Kindle
When I hear the term Kindle I think not of imaginations fired but of crematoria lit. And when I hear the term "hi-tech" I think not of helpful androids efficiently performing household chores or light-speed rockets gliding seamlessly through space but of the fact that between 1933-45, modern technology was used to perform in ever more efficient ways the mass murder of six million of my people. The instruments of so-called progress, placed in the hands of the modern state, disappeared six million Jewish men, women and children, into a void from which they will never return and in which a majority of them remain forever unidentified. This was done in the name of progress by means of technology for the creation of a better world.
The Nazis often were, by their own lights, well-intentioned idealists working for a better tomorrow. And their instrument was modern technology, aspects of philosophical and aesthetic modernism and the old religious concept of supercession implicit in the Christian notion of progress. Jews were outmoded, useless, they said. Most high level Nazis, like Himmler or Heydrich or Eichmann, did not feel visceral hatred towards the Jew. Rather, they looked upon them coldly as something that simply needed to disappear so that the new life could get on its way. And the means by which they sought to do so was first through a propaganda campaign that portrayed Jews, in Wagnerian terms, as a drag on the visionary energies and bursting vigor of the new Aryan man, and then by the implementation of this decision to eliminate Jews through ever more sophisticated state corporate and scientific technological means. And yet, during the war crime trials at Nuremberg, while Nazi Jurisprudence was tried and hanged, Nazi technological attitudes were not put on trial.
The victorious Allies did not mandate that technology, which had been turned to such murderous ends, must pass an ethical standard review from an international body, like a UN of technology. No such body of decision came about. To the contrary, even while the war crime trials of Nazi chieftains were in session, American and Soviet governments were recruiting high-level Nazis to their intelligence services, military armaments industries, and space programs. So that, while in jurisprudence terms Nazi social and political values were delivered a blow, the Nazi fascination with technology merged seamlessly with that of their conquerors: us.
That is why today we drive Volkswagens, which were invented by Hitler, and use space heaters from companies that may once have manufactured crematoria and why Werner Von Braun, the Nazi father of the V-2 rocket became an American space pioneer hero studied in public schools. Nazi Technology and corporate methodology was folded handily into American feel-good Capitalist culture. That is the very point of the brilliant satire, "Dr. Strangelove".
So that now, sixty four years after the Holocaust, the Nazi disdain for the book has become the feel-good Hi-Tech campaign to rid the world of books in place of massive easily controlled centralized repositories of book texts downloadable on little hand-held devices and from which a text can be dissapeared with the click of a mouse: in Nazi terms, a dream come true.
How grave was Nazi contempt for books? As response to the book burnings in Germany, in the May 11, 1933 issue of Chicago's Daily Worker, (and years before the first fully operational death camps opened their furnace doors), a grim cartoon entitled "Altars of the Nazis" portrayed two smoking crematoria of equal size, placed side by side, one marked "Nazi Victims" and the other "Condemned Books". The link between contempt for books and mass murder could not be more clear.
President Roosevelt, recognizing the threat of Nazi attitudes to the book, launched a full-scale government campaign, and declaring it part of the national war effort, said: "...books...embody man's eternal fight against tyranny. In this war, we know, books are weapons."
In World War II, people died to produce and protect books. Anti-Fascist organizations, American Jewish Groups and writers, editors and journalists launched massive demonstrations in defense of the book, including, on March 10, 1933, the largest march, to that date, in the history of New York City: 100,000 people turned out to express outrage at the burning of books and other events in Germany. In its coverage of the Berlin book burnings, Newsweek used "Holocaust" as its headline.
Today's hi-tech propagandists tell us that the book is a tree-murdering, space-devouring, inferior form that society would be better off without. In its place, they want us to carry around the Uber-Kindle.
The hi-tech campaign to relocate books to Google and replace books with Kindles is, in its essence, a deportation of the literary culture to a kind of easily monitored concentration camp of ideas, where every examination of a text leaves behind a trail, a record, so that curiosity is also tinged with a sense of disquieting fear that some day someone in authority will know that one had read a particular book or essay. This death of intellectual privacy was also a dream of the Nazis. And when I hear the term Kindle, I think not of imaginations fired but of crematoria lit.
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Comments
Hey I remember this rant.
I forget where I read it, though.
Sorry if that's a bit harsh, but really?
These people are not worth the mental effort.
To be honest, it's rather rude to point it out, seeing that they can do nothing about it.
Wow, I'm sorry but this might just rubs me the wrong way.
"Most people are stupid"? Really? Cuz that kind of goes against the very concept of stupid, which is exceptionally unintelligent. Most people can't be stupid, that's not even what it means.
And if you're saying "most people are stupider than me" which is probably what you mean, that's an awfully big assumption to make.
Also it's not at all rude to point out "and therefore HITLER" is stupid. Especially when the person making the argument isn't even here.
Wrong when they can't defend themselves.
Like, I'd be ok if we laughed to his/her face, because then there could be dialogue, and (*possibly*) realisations of wrong-ness.
But as it is, this seems very mean-spirited, even, in fact especially, because of the sheer innanity of this person's statements.
I find this sort of discussion disturbing.
I feel it's a tad condescending that we just assume s/he's too stupid to defend themselves?
In fact, much more condescending than pointing out how stupid I happen to think it is?
Because they are not here.
And that's wrong.
Oh.
Well if that was the case, wouldn't it technically always be wrong to talk about a person that's not there?
And that's like....a lot of different things.
They have never had any relations with this site, and as such, there is no reason for this.
Now,if they has written this treatise on how terrible and awful shitposting is, I could see a reason for this thread. If this were a forum dedicated to Kindles this would be somewhat more justified.
But as it is, I have my concerns.
....okay, sure.
Thing is though we're not attacking the person (I have no clue who wrote this, I know it's been going around the 'net for awhile), we're attacking what they said. Which is basically stating "Nazis would like Kindles therefore Kindles are bad."
I think that kind of thing deserves at least, criticism, because it's for one thing just bad logic, for another thing, a completely baseless attempt to discredit an innocuous item.
I am of the opinion that, and this is just my opinion, that simply going "LOL this is retarded" (*Which even the most cursory reading shows to be true*) and going around laughing at its overwhelming backwardness is detrimental, not simply to whatever distinctly foolish wrote this, but to us.
Discussing this brings us nor anyone else any benefit, it simply wastes mental resources in a form of simple egotictical self-gratification and leaves us further jaded.
And what you're doing is....what, exactly, by contrast?
Furthermore, I only even said anything because the thread is here at all. I didn't make it, and frankly that Odradek does this all the time kind of annoys me too, but for once I can actually understand the block of text he copied, so why would I not comment? It's here, isn't it?
You're overestimating the amount of thought I (and people in general) put into our every action.
I'm sort of struggling with this in my head.
It's hypocritical, for sure.
How can I express these ideas well? They contradict each other in my head in a way I can't quite resolve.
Cognitive dissonance is a funny thing, especially when you're aware of it.
But am I wrong in saying we shouldn't do this?
I don't think I am.
Then perhaps, instead of rudely butting into a conversation and cryptically speaking about the wellbeing of a nonpresent individual, you can simply politely state that you find such discussion distasteful and leave it at that.
It's really not a difficult thing to do, and this discussion could've been mostly avoided if you'd just done that. In fact I'd mostly agree with you if you had.
Pardon me if I'm seeming rude myself here, but it's kind of weird to decide you're going to call someone out for something and then be as roundabout about it as I feel you've been here.
Although I could tell off fanboy trolls on The Verge all day. That shit never gets old.
But this... I can't work it out, and I have been trying for some time.
Because, on one hand one part of my my brain thinks this is wrong because "THIS IS ALL STUPID. ALL YOU ARE STUUUUUPID." And the other half is all like "this is wrong because it's not right to do this, because people's feelings need to be considered, and everyone brings important things to the tableof life's experience"
So they're in agreement on the merits of this discussion, but for completely different, and contradictory, reasons.
Sorry about my jumbled brain contents, they escape me, sometimes in a logorrheic and not entirely useful manner, hope I haven't inconvenienced you.
I'll leave y'all to your discussing this.
I knew I liked you for things besides your dashing good looks and cuddlerifficness.
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
Eh on that.
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
Unless this was communicated via medium, then people would gobble it up. :P
And then I go and contradict myself.
Arghlebarghle.
I see your point, and it's a good one, but like FM said, the guy who wrote that isn't even here. I doubt there's anyone on this board who isn't already familiar with the association fallacy/reductio ad Hitlerum (or at least with Godwin's law or the Hitler Ate Sugar trope, neither of which is a mile away from it).
There are obviously constructive reasons to criticize this kind of bullshit, but on a forum like this one, where, I think it's safe to assume, nobody thinks Kindles have anything to do with Nazism, not so much. If this topic hadn't gone meta, it would just be a mock thread.
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
Point taken. To be honest, I don't care that much either way, but it sometimes feels to me like we see a lot of threads dissecting obviously-bad arguments with obviously-dumb conclusions, and it just seems a little pointless because everyone can see what's wrong with it. It's not something you even need to seriously take apart.
If people really want to talk about it I don't want to make an issue of it, but there was a discussion underway and I gave my opinion. There's stupid and there's stupid. And then there's regular ignorant, which most people will grow out of if given the opportunity and maybe a patient nudge in the right direction. FM, you tend to come across as more informed and capable of critical thought than most people.
But I really doubt that most people are "Kindles = Nazism" stupid. That takes a special kind of idiocy.
Heh.
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
NOTED SCHOLAR/SOTI COTO/ESTNIHIL
:p
I may have to eat these words, but I'm okay with that.
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis