Bavarian official backs new Mein Kampf edition

I don't know what the big deal is. I have a 1934 edition and the book is so boring that I stopped half way through. I have a version with comments and according to the comments, half of the book is lies anyway. My son read the first couple of pages and was bored with it. So what is the big deal?

Mein Kampf is a perfect example of the world's greatest threat..ignorance.

Does that translate as "Feck, if we don't get a version on the shelves soon we'll lose out on a Scheiß-load of possible revenue"?

Translation: Politicians will try anything to extract money from the public to increase/boost their salary/non-taxable income.

If you were reading the English version then it was boring and full of errors. There is a new book "Mein Kampf: A Translation Controversy" which analyzes English translations and it revealed ...well a book full of errors. There is a new translation the Ford translation which is the best English language translation. It is even better than the original German because there were parts of the original book which were edited out(like the name of Henry Ford, not connected to the new translation) and some parts are poorly worded while others refer to people and places that were well known in Germany at the time but are unfamiliar today. The Ford translation includes notes about all of these which made it much clearer. I have read both the old Murph and Manheim translations and listened to the new Ford translation audio book and it is much easier to understand.

Better than dishonourable and narrow-minded. If it's unreadable, no-one is likely to read it from cover to cover. That could be a reason to say that there's no harm in publishing it. On the other hand, if it became widely available, who would be most likely to buy into what it says? Obviously not the people who don't sympathise with Nazi doctrine or aren't susceptible to doing so. Nazi sypathisers or potential sympathisers would hardly be likely to read annotations or explanations, let alone be swayed by them. If the book became widely available, Nazi sympathisers and Holocaust deniers would just find it easier to pluck quotes from it to glorify Nazism and anti-Semitism and spread the word.

But their opponents can point out the annotations, comments and critical evaluation of alleged sources without having to do the research themselves. It works both ways. I'm all for it if the philosophy is exposed as faulty, illogical and not based on facts.

If it'd been written by some sunflower hippy from the 60's - or I don't know, Normal Mailer or Allen Ginsberg(child molester homo pervert..), or better yet, speaking of longwinded blowhard PIA's - Günter Grass - people would look past the longwindedness, errors of detail, irritating style, etc.. and find good things to say about it... I find all the tangential demonizing of Hitler kind of amusing - his facts were wrong in Mein Kampf, he was long-winded, he was short, maybe he was gay, etc... Just funny how people focus in on these things, as if they in themselves proved how bad he was..

That is seriously one of the dumbest comments I've ever heard/read..

Sorry, not picking on you. But it is.

why is it dumb? Hitler's entire phiilosophy rested on a vast number of ignorant assumptions. Would have said perdido was spot on meself.

Because Mein Kampf, like its author and ultimately Nazi Germany itself and everything it perpetrated, was a product of a vast menagerie of complex social, political, economical, etc.. forces swirling together in a particular historical period. Hitler was bad, crazy, megalomaniacal, evil, etc etc.., but he was not ignorant(or gay, or short, or a child molester, or lots of other things the WWII industry likes to attribute to him.. It's just a super lame attempt to attribute all other bad things to him, as if doing so will reassure is that maybe he was completely bad... He was fond of dogs - one could be surprised it's still considered acceptable to keep them as pets.. Vegetarain too.. Hmm..)

I'm sorry but the assumptions he made were based on one would presume an ignorance on his part or a presumed igniorance on the part of his audience. It might be 'interesting' to read but this is not political philospophy of the calibre of Plato, Machiaveli, Marx, Rousseau, Locke or even Friedrich Hayek. And if you think it is of the same quality then IMHO that is more revealing about you than it.

Are you of that caliber?? I assume no. But I wouldn't call you ignorant on that basis either.. A second rate philosopher might not be first rate, but that doesn't mean he's ignorant. Heck, you probably haven't even written a book.. Even then I wouldn't attribute ignorance to you.

One of the main criticisms of Mein Kampf is that it's incoherent. Well, IMO Nietzsche for ex. can be very incoherent, yet he is IMO anyway one of the most intelligent people I've ever read.

Anyway, I just don't think "ignorant" applies to Hitler. Yeah sure, lots of other pejorative adjectives may. But not "ignorant".. And it just bugs me how you can't read any reference to WWII in a news article, history book, or whatever, without all kinds of gratuitous aspersions... I mean, a history book, instead of saying "In 1921 Hitler was in Munich..." will have to say someting like "In 1924 the future murderer of European Jewry and suspected child molester who was also ignorant made his way to Munich..."

even Mussolini was of the opinion that it was a pile of crap. Nor is it widely cited by intellectual political philosophers of the far right who prefer to reference Hayek, Strasser or other more informed political philosophers.

Again, they don't reference you either. But I'm not calling you ignorant...

Yet..

I haven't written any political philosophy myself, nor have I ever set myself up as the mouthpiece of a political movement in the way Hitler did.

Hitler was a classic opportunist whose crackpot views would have remained on the fringe had it not been for the economic and social collapse of prewar Germany coupled with its isolation from the international community.

"Crackpot" - that's another good (stock pejorative) one..

"Had it not been for"... is a key problem in your reasoning IMO. Because you can never subtract the reality from a situation when making a judgement of that sort.

Hitler, like Napolean, through will, determination, vision, hard work, and yes, a certain kind of leadership and oratorical genius..., rose to a position of power in Europe of phenomenal proportions. Yes the historical circumstances were chaotic at the time, and he took advantage of this. But millions of other, presumably un-ignorant.. people did not. My problem with Hitler is that he focussed too much on the Holocaust - needlessly and tragically murdering millions of innocent people.. - all ultimately at Germany's expense.., and made the idiotic decision to invade Russia, and in so doing ruined Germany and much of Europe in the process. Furthermore, his loss has burdened Western civ with a Holocaust-centric morality which seems impossible to overcome..

But just because he was a vegetarian, liked dogs, was obsessed with architecture, pushed for autobahns, etc..., does not mean that vegetariansism, dogs, architechture, and autobahns are all bad... And precisely that kind of thing is what clouds up any potentially intelligent discussion of Hitler - or Mein Kampf for ex.. Mein Kampf is a historical document that gives insight into the mind of one of history's most significant figures, and thus into one of history's most tumultuous periods. There are a lot of interesting issues still to discuss about WWII and what it all means..(I have my theories...) But using all these ridiculous trite epithets and blanketing the whole topic with our ultimately contingent morality really doesn't achieve anything in terms of historical, cultural, moral whatever analysis... We as a culture have all kinds of moral problems about homosexuality, but we don't apply those morals to studies of ancient Greece... (Opening sentence of history book - "In ancient Greece, it was considered quite normal among the priveledged class to be a fudge-packing gaylord homo..." I kind of see the way Hitler is discussed along those lines..) To name just one random example..

I am not trying to lionize Hitler btw. I am only saying that so long as we cloud the whole topic up with cheap moral assumptions and epitethets, that it's just not possible to talk about Hitler in any kind of interesting or intelligent way... It's just empty words to show each other how morally conformist we are or whatever...

"The answer to bad speech is more speech." Thus has the U.S. Supreme Court repeatedly opined on issues of censorship. Let people speak, whatever political views they may have, as long as everyone gets her turn.

I suggest you re-read Hitler Herrdinkbumps, vegetarianism dogs and autobahns were never central to his philosophy which rested instead on a theory of 'scientific racism' that sought to create racial purity in a greater Germany that needed to expand eastwards. The Holocaust and the Invasion of the Soviet Union were therefore integral consequences of his philosophy.

The problem is that extremists usually aren't open to persuasion. So I doubt that it does work both ways. A few years ago, Oprah Winfrey interviewed members of the Ku Klux Klan on her show. There was no scope for discussion. They were right, and she was ... well, they apparently told her what she was during the commercial breaks.

I'll give you credit there - it's been years since I looked at it - and even then I don't think I ever read the whole thing.. I admit to spinning a bit off - or expanding on - the topic.. But I was replying to comments made about Mein Kampf and Hitler, and not commenting on the content of the book itself..

Maybe all of you don't know the TRUTH, Furher ( Hitler ) was played by GOD, but a true Aryan doesn't belive in GOD, they believe in something which can only be felt or the elements of nature.

If you read the Bible, it is clearly written about Egyptians and the Jews. May be it was not right time for the VISION of Germania.

But maybe the right time for the state of insomnia. That way we can all enjoy the perils of disillusionment as well as self-righteousness. Oh wait same thing.