You, you, Anti-Aryan! 
You put it better than I would have. Bonaparte was a grandiose *egoiste, *and a warmonger; but one who actually helped establish modern civil law. Hitler leaves no such legacy.
I think Caligula has a better chance of being rehabilitated than Hitler.
French Jews were emancipated in 1791 and feudalism abolished in 1789.
Don’t give to Napoleon what belongs to the Republic.
That’s adorable.
I wonder how long someone in the USA could get away with a boutique called “Tamurlaine.” Of course, Timur the Lame was much longer ago.
Pfft. He was too committed to constant warmaking, I think, my son. Built a capital city and never slept in it, always on campaign, my son.
But he, my son, was a weird fusion of the conquest-happy legacy of Temujin and the belligerence of absolutist Islam, in a stew of Turkish arrogance. I half-like Timur, weirdly, and his incredible self-importance, always calling everyone from his lieutenants to the King of the Franks “my son,” my son. But he was, my son, probably the worst man to be a world power in centuries.
Actually, what I started to say about Timur was
TOWERS OUT OF HUMAN SKULLS!! my son.
When you invade a country, not to conquer it, but on the pretext that its Khan (my son) is too tolerant of Jews and Christians (and whatever), so you build TOWERS OUT OF HUMAN SKULLS!! and leave, you can expect to be considered the worst person in the world (my son). And it was a pretext. Timur didn’t believe in “sitting idle” & not making war. Guys like me and Tamerlane can regard Timur (last one) my son with mild, almost fond, bemusement because he was so long ago and far away, but he was a horror.
Caligula has been rehabilitated. Together with Tiberitus, Claudius, Nero, Domitian. And I suspect Messalina wasn’t all the bad either. Perhaps they did all of them have various faults, it’s hard to know, but their enemies from the senatorial class (and their historians) smeared their name.
Who knows what’ll happen in four hundred years, but for the foreseeable future, the swastika is verboten - at least in the west. You can try to rehabilitate it, but you’ll come off like one of those clods who flies the Confederate battle flag from their pickup truck; no matter how pure your intentions, people will assume you’re a racist, anti-Semitic moron.
The swastika, like any symbol, has no inherent value. It has only the value that we impute to it. So, any sympathy for the symbol itself takes a back seat to whether you have sympathy for the meaning that is imputed to it. Ultimately, there’s no good faith reason to rehabilitate the symbol that isn’t overwhelmed by the risk that you are expressing sympathy for the meaning imputed to the symbol.
Naah. They may have killed millions, but they were pre-Modern, and I think that makes all the difference. Also, they killed most of those in war, not in industrial slaughterhouses. And it wasn’t genocide so much as enemy-cide.
Nazi chic exists, but it’s either tacky and reviled (Prince Harry), ignorant and laughed at (Asian Nazis), or, mostly, Nazis are depicted as the bad guys (like Iron Skies). That isn’t rehabilitation.
Nobody in the West wears a swastika T-shirt the way they wear a CCCP T-shirt. And anyway, being Communist was never the same as being a Nazi, so that’s a false equivalence. Stalin = Hitler but Communist =/= Hitler, basically.
Can’t say I’ve seen Maoist symbolism being used in fashion, myself.
The only way Hitler will be forgotten in the way you propose, is if all the Jews are dead.
One reason I don’t think Hitler won’t be worshiped is that he was just a politician. Generals are admired even if they lose, if they’re sufficiently badass, but politicians are only respected if they succeed. That’s why people idolize Robert E. Lee, but not Jefferson Davis.
By “Emancipated” I meant the release from the Ghettos in all the French Empire, and making Judaism an official French religion. I understand the 1789 Declaration did the official emancipation.
And by “LAst vestiges of feudalism” I meant the Holy Roman Empire.
This is a very good way of putting it, I think.
I remember this from a few years back: Cameron Diaz apologizes for wearing bag with Maoist slogan in Peru
And the Nazi slaughter wasn’t nearly as industrial as it has a reputation for. Most people that died in WW-II (being mostly Russians and Ukranians and such - and Germans of course) were shot or died from sickness due to starvation and maltreatment.
And you’re seeing some of the rehabilitation of the reputations of Rommel and Guderain.
Ah, I see you haven’t been to Virginia, specifically to US Route 1, aka Jefferson Davis Highway. I used to live a little ways up the hill from part of it. The people in that area then did idolize that bastard.
True, but my WAG is that Davis fans are much rarer than Lee fans, and probably also more racist. People who admire Lee often conveniently ignore the whole slavery thing; people who admire Davis celebrate it.
I don’t see too many monuments dedicated to Caligula. From wiki, I understand that not much is really known about the guy given the tendentiousness of the original source material. That’s different than a rehabilitation in my view.
Uh oh.
War crimes are typically treated differently than deaths in battle or deaths from disease for that matter. Murdering 11 million+ civilians, including 2/3 of the continent’s Jewish population tends to give the perps a rep for evil rather than military prowess.
Dude, Dude, Dude. In that area it’s almost as bad as it is in certain parts of Richmond, Virginia. The celebrants celebrate both.