On 12/01/2012 01:50 AM, turquoiseb wrote: > Listen up, all you wannabee Hindus. This is the culture you're > embracing. > > Wikipedia: [In "David Wants To Fly,"] Sieveking films a controversial > public presentation in Berlin in November 2007, with Lynch in > attendance, where Raja Emmanuel starts his intervention with the > slogan: "We want an invincible Germany!" and as the result, he is booed > by the audience, one man shouting: "Adolf Hitler wanted that too!," to > whom he replies that Hitler failed to achieve it for lack of the right > technique. > > See also: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/message/8815 > <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/message/8815> > Hitler's Strange Afterlife in India Nov 30, 2012 4:45 AM EST > by Dilip D'Souza > > Hated and mocked in much of the world, the Nazi leader has developed a > strange following among schoolchildren and readers of Mein Kampf in > India. Dilip D'Souza on how political leader Bal Thackeray > influenced Indians to admire Hitler and despise Gandhi. > My wife teaches French to tenth-grade students at a private school here > in Mumbai. During one recent class, she asked these mostly > upper-middle-class kids to complete the sentence "J'admire …" > with the name of the historical figure they most admired. > > To say she was disturbed by the results would be to understate her > reaction. Of 25 students in the class, 9 picked Adolf Hitler, making > him easily the highest vote-getter in this particular exercise; a > certain Mohandas Gandhi was the choice of precisely one student. > Discussing the idea of courage with other students once, my wife was > startled by the contempt they had for Gandhi. "He was a > coward!" they said. And as far back as 2002, the Times of India > reported a survey > <http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2002-12-26/edit-page/272984\ > 96_1_adolf-hitler-indian-students-nationalism> that found that 17 > percent of students in elite Indian colleges "favored Adolf Hitler > as the kind of leader India ought to have." > In a place where Gandhi becomes a coward, perhaps Hitler becomes a hero. > > Still, why Hitler? "He was a fantastic orator," said the > 10th-grade kids. "He loved his country; he was a great patriot. He > gave back to Germany a sense of pride they had lost after the Treaty of > Versailles," they said. > > "And what about the millions he murdered?" asked my wife. "Oh, > yes, that was bad," said the kids. "But you know what, some of > them were traitors." > > Admiring Hitler for his oratorical skills? Surreal enough. Add to that > the easy condemnation of his millions of victims as traitors. Add to > that the characterization of this man as a patriot. I mean, in a short > dozen years, Hitler led Germany through a scarcely believable orgy of > blood to utter shame and wholesale destruction. Even the mere thought > of calling such a man a patriot profoundly corrupts—is violently > antithetical to—the idea of patriotism. > > But these are kids, you think, and kids say the darndest things. Except > this is no easily written-off experience. The evidence is that Hitler > has plenty of admirers in India, plenty of whom are by no means kids. > > Consider Mein Kampf, Hitler's autobiography. Reviled it might be in > the much of the world, but Indians buy thousands of copies of it every > month. As a recent paper in the journal EPW tells us (PDF > <http://www.epw.in/system/files/pdf/2012_47/46/On_the_Indian_Readers_of_\ > Hitlers_Mein_Kampf.pdf> ), there are over a dozen Indian publishers who > have editions of the book on the market. Jaico, for example, printed > its 55th edition in 2010, claiming to have sold 100,000 copies in the > previous seven years. (Contrast this to the 3,000 copies my own 2009 > book, Roadrunner, has sold). In a country where 10,000 copies sold makes > a book a bestseller, these are significant numbers. > > And the approval goes beyond just sales. Mein Kampf is available for > sale > <http://www.flipkart.com/mein-kampf-817224164x/p/itmdyu4dqgtdafrq?gclid=\ > CPSL-IrD6rMCFc8c6wodx2MA7g&semcmpid=sem_4171916357_books_goog> on > flipkart.com, India's Amazon. As I write this, 51 customers have > rated the book; 35 of those gave it a five-star rating. What's more, > there's a steady trickle of reports that say it has become a > must-read for business-school students > <http://digitaljournal.com/article/271936> ; a management guide much > like Spencer Johnson's Who Moved My Cheese or Edward de Bono's > Lateral Thinking. If this undistinguished artist could take an entire > country with him, I imagine the reasoning goes, surely his book has > some lessons for future captains of industry? > > Much of Hitler's Indian afterlife is the legacy of Bal Thackeray, > chief of the Shiv Sena party who died on Nov. 17 > <http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/11/16/mumbai-on-edge-with-sh\ > iv-sena-founder-bal-thackeray-ill.html> . > > Thackeray freely, openly, and often admitted his admiration for Hitler, > his book, the Nazis, and their methods. In 1993, for example, he gave > an interview to Time magazine. "There is nothing wrong," he > said then, "if [Indian] Muslims are treated as Jews were in Nazi > Germany." > > > This interview came only months after the December 1992 and January > 1993 riots in Mumbai, which left about a thousand Indians slaughtered, > the majority of them Muslim. Thackeray was active right through those > weeks, writing editorial after editorial in his party mouthpiece, > "Saamna" ("Confrontation") about how to "treat" > Muslims. > > On Dec. 9, 1992, for example, his editorial contained these lines: > "Pakistan need not cross the borders and attack India. 250 million > Muslims in India will stage an armed insurrection. They form one of > Pakistan's seven atomic bombs." > > A month later, on Jan. 8, 1993, there was this: "Muslims of Bhendi > Bazar, Null Bazar, Dongri and Pydhonie, the areas [of Mumbai] we call > Mini Pakistan … must be shot on the spot." > > There was plenty more too: much of it inspired by the failed artist who > became Germany's führer. After all, only weeks before the riots > erupted, Thackeray said this > <http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Sunday_TOI/Its_hardly_a_struggle_sel\ > ling_Hitlers_story_in_India/rssarticleshow/4058227.cms> about the > führer's famous autobiography: "If you take Mein Kampf and if > you remove the word Jew and put in the word Muslim, that is what I > believe in." > > With rhetoric like that, it's no wonder the streets of my city saw > the slaughter of 1992-93. It's no wonder kids come to admire a > mass-murderer, to rationalize away his massacres. It's no wonder > they cling to almost comically superficial ideas of courage and > patriotism, in which a megalomaniac's every ghastly crime is > forgotten so long as we can pretend that he "loved" his > country. > > In his acclaimed 1997 book Hitler's Willing Executioners, Daniel > Goldhagen writes: "Hitler, in possession of great oratorical > skills, was the [Nazi] Party's most forceful public speaker. Like > Hitler, the party from its earliest days was devoted to the destruction > of … democracy [and to] most especially and relentlessly, > anti-Semitism. … The Nazi Party became Hitler's Party, > obsessively anti-Semitic and apocalyptic in its rhetoric about its > enemies." > > Do some substitutions in those sentences along the lines Thackeray > wanted to do with Mein Kampf. Indeed, what you get is a more than > adequate description of … no surprise, Thackeray himself. > > Yes, it's no wonder. Thackeray too was revered as an orator. > Cremated, on Nov. 18, as a patriot.
Remember that MMY revered Hitler too until he was told by those around him to stop it. I'm sure one could update the language in the first 50 pages of Mein Kampf and publish it under another name in the US it would become a hit with the Tea Party folks. ------------------------------------ To subscribe, send a message to: [email protected] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!'Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: [email protected] [email protected] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [email protected] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
