(Audrey) Yesterday, a certain man in my life who shall remain unnamed said to me as we were making dinner, “I saw this Glenn Beck clip on youtube, and you know what, he was actually underreacting to the issue.” The clip in question concerns Anita Dunn’s love of Mao and is available here if you’re interested. Beck’s style isn’t my favorite, but nonetheless I agree with my to-remain-unnamed man’s reaction.
Regardless of the merits of Glenn Beck as a social commentator, this episode highlights some of the problems with continuing to give voice to historical figures and ideas regardless of their impact on the world. At what point do we decide not to admire the qualities and persistence of historical figures because of where it got them? Let me give an example from modern India–Hitler.
Virtually every bookstore I have ever set foot in in India carries a copy of Mein Kampf. Not only that but sales of the book are booming in recent years as the text is often seen as a guide to good managements skills. I find this outrageous. Yes, one could admire Hitler for his perseverance and management abilities—he was certainly a guy who knew how to get things done in a grotesque sense. But I choose not to think like that because his ends, as well as his means, were abhorrent. Instead I prefer to banish Hitler into the category of pure evil altogether. If nothing else, shouldn’t we continue to wonder if something about Hitler’s unwavering perseverance is directly linked to the Holocaust? Maybe being so driven, so immune from persuasion, and totally devoid of morality are not all good things?
Even if we could learn things from Hitler’s style of operation, are we really so certain that we can effectively separate the good from the bad? More importantly, why would we risk getting the formula wrong when the last time it resulted in arguably the greatest tragedy in recorded human history? Can’t we find somebody else to teach us how to run a business? And why doesn’t admiring Hitler particularly bother Indians considering their ambivalent position during WW2 (granted, largely as a result of colonialism, but still)?
I don’t have answers for all these questions, but the outcry over the Anita Dunn-Mao issue also raises a particularly difficult question: why is the widespread Indian admiration of at least some aspects of Hitler not more criticized here?
Tags: anita dunn, glenn beck, hitler, India, mein kampf
October 21, 2009 at 8:14 am |
Hi, I liked the the way you have handled the article. Its true that there exists this admiration to Hitler, but still it by and large due to the Colonial rule.
March 18, 2010 at 3:58 am |
[...] gets a little more interesting as many Indians have a bizarre and unexamined respect for Hitler (see earlier post here). And I’m going to become a saint? Well, if idiot astrologers don’t stop interrupting [...]