ideas of modernism and progress were all the rage. He was popular because his ideas were popular...he and his buddies were only doing the "rational" and "necessary" thing.
Basically, what I am getting at is that it is important to be very critical of censorship of any sort, even if its the ban of celebrating someone like Hitler. Seeing representations of the glorified Führer enable us to see how easily mass sentiment can have us all following the wrong leader.
Obviously less extreme, but an example closer to home, would be Trudeaumania that swept Canada by storm. What did he do? He implemented the War Measures Act which essentially threw our rights out the window. The United States' President, leader of the Free World, enacted the Patriot Act in 2001. George Bush had an exceptionally high approval rating at the time. And recently, Obama-mania has taken the world by storm...
So perhaps we should refrain from so quickly throwing away positive portrayals of shameful leaders. We can use these as tools..not to learn how great Hitler was...but to learn to recognize propaganda (whatever it is supposed to serve) and even send the message across that not all monsters will seem to be so...the cliché wolf in sheep's clothing.
I think an important point regarding the 'showing Hitler as a person' meme is that it reminds us that he was, indeed, human. Humans commit atrocities, not monsters. Or, said differently, human beings can do monstrous things, but those actions are always, in the end, within the capabilities of humans.
ReplyDeleteThe question regarding censorship, then, is whether or not by portraying Hitler, ect, as super- (or anti-) human in the evility (to invent a word) of his actions actually excuses him by taking away his humanity. Do we, then, forget that humans perform such acts?
That question is getting into a law/philosophy debate.
ReplyDeleteI think that by calling him anti-human (or whatever word we would like to use) we do indeed forget that this act was committed by a human. That was my point, we need to keep in mind that Hitler was a human and that we absolutely need to remember that he was if only to keep ourselves from following another "monstrous" human.
Legally though, and maybe there are law scholars out there that would know better than I do, but if Hitler was insane...at least in today's courts... he would not held culpable for his actions. He would likely be institutionalized just the same, but he would not just be placed in the prison system but the health care system instead.