— George Santayana
"I've got news for Mr. Santayana: we're doomed to repeat the past no matter what. That's what it is to be alive."
— Kurt Vonnegut
Makes more sense to me.
Just to keep the quote chain going. Seems relevant to me at least...
Believe me, kids nowadays don't want to fight. They'll be sitting in the tanks, on the battlefield on tiktok or something. Worse, (better?) is the ideas they pick up from the movies. Superbly advanced civilizations, with an almost [Edit: actually] unbelievable array of weapons, still hang their fate on individual superheroes. Their principal weapons are (get this) modern day swords and spears and body armour! also, the weapons are quickly abandoned in favour of punching the opponent in the face, with no apparent effect, and they don't even do that properly. If anything, violent superhero movies should be encouraged.
This zeitgeist is not ubiquitous. There are plenty of newly minted adults who jump into the military. Not all of them are lifers, but the government incentives are very good for the poor facing minimum wage at a McDonald's.
I also doubt it would be popular with helicopter parents :)
But my impression was that it was more tolerated.. with an attitude like: "this is my war", as if every generation has a war to fight.
English poets today don't write how war is great for the spirit or whatever...
Sure, there's still plenty who don't quite get how bad armed conflict actually is.. but it's less romanticized today.
Reading wikipedia it seems when the book came out it was critically received by some for "it's pacifists agenda".
Sure, we still glorify warfare, but our culture and tolerance for casualties have changed dramatically.
I might be misinterpreting, but many in Gen Z seem to consider WWII and Nazi history as a kind of meme to joke about. (9/11 too, for that matter.)
I'm worried we might be destined to forget the lessons we learned. The rise of domestic terror, hate, and partisanship doesn't help.
For example, in Seinfeld, they had a character called the "soup Nazi", a character that was extremely asshole-ey about who he gave soup to. This was not a controversial episode or anything, and became one of the most quoted episodes of the series. Nowadays I'm not sure if that would be considered "ok."
I feel like the rise of domestic terror, white nationalism, and fascism is scary, but seems to a) by mostly composed of millenials my age and older, and b) a lot more complicated than some edgelord humor.
That said, despite the fact that I love edgey subversive humor, I agree that trivializing things as "just jokes" isn't a good thing; if it means fewer memes, I can live with that.
I mean I don't know if I would go that far; things like Hipster Hitler got a fair amount of traction, at least for a bit [0]. Hardly indicative of the entirety of human culture, and obviously it's not a major network sitcom like Hogan's Heroes (or Seinfeld).
Also, a staple of the Call of Duty franchise is a tongue-and-cheek mode of running around killing zombie Nazis, isn't it? (I admittedly haven't played it), and it's not like "Iron Sky"[1] was meant to be taken super seriously.
I think it's unnecessarily reductive to say "one generation is ok with subject X and another generation isn't." I don't think humans really form big, homogeneous groups completely based around the year they were born.
[0] http://www.hipsterhitler.com/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Sky
No need to tell us this, tbh. Your easy reference to "the rise of domestic terror, white nationalism, and fascism" to rationalize shutting down humor already marked you as a millennial, my dude, your claims to enjoy edgy humor notwithstanding.
Humor has unsettled fragile, self-righteous authoritarians throughout history, including but sadly by no means limited to, fascists. Attempts to shut it down are always concerning. They will never say "we want to stamp our boot on the face of humanity" as the reason for shutting down humor. It will always be a plausible reason: "we are at war" or "some things are too serious to joke about" or "vulnerable people need our protection"
Embrace your love of edgy humor. It's how people deal healthily with their anxieties and concerns.
I realize I didn't make it as clear as I'd like (and that's my fault), but I wasn't suggesting "shutting down" humor. What I was trying to say (unsuccessfully) was that we should potentially be less tolerant of certain humor en masse via social pressures. I'm really not in favor of having a government entity disallowing humor.
For example, throughout the 90's and early 2000's, it used to be somewhat tolerated to use gay stereotypes to make fun of gay people. Eventually we realized (for the most part) that these stereotypes might be harmful, and for the most part have stopped making these kinds of gay jokes. It wasn't like the government stepped in and said "it's illegal to make fun of gay people", we just socially moved on from that.
This is true. Today, being gay is generally accepted.
Before the 1970s, homosexuality was so unacceptable even joking about it was unacceptable. Homosexuality was invisible. At best, if you were enlightened, you would consider it a mental illness. Most just considered it a moral abomination.
I would argue that jokes from Eddie Murphy, Andrew Dice Clay, Sam Kinnison were simultaneously an expression of society's anxiety about social change, and part of the start of a national, or even global conversation that led to "Enh, being gay is no big deal. As long as it's consensual, let people do what they want."
Today those jokes aren't funny, but I wonder if homosexuality would be as accepted as it is without them. The conversation became increasingly about whether the jokes were fair or not; funny or not. Which at the time was miles better than one mustn't joke about homosexuality
Jokes can be mean-spirited bullying moving society towards being more oppressive and less tolerant, but not always. Not inevitably. Humor pushes taboos and boundaries, sometimes towards good.
Why would making nazis the but of a joke not fly today?
https://www.cinecity.nl/sites/default/files/images/movies/35...
https://www.queerty.com/sharon-needles-banned-from-performin...
https://www.vulture.com/2017/03/samantha-bee-apologizes-to-c...
https://www.thewrap.com/last-man-standing-canceled-tim-allen...
https://forward.com/fast-forward/424615/comedian-isaac-butte...
It seems like you can make fun of the Nazis directly, but cannot joke about the situation surrounding the time/place/events regarding the Nazis.
First of all, I am not going to defend soviet concentration camps, USSR has had it's own share of sins. But comparison of Third Reich and USSR is an anti-communist propaganda cliché. For obvious reasons: no jew could become a member of national-socialist party, but anyone could become a communist. So, no matter how disgusting the stalinism was, it cannot be compared to nazism.
As for popularity of communism, well, Red Army was victorious, USSR was one of those who survived and won, so it's ideology was gaining supporters. There were many true believers in ideas of communism. E.g in socialist Czechoslovakia there was an attempt to build "socialism with a human face." In USSR there was a generation called "sixtiers" who were true believers in communism but saw stalinism as something horrible that should never happen again. But, for better or for worse, it looks like believers was the last thing the communist party needed.
By the way, the book "Monday begins on Saturday" by Strugatsky brothers is exactly about a RnD institute (almost) full of people sincerely trying to make world a better place. Strugatsky brothers were believers themselves. To the end of USSR they have become bitter haters.
PS. I am not stating that communism is good or better than capitalism.
He knew the line was bugged, likely by both PET and the KGB. His cries were heard, and after a "chance" meeting at a squash game he became a double agent, years later stationed in London where he nearly became the rezident (~CEO) at the Embassy. He was betrayed by Aldrich Ames at some point around 1985, and went on to become the only (as far as I'm aware) person to be exfiltrated from the Soviet Union directly under the nose of the KGB. Not a bad life story.
Wait, your whole argument for why Stalinism can not be compared to Naziism was that jews could become members of the communist party?
Stalinism/communism provided you a moral/ideological choice: to be part of it or to oppose it. Although sometimes people who were taking the side of stalinism and were active in whistleblowing and finger pointing in the name of ideological purity were later repressed themselves.
Nazism, on the other hand, gives you no choice if you are a jew. It is already decided for you.
But again, stalinism was awful. I am not going to defend it. I too have some far relatives who died because of it. My grandmother survived thanks to luck. But to compare communism or even stalinism to nazism is wrong.
> Stalinism/communism provided you a moral/ideological choice: to be part of it or to oppose it. Although sometimes people who were taking the side of stalinism and were active in whistleblowing and finger pointing in the name of ideological purity were later repressed themselves.
The point is there them being repressed themselves. Stalin, & Co. were rather indifferent to who was pointing fingers at whom with regards to who goes to GULAG first.
Very often both the "stukach," and his victim were sharing the same train to Magadan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_the_Soviet_Uni...
The main reason Jews could become communist in the USSR is that Stalin died before he could commit his own explusion/genocide. Had he lived, he would have likely used the Doctor's Plot to deport Soviet Jews to Siberia. Read Stalin's Last Crime:
https://www.amazon.com/Stalins-Last-Crime-Against-1948-1953-...
Hitler's no.2 was Jewish: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emil_Maurice
Avoiding buying Chinese goods seems almost impossible, we have outsourced also much manufacturing now.
It's not a defense of Soviet crimes to say that the Nazis were unequivocally worse.
To place their "evilness" on the same order of magnitude means you're not considering generalplan ost's fulfilment as worse than our current timeline.
I’m pretty sure Hitler will have a similar public image to Napoleon in a few hundred years. We do similar things with Roman emperors and praise their accomplishments forgetting the massive amounts of suffering they caused.
I mean, does Russia have memorials of their leaders? Germany also has a bunch of memorials even going back to Prussian days. Yet many of these individuals caused massive suffering.
I personally find Napoleon and Julius Caesar as completely uninspiring figures. Their accomplishments are worthless but for some reason praised from the perspective of history.
A big reason for this is that history finds explanations after things happened. They attribute to these "leaders" way too much.
Reveal these hidden facts! To which facts do you refer, exactly?
Russians have monuments that praise the rulers that were ruthless and brutally destructive towards the human spirit and it's been less than 100 years ago since these events happened.
Just because current rule in Europe/Germany finds him horrible it does not mean that in 200 years these events will be looked at with the same eyes.
If I had asked "The facts to which you refer are related to what?" then that would be an excellent answer to the question!
I asked "To which facts do you refer?": What are these facts?
Attila the Hun is to this day considered a ruthless barbarian and killer. Practically no one could tell you who he was or what he did, but everyone knows he was a bad dude.
Hitler will be remembered for the ovens, long after everyone has forgotten Archbishop Ferdinand.
Apologies to my Magyar friends! But what I said is certainly true in the English-speaking world.
We can only hope that Hitler doesn't become a culture hero on the same fashion.
Also, someone in this discussion said that as more and more people pass away there is less and less truth about WW2 and less and less respect to its lessons. There is also another interesting observation: the more related to WW2 people die the more Cold War #2 we see. Cold War hasn't become "hot" because during these times almost everyone except kids knew what is war and how it looks and that it causes. War heroes were not imaginary movie personalities, they were everywhere. And kids could hear real stories from someone who has seen it all with own eyes. And so, everyone knew that war is hell and that nuclear weapon can make war even worse, so that WW2 will look like a picnic.
But what do we have now? Movies about WW2 with expensive SFX and cheap plot, Call of Duty, etc. War isn't scary anymore. People are eager to fight something. This mad mad mad mad mad world.