Posted by Eugene Volokh:
Broken Journophone?
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2007_12_23-2007_12_29.shtml#1198541498
[1]Glenn Reynolds (InstaPundit) writes, "LIBERAL FASCISM: Will Smith
says nice things about Hitler." He links to this [2]short World
Entertainment News story:
Will Smith has stunned the world by declaring that even Nazi
dictator Adolf Hitler was essentially a "good" person.
The Men In Black star, 39, is determined to see the best in people,
and is convinced the former German leader did not fully understand
the extent of the pain and suffering his actions would cause during
his time in power in the 1930s and '40s.
He says, "Even Hitler didn't wake up going, 'Let me do the most
evil thing I can do today'.
"I think he woke up in the morning and using a twisted, backwards
logic, he set out to do what he thought was 'good'. Stuff like that
just needs reprogramming."
Hitler's totalitarian leadership as Fuhrer during 1934 until his
eventual suicide in 1945 resulted in the persecution of an
estimated six million Jews in the Holocaust, and his invasion of
Poland in 1939 led to the start of the Second World War.
But did Will Smith really "declar[e]" that Hitler "was essentially a
'good' person"? The World Entertainment News story seems to be based
on an interview with [3]the Daily Record (Scotland), the relevant
portion of which reads this way:
Remarkably, Will believes everyone is basically good.
"Even Hitler didn't wake up going, 'let me do the most evil thing I
can do today'," said Will. "I think he woke up in the morning and
using a twisted, backwards logic, he set out to do what he thought
was 'good'. Stuff like that just needs reprogramming.
"I wake up every day full of hope, positive that every day is going
to be better than yesterday. And I'm looking to infect people with
my positivity. I think I can start an epidemic."
It seems that "Will believes everyone is basically good" is just the
reporter's characterization of Smith's statement. Nothing in the
quoted material suggests that Smith was saying that Hitler was a good
person. Rather, the quoted material simply reports Smith's quite
plausible view that Hitler, like many other people who do evil (Smith
must have used Hitler as a referent precisely because Smith
acknowledges that Hitler did do evil), believe that they are doing
good. I'm hardly a Hitler scholar, but my sense is that Hitler did
indeed believe that he was doing good, as did Stalin, Bin Laden, and
various others.
At most, given the upbeatness of the rest of Smith's message, Smith
might be saying that everyone has the potential for good, if only they
can be "reprogramm[ed]" away from their "twisted, backwards logic."
This is not clearly true; perhaps people can't be so easily
reprogrammed even in theory, certainly they often can't be in
practice, and there's also the question of how they should be held
accountable for what they did before their reprogramming. Sometimes
stuff like that needs killing, as in Hitler's case and quite a few
others. But surely Smith's message isn't outrageous, either, at least
unless he said something stunning that the reporters for some reason
decided merely to paraphrase rather than quote -- possible, but in my
view far from certain. What Smith is actually quoted as saying doesn't
seem like a statement that Hitler is a "good person," evidence of
"liberal fascism," something that should "stun[] the world," or even
particularly "nice things about Hitler."
On the other hand, to give blame where blame is due, the World
Entertainment News should certainly be faulted for talking about
"persecution of an estimated six million Jews in the Holocaust" (as
InstaPundit points out, quoting a reader).
References
1. http://instapundit.com/archives2/013334.php
2.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/wenn/20071223/ten-smith-hitler-was-a-good-person-c60bd6d_1.html
3.
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/entertainment/celebrity-interviews/2007/12/22/will-smith-my-work-ethic-will-make-me-a-legend-86908-20262460/
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