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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   9819 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025

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I don't think the point about Hitler's identity politics is as surprising as you make it out to be, given that the deaths caused by Lenin and Mao are not exactly a secret. In fact, this is what the difference in their assessment often openly stems from - Hitler's stated goals (which really are those same identity politics you are talking about) are taken to be evil, but the goals of Lenin and Mao are generally actually perceived as a deontological or virtuous good even by many of those (common in the US) who consider them a utilitarian evil. If you wreak murder at an inconceivable scale in the service of evil goals, you are a particularly insidious (because effective) kind of evil; if you however wreak murder in your pursuit of good, you are seen as closer to something like a tragic or merely misguided, even antiheroic figure.

It's easy for resentful right-wingers to see this as a simple case of who/whom thinking being conveniently weaponised against them, but unless you specifically subscribe to (or want to no-enemies-on-the-right) Hitler's brand of identity politics, you are not actually the [antonym of beneficiary]. In the grand scheme of things, most murderous movements in history are actually tolerated, including ones that would unambiguously code conservative in the modern eye - nobody bats an eye at Genghis Khan branding, and even crusader chic is still on the menu (could you imagine a grand strategy game like Crusader Kings II, but modelling the political tug-of-war between Hitler's Gauleiters?) despite their portfolio including religiously motivated rape, murder and land grabs against people further down the progressive stack, use of child soldiers and much more.

given that the deaths caused by Lenin and Mao are not exactly a secret.

Not exactly a secret, but not nearly as embedded in our cultural consciousness as those caused by Hitler. You should try asking 30 young adults who the most prolific mass murderers of the 20th century were. I did that experiment several times in the 90's. Stalin was rarely mentioned, and Mao was never mentioned once. Hitler was always the first name on the collective lips of the class. The situation is probably a little different now, but I would be very surprised if perception has caught up to reality.

At least with hitler, as long as you weren’t… a jew, a slav, a jehovah’s witness, a political opponent, a homosexual, a cripple… you were sort of safe cravenly heil hitlering your way though the war-torn hellscape. Whereas for the khmer rouge, the entire present population was fair game. It was all about the future. And if the present clay wasn’t molding fast enough into the ‘new man’, throw it away and try again, as many times as it takes. They went beyond identity politics, there was no ingroup left.

My eye does twitch involuntarily when people say genghis khan's empire 'opened up trade lanes' and 'travelers had never been so safe'.

I don’t believe in the hierarchy of motives. If you had offered to take the ‘undesirables’ off hitler’s hands, he would have happily agreed, just like the communist only wants successful reeducation for capitalists. The deciding moment comes after the original optimistic plan fails. You can then either give up on the idea, or find that you “have to” apply more force for reeducation than you thought, and so tragically break a few eggs in the process/ murder everyone out of convenience. The relevant moral lines are broken here, not on the higher level of goals.

At least with hitler, as long as you weren’t… a jew, a slav, a jehovah’s witness, a political opponent, a homosexual, a cripple… you were sort of safe cravenly heil hitlering your way though the war-torn hellscape

I agree with you that Nazi persecution was more predictable and narrowly targeted than that of the communists, but you left one important group off your list of those who were marked for death by the Nazis: people who would not keep their mouth shut and their tail between their legs. The fact that there were so few of these is a testament to how ironically wrong Hitler was about the alleged greatness of the German Volk. Hitler pointedly lambasts sycophants in Mein Kampf, but he hypocritically demanded it of his vassals and subjects, on pain of death. Hitler reigned over a nation of Spucklecker (spit lickers; his term for sycophants) -- and if they hadn't been, he couldn't have.

I don't think spit-licker is too unkind a term for someone who professes Christianity, and yet silently, passively watches the Nazi persecution of the Jews. I have never done anything so brave as stand up to a murderous tyrannical regime, and so I cannot claim that I would have done anything different than what most Germans did, even most of the ones who recognized Hitler as a ruinous, berserk tyrant. Maybe I would and maybe I wouldn't. What I am saying is that those of us who are (or might be) spit-lickers should recognize those among us those who demonstrably aren't, such as Deitrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Niemöller, as better men than us in the most important way. In the words of Solzhenitsyn,

And as for him who lacks the courage to defend even his own soul, let him not brag of his progressive views, boast of his status as an academician or a recognized artist, a distinguished citizen or general. Let him say to himself plainly: I am cattle, I am a coward, I seek only warmth and to eat my fill.

Not to be all atheist, but one of the things I find most discrediting to the Church’s claim of providing moral guidance was its shameful compromising with hitler. Even though it was clear to church leaders that nazism was both generally evil, and opposed to the power of the church as such. Unlike the german people, who were more bribed than threatened into compliance with the regime (so can be said to be morally corrupted, and complicit), the church’s behaviour reflects pure moral cowardice.

but the goals of Lenin and Mao are generally actually perceived as a deontological or virtuous good even by many of those (common in the US) who consider them a utilitarian evil.

They are deontologically evil, I've brought this up before though on a different subject. Star Control has an origin story for a comically evil race be the pursuit of the perfect good. They achieved it, but then overdid it, resulting in the ultimate evil. Same principle.

I assumed we are talking about the beliefs of typical people rather than us assorted degenerates haunting the Motte, since we are trying to explain why the general populace is more comfortable with Mao/Lenin quotes than with Hitler quotes. If you do not actually believe Hitler quotes to be less appropriate to quote approvingly than Mao/Lenin quotes, then your moral beliefs on the topic are not particularly relevant.

Then isn't the simpler explanation the years of propaganda they go through in public schools, or all the media portraying him as the ultimate evil, while the ins and outs of communism are mostly glossed over? It's not lime most people are doing an in-depth ethical analysis of each system and the ideas behind them.

Then isn't the simpler explanation the years of propaganda they go through in public schools, or all the media portraying him as the ultimate evil, while the ins and outs of communism are mostly glossed over?

I'm surprised this has not been the go-to explanation in the discussion. The clue is not that Hitler is stigmatized, but the pattern of the what Moldbug calls the "cathedral" minimizing and excusing communist atrocities even after they became known. I think this pattern is obvious.

At least at the German school I attended they covered in sufficient detail the beliefs associated with communism and the various skull mountains associated with it, but apart from the one token card-carrying neonazi kid (who wanted to become a tank driver but I think grew up to be a ski instructor instead) everybody still walked out with the standard differential assessment of the two. Of course morality rarely spontaneously materialises out of nowhere and people ultimately believe that aiming to advance one race at the expense of others is intrinsically evil because they are instilled with this message from early on, but all I am saying is that this is the deontological moral package that most people wind up with, and given that package the conclusions that they arrive at are correct in the sense that no amount of additional information about communism or Hitler is likely to change them. If you want to rehabilitate Hitler or throw communist leaders in the pit with him, there is no shortcut around convincing a majority of people to actually change their morality, rather than merely exposing them to some "glossed over" forbidden information.

people ultimately believe that aiming to advance one race at the expense of others is intrinsically evil because they are instilled with this message from early on

I don't think this accurately describes our shared common moral sense. If people in a black church take up a collection to send money to hungry children in Zimbabwe, that they could have sent to even hungrier children in Ukraine, then they are advancing their race at the expense of others and few people have a problem with it, and I wouldn't have a problem with it. On a similar note using religion instead of race, if two people were taking up collections, one to aid persecuted Christians in Pakistan and one to aid persecuted Muslims in China, I would preferentially donate to save-the-Christians, and I think that is OK too, and I think it also accords with common sense (and that the push for "effective altruism" defies common sense).

What is wrong in our moral common sense is not advancing your people at the expense of others; it is advancing your people by violating the negative rights of others. Which is what Hitler (and Lenin and Mao) did, of course.

People rightly intuit that we live in an anti-fascist civilization with WW2 as a founding myth. In that myth, the Soviets are flawed allies but ultimately on the side of good.

For people to reliably recognize all forms of totalitarian socialism as equally evil, we'd have to live in a society that considers virtue as distance from totalitarian socialism, not distance to fascism.

At least at the German school I attended they covered in sufficient detail the beliefs associated with communism and the various skull mountains associated with it.

(...) rather than merely exposing them to some "glossed over" forbidden information.

You're right, I shouldn't have phrased it as "ins and outs" of communism, because it's not a question of not knowing about some event. Many people have knowledge of the shenanigans of Genghis Khan, but they won't have a similar reaction to him as they do to Hitler, even though the scale of his atrocities is comparable, and he doesn't have much of a deontological footing either.

Rather than information, it's about the constant reinforcement of the message that Nazis == Satan, and the Germans are absolutely unrivaled in that. Even some of the nations that were victimized by the Nazis are not so uptight about it. If you stop hammering that message, I doubt Hitler will be seen as any worse than Stalin, which you can even see in the attitudes of people in countries like India.

Hitler's stated goals (which really are those same identity politics you are talking about) are taken to be evil, but the goals of Lenin and Mao are generally actually perceived as a deontological or virtuous good even by many of those (common in the US) who consider them a utilitarian evil.

What was Hitler's stated goal, in your view?

The Communists' stated goal was to make a better world by killing everyone who didn't fit into it, a number they generally estimated at ~10% of extant humans.

a number they generally estimated at ~10% of extant humans.

Citation?

The early Soviet communists were explicitly pro-terror and against "Quaker-Papist babble about the sanctity of human life", but I was under the impression that they were imagining a world where a relatively small amount of terror and murder would be sufficient to make everybody else fall in line. Maybe my recollections are muddled with later leftist movements, but I could swear I recall even early Communism being very pro-equality, to the point of having theories of psychology where people are all basically the same underneath and the fact that some of them eventually want to be evil capitalist oppressors is just because they got an evil capitalist upbringing. Maybe I'm wrong, though - "reeducation camps" were a feature of lots of later strains of Communism but the Gulags didn't really bother to put on such an optimistic "we're trying to fix you for your own good" facade.

To overcome our enemies we must have our own socialist militarism. We must carry along with us 90 million out of the 100 million of Soviet Russia's population. As for the rest, we have nothing to say to them. They must be annihilated. — Grigory Zinoviev, 1918

Early Communism was indeed very pro-equality, but it also viewed humans as the output of social forces, presumed that bad social forces could make bad humans, and was not shy about advocating that bad humans should be "liquidated". Once Communists gained power, this sort of liquidation was routine wherever they gained power.

I was wondering if maybe your citation would be nutpicking, and worried when I didn't recognize the name, but shame on my ignorance. The "chairman of the Communist International from 1919 to 1926" is a pretty solid reference. Thanks.

I think you specifically would've been around last time I had a similar discussion, but Hitler's stated goal was to make the world better for ethnic Germans at no expenses spared for other ethnicities (and with particular vengeance towards some specific ones that he considered their sworn enemies). For better or worse, most people consider such a goal already more evil than the same thing with people selected by socioeconomic status, but that's neglecting that the communists' stated goal as commonly understood does not mandate killing or even displacing any fixed set of people (that's why they ran reeducation camps).

Having to kill capitalists rather than being able to brainwash them all into becoming good workers was presumably seen by most communists (with the exception perhaps of outliers like Cambodia) as a failure and unfortunate compromise with reality. If you conflate "do terrible thing to everyone who doesn't fit in your world" and "do terrible thing to everyone who you can't reform to fit in your world no matter how much you try", then everyone supporting law and order in the US could also be said to want to make a better world by brutally robbing the liberty of everyone who doesn't fit into it, a number that is bounded below at ~0.5% of the US population.

Hitler's stated goal was to make the world better for ethnic Germans at no expenses spared for other ethnicities (and with particular vengeance towards some specific ones that he considered their sworn enemies).

Can you point me (or us) to Hitler's statements on this?

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