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I am still trying to decide what I think about things like this. On one hand they aren't outright saying that the books should be banned so it's not necessarily blatant hypocrisy. On the other hand "they don't meet our qualifications as banned books" is. They are banned all over the place. Someone else decided other people can't read them.
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@sun if it's about things like mein kampf, I think people really *should* read it just so that they have to deal with the horror that is hitler's prose style and be inoculated that way
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@allison literally unreadable when I tried.
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@Hyperhidrosis "at least it's not the gubermint"
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@sun Imagine being banned from the banned area where the banned go only to not be allowed there.
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@sim @sun Much worse. Marx is dense but Hitler is actually insufferable as a prose writer. Literally some of the most inane and eyes-glazing-over rambling you'll ever read in your life. Actually, a lot of Nazi literature is like this, they had a serious dearth of good writers and it shows.
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@sun @allison This might be the case when I tried reading Marx. Is it as bad or worse?
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@sim @sun Yeah that's a different kind of rambling. Hitler actually doesn't use many complicated terms but the way he does use them gives an effect that makes it very unpleasant to read sequentially. I think this was in some way intentional, true believers would read it like a religious text and everyone else would just have it quotemined as needed. Hitler's speeches, on the other hand, don't suffer from this problem and are genuinely engaging to listen to regardless of your views on the actual contents thereof.
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@allison @sun But that seems to be academia in general. I've read passages from other communist writers, and the rambling was insane. You probably have to pretend that you know and understand the terms and what is being said so that other people in the circle accept you. So it doesn't surprise me that Nazi literature has a similar problem.
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@sim @sun I'm not aware of any law in the United Kingdom that makes (annotated versions especially) Mein Kampf illegal or quoting it illegal, so long as it isn't done with the intent of inciting racial hatred. But please consult with someone more knowledgeable than me about UK law on this matter.
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@allison @sun If I read mein kampf, would it be forbidden to share passages from it on here?
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@sim @sun Hitler clearly intended the book for mass consumption, like I said, the actual vocabulary isn't complicated at all. I think a knowledgeable middle schooler could read Mein Kampf and understand most of what Hitler is saying in it, whether or not actually reading it is a pleasant experience.
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@allison @sun That's interesting. It might also be a different medium. In speeches, he had a different audience too. In academia, they seem to speak a different language. Probably so us peasants wouldn't understand it or be able to easily infiltrate their circles.
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@sim @leyonhjelm @sun A lot of conservative texts are actually very well written, clear, and spare with their prose, and you can kind of tell those are the kinds of things that the people writing them valued, almost in a kind of reflection of what they valued politically.
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@leyonhjelm @allison @sun
When I read the communist manifesto, I really wanted to be a true believer.
But, alas, whatever the government thinks will happen if we read these texts... it didn't work on me. And yes, I probably mostly mocked the communist texts or had a "what the fuck are they talking about, fedi?" moment.
On the other hand, I started to read conservative literature and thought it made so much more sense. So I don't know...
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@sim
Only communist books are restricted here
Unless the passage is humiliating for the communists.
@allison @sun
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@sim @sun Oh in the US you can quote these works pretty much as you please, there's no problem with it. We don't even really have federal hate speech laws as such, I would feel extremely comfortable quoting just about anything here if I felt like it.
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@allison @sun I was thinking more about US law. You know how uppity they are right now with election season coming in.
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@allison @sim @sun
Mein Kampf had like 2 good passages and everything else sucked.
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@ArdainianRight @sim @sun Sounds about right. I take Vogelin's view of it and essentially see it as a religious text with all the perils of such stylistically. (The Qur'an and much of the Bible (Old Testament especially) inspire the same kind of feeling in me when I read them, although in the case of the Bible there is genuinely excellent prose to be had if you know where to look)
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@sim @sun Yeah it's pretty much a stylistic issue. It's difficult to explain but you'd know exactly what I meant if you read it.
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@allison @sun That makes sense. So the main problem really is the sentence structure than whether you can understand this artist come politician.
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@sun its a typical hamsterwheel for neoliberals to proclaim they support something only to cope how thing they don't like doesn't "count."
you've seen this with the dissolution of the US constitution (inventing 'protected speech' as literally 'its not speech'), Europe calls everything they don't like human rights abuse, etc.
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@allison @sim I am not sure the extent to which the awfulness is the translator
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@sun @allison @sim remember how germans complain about how their language is unsuited to foreplay/dirty talk? i presume it’s just a feature of the language…
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@cell @allison @sim how does a language that suppresses sex survive culturally
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@sun @cell @sim By treating sex the same way one might treat a precision instrument.
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