Missed the edit window:
Just in case it wasn’t clear that Hitler is not in favor of trade unions:
Just to deflate the vindication balloon just a little 
I do want to go on record saying I’d never use the word “reasonable” in that sense myself. I don’t think that’s really what “reasonable” means in English. I might have said something like “seemed reasonable” (i.e., at that time, given common assumptions and rhetorical habits of the day).
No, I am not. Would you describe Loose Change as “perfectly reasonable?” Would you define the view that Catholics can’t be trusted because they’re all agents of the Pope “perfectly reasonable?” Would you describe investment strategies via Pixy Dickery as “perfectly reasonable?”
If not, then you and I are using the exact same definition and we’re both using the definition of the word “reasonable” exactly as it’s used in common English. And quite opposite Scylla’s claim that arguing about how National Socialism is necessary to prevent the cancer of The Jew and his weapon, Marxism, is “perfectly reasonble”.
But this misses the point. Even without a firm biological understanding of race, it’s not reasonable to assume that an entire race is bent on the destruction of all that is good and decent in the world.
It’s just one of them thar mistakes. :dubious:
By the way Scylla, I assume that since you have yet to reveal your own source for your own quote from MK, you’re just baiting me and trying to divert focus when you pretend that finding a quote from MK somewhere and not listing where you found it is “plagiarism”.
Do you have no shame at all? You couldn’t clearly admit you made a massive mistake by saying that Mein Kampf as a whole was “reasonable” or that its arguments were “perfectly reasonable”, and instead dug yourself ever deeper and kept pretzeling yourself and lying about context in order to show how the book was “reasonable”, and it’s my fault that you didn’t just admit you were wrong instead of trying to cover your ass?
How very dishonest of me. :rolleyes:
Yeah, you set out to debate dishonesty, hide your true intentions, lie about what Mein Kampf actually said and play a rousing game of Tweak Those Reading Along and you got a bite. Boy, are you ever vindicated.
No, actually, this was just you being dishonest some more and deliberately taking a quote out of context to hide what it was about. I imagine that you were quite saddened to learn that someone else had read the book and could catch you at your game. Of course, what Hitler actually says is that trade unions are necessary to counteract the Jewish poison, Marxism. And that trade unions are only to be used in order to strengthen his fascist state.
Further, as you evidently are habitually ‘conveniently making mistakes’, what you actually alleged was that the book as a whole was reasonable. So no, finding individual, non-representative samples doesn’t show that. And it should also be noted that despite your prevaricating, your claim was that the need for National Socialism was the core tenet of the work. Of course, again you just happened to luckily forget the actual context, which was that Hitler said that NS was necessary in order to counteract the political, economic, philosophical and cultural cancer that was The Jew. Showing that even that central theme was nowhere near as “reasonable” as you were pretending.
Likewise, you are lying when you claim I ignored it. I knew you were deliberately distorting the text when you just so happened to ignore that the entire context was about trade unions in the context of Marxism and The Jew. So I cited the actual context in which in which Hitler talked about the necessity for trade unions, that being the context of Marxism and The Jew. That’s when you began your absurd bullshit about how citing quotes from a book that you look up in a concordance or book of quotations is “plagiarism” (except of course when you do it, natch).
And, to compound idiocy with ignorance, the reason the quotes were in a certain order is because that’s the order they come in in Mein Kampf. Only someone quite as pathetic and desperate as you would go on (and on and on and on) about how finding quotes from a book online is “plagiarism”.
Again, you prevaricating jackass, relating a reasonable belief does not make a book reasonable. And despite your near constant evasions distortions and fictions, your claim was indeed that the book, as a whole, was reasonable. Ya know, when you said that “I said Mein Kamp was reasonable.” Idiot.
And then lied, distorted, obfuscated and did your best to leave out essential context so as to present cherrypicked bits as representative of the book as a whole.
Again lying about the actual context, which was the Jews were to blame for Germany losing the war, and Jews were to blame for the situation in which the war was resolved, and Jews were to blame for the suffering after the war.
No, actually, I’ve pointed out how you deliberately distorted and obfuscated about all the bits you did prove. Also, how you are a dishonest little twerp and that you claimed that the book as a whole was reasonable and that its core tenet was the necessity for National Socialism, while deliberately ignoring that MK set out to prove that NS was necessary precisely in order to combat the evil, cancerous influence of The Jew on culture, politics, economics, and via the corrosive force of Jewish Marxism.
So no, you haven’t provided any actual examples, you’ve done your best to dishonestly hide what all the examples were about and to cherrypick ideas and phrases totally out of context while trying to hide what they were about. I can imagine your distress at learning that I was on to your little game, which is why you’ve tried to divert so much attention with your trolling about “plagiarism!” while you rather conspicuously still have not given a cite for where you “stole” the text you provided from MK. But of course you and I both know that you don’t really believe that you’re guilty of plagiarism, which means you don’t believe I am either for committing the same action, and you’re just trolling as part of your grand game of Tweak The Readers.
Of course, what you actually said was that his quote on trade unions was reasonable. Again, you evidently hoped to pull a fast one and counted on nobody having read the book and being able to point out your game. Because, of course, Hitler only spoke about trade unions as a way to defeat Marxism and The Jew and then to be absorbed into the fascist state.
What you actually agreed with was that the book had “perfectly reasonable arguments.” And as already proven, you have lied about pretty much each and every single argument you mentioned while pointedly refraining from mentioning the actual arguments in their actual context with their actual foundations and instead taking them as far out of context as you could while pretending that you’d provided support for “perfectly reasonable” arguments.
Hold on there, pardner. You caught Scylla fair and square on the fact that he did make the statement “I said Mein Kamp[f] was reasonable.”* That was in post 76. In this post, you’re clearly moving the goalposts on him and upgrading “reasonable” to “perfectly reasonable.”
Foul.
Or is it not a foul because it’s about Hitler? :rolleyes:
*And in point of fact, when he made that post, he was mistaken. He had still not called MK “reasonable.” He was still on “not unresaonable.” And no, they are not interchangeable terms.
Unless, perhaps one is talking about Hitler? :rolleyes:
I’m doing no such thing. In fact Scylla just reiterated that he was agreeing with Frylock’s and Polycarp’s interpretation of his apologia.
And Scylla did indeed agree to it, I’ll underline the relevant part.
Hilarious of course to see Scylla Of-The-Curiously-Distorted-Examples-and-it’s-not-plagiarism-when-he-does-it accusing others of playing games and being jackasses.
It’s charitable of you to assume that he was mistaken.
Of course, as his ‘mistake’ about what he was saying flip flopped back and forth and just happened to allow him to claim that he was being mischaracterized…
And, well, since “not unreasonable” would mean not absurd, that really doesn’t make Scylla’s apologia for Hitler’s politics any better since that would be a claim that any of the arguments (from ‘we need labor unions to destroy the Jewish Marxist influence and then be subsumed into the state’ to ‘we need national socialism in order to combat the menace of the societal cancer being spread by The Jew which will lead to the end of the world’) are not absurd.
Of course, as Scylla has yet to honestly relate a single argument that Hitler actually used and show either how it was reasonable or at least not unreasonable, something tells me that this is all just a big running example of Tweak The Readers.
To be fair, Scylla has been quite willing to lie, distort, deceive and conceal what many of the arguments he cited were actually about.
Like claiming that Hitler’s main objection was to Marxism not the Jews (while forgetting to mention that Hitler clearly stated that Marxism was the Jews’ weapon against the rest of the world and referring to it as “Jewish Marxism”).
Or claiming that Hitler’s main point in the book was the necessity of National Socialism (while forgetting to mention that Hitler said that NS was necessary in order to combat the cancerous rot being spread in the world by The Jew).
Or claiming that Hitler’s views on trade unions were “reasonable” (while forgetting to mention that his views were that trade unions had to be used to smash the Jewish programs of control evinced by Marxist unions and that trade unions would then be absorbed into National Socialism whose whole purpose was to wage war against The Jew and restore Germany to what it was supposed to be before it was attacked by The Jew.)
Scylla is sure lucky to keep making quite so many innocent mistakes that just happen to help his apolgia.
For the record, as he’s continually lied, distorted, obfuscated, attempted to mislead and deceive and prevaricate, I do not accept his claim that he really meant to apologize for his apologist bombast all along and merely say that MK was effective and not reasonable, especially when numerous people were asking him if what he meant was that it was effective and not reasonable and he denied it.
He’s rather clearly chosen a path of baiting an dishonesty in order to try to annoy folks. I think he decided to be an apologist for Hitler’s politics only so far as he hoped it’d piss some people off.
Why, was Hitler defending Pat Buchanan?
My eyes glazed over about fifty posts back.
FinnAgain vs Scylla. The immovable object meets the immovable object. These guys are as stubbornly belligerent as an ill-tempered mule with OCD.
I disagree and think it’s more a question of premises. If one were to accept Hitler’s premise on race than the rest follows.
Late in Chapter II Hitler professes religious tolerance towards Jews and looks down on anti-semitism. I can get a quote if you would like?
True. He is describing his earlier position here. I just grabbed that as an example of something reasonable.
Yeah. The purpose of the quote was not to endorse Hitler’s philosophies, or give a lengthy explanation of their evolution but rather to give an instance of something reasonable. While I disagree with Hitler’s extrapolation here, again, granting his premises he’s making a rational argument.
Hardly. I didn’t mean to suggest that you had said that I’d written a word perfect communication, but simply that you got the gist of it.
I suppose you’re right.
Finn:
I look at your above barely coherent diatribes, and I get tired. You will never get back the hour (or however long it took to write them,) and in that sense, you lose.
Your main and original objection is one of semantics. I first said “not unreasonable,” later I was asked what I thought was reasonable, and I said “reasonable.” While you seem to understand the usage of the word as I meant it, you seem to feel this usage is offensive or improper, or proscribed in some way. It is a fundamentally semantic argument. It is pointless, and since you know what I meant, it’s dishonest and unworthy. You seem to like it though.
Now you’re arguing semantics with kaylasdad when he points out that contrary to your quote I did not say I find Hitler’s argument “perfectly reasonable.” Your logic in imputing that viewpoint to me is that I endorsed Frylock’s interpretation of my post wherein he said it was possible to make “perfectly reasonable” arguments for terrible conclusions. From this you now claim I think Hitler is perfectly reasonable.
Untangling this is more work than it’s worth.
Which premise? If you’re allowing him to take as given “there is an international Jewish conspiracy to undermine the German people” then I suppose it’s not very hard to make a reasonable argument that those dirty Jews ought to be killed. I’m a little unclear when this snuck under the umbrella of “reasonable.” Can you give an example of an unreasonable argument?
Knock yourself out. While you’re at it, maybe you can explain how it’s different from saying “some of my best friends are black” before launching into a tirade against niggers. I ask this in light of the conclusion to Chapter II:
In point of fact you said
The first part is true, Hitler argues that the worker needs some kind of protection in the workplace. Hitler is not, however, in favor of trade unions. He is in favor of a government office which will decide what is best for the worker and the employer and hand that decision to them as from on high. The business interests were originally supportive of Hitler because they were told that this office would, of course, favor the employer. After the Nazis had actually taken power they screwed over the industrialists just like they screwed over everybody else.
Quoting that passage and saying “this describes Hitler’s views” is like opening up the Summa Theologica and quoting
and concluding that Thomas Aquinas thought that God cannot be demonstrated to exist.
No, not necessarily. They could have opted out on reason.
The great management theorist Peter Drucker attended a Nazi rally during the 1930s. Here’s what the speaker said:
Now emotionally, that makes a great deal of sense. But the argument has nothing to do with reason and everything to do with the willing suspension of disbelief. To spell it out prices will go up, down or sideways – appeals to justice are emotionally fulfilling, but also complete red herrings.
I don’t think it did, nor is that really one of his starting premises. Off the cuff, I’d say that the germaine starting premises are, first, the concept of race and secondly the concept of nation which is the identity of a race.
Those are the starting premises.
From there, He argues that since the Jews have no Nation, they have no identity (strictly logical from the second premise.) Without a Nation there are parasitical upon other nations and the race’s that inhabit them, corrupting and diluting them. The connection across nations is what creates the conspiracy, etc. etc. etc.
So, you have “not unreasonable” stemming from the basic premises. I am not arguing that it is correct, laudable or anything else but an evil lie, an excuse. It is simply a well thought out and reasoned evil lie consistent to its basic premises.
All dogs are blue.
Jake is a dog.
Therefore Jake is red.
Well, since you’ve poisoned the well by saying it won’t show anything, I won’t waste the time to hunt for the quote. You are correct, it is no different. I’d use another example though. Often a bigoted man will claim prejudice is wrong before he launches into a racial tirade. That does not mean he was being wrong or unreasonable in that initial claim, does it?
I thought I’d conceded your point adequately the first time around. It was not my goal with that quote to summarize Hitler’s final undisputable feelings towards trade unions. It was simply to show a rational argument. It was, and what followed was arguably so.
I was in error to state that that was Hitler’s final stance on the issue, and I plead expedience as mitigating circumstances. Okay?
My first response is a joke:
You’re only saying that because you’ve never shopped at Walmart.
Then it occured to me that maybe it’s not a joke. Let’s try changing the words around.
“We don’t want fried food. We don’t want processed food. We want healthy food.”
Perhaps I’ve taken more liberties than I should in the alteration of meaning there, but I guess my point is that without defining National Socialist Prices we can’t really can’t comment on the reasonableness of the quote.
Secondly, perhaps the speaker is not attempting an emotional argument but a reasonable one. Another way to read the quote would be: “Bread prices are not the issue. National Socialism is.”
It’s obviously translated, and I don’t know the context or the rationale for the comment so it’s difficult to determine, but it doesn’t necessarily demonstrate an abandonment of reason. Just sayin’
And you believe those statements?
They’re a transparent ploy to show how, um, reasonable Adolf was in his early years, eager to love everyone, naive in his embrace of his fellow man, until his eyes were opened and he ceased to be “a weak-kneed cosmopolite” (that phrase sticks in my mind, for some reason). Another passage from Adolf’s Master Work describes how, during his Vienna period, he began to notice Jews on the streets of the city (Orthodox apparently, as the rest were good at concealing their horns and tail under standard garb). He relates how, when looking at them, he first wondered, “Are these Jews?” And immediately afterwards, “Are these * Germans*?”
I’d say there was just a wee predisposition towards hatred there.
Maybe you don’t actually believe he was a reasonable guy before politics and bad Viennese pastry poisoned his mind. In which case, why suggest it? Still defending a position that has long since slid off the cliff?
Says the guy who’s spewed out six posts since Finn last had anything to say. 
Dang, Bryan, who are those nasty people who forced you not only to continue following the thread, but to post yourself? Unconscionable, I say.
No. Jack. I don’t.
No shit. I said as much earlier, and again just a post or so ago when I said that a bigot will often say that prejudice is wrong before launching into a racial diatribe. The initial premise was still reasonable whether or not the speaker believed it.
I’m not sure what your point is. I realize it. I stated it.
Are you suggesting Hitler was a hater? Really? Wow. You think? You’re really not afraid of getting out there on the edge with your speculations, are you?
You’re just now considering that as a possiblity, Captain Obvious?
Again. Whether or not he believed it, or it was gratuitous, the stance itself (endorsing religious tolerance) was an example of something not unreasonable. I was asked to show what was not unreasonable. So I did. That’s why I suggested it.
You figured out that Hitler was a hater all on your own. You figured out that I really don’t think Hitler is an example of religious tolerance all on your own. You couldn’t figure that out?
It didn’t slide. It committed suicide after having to restate itself over and over and over to a few especially thickheaded individuals.
You miss the point. None of them were returning bile, or dealing with bullshit stupidity. So, I didn’t consider them a waste of time as would consider dissecting Finnagain’s.
This one, to you, does qualify as a waste of my time.
This gem (to Finn) bears repeating.
This represents an unconscious but staggeringly accurate moment of self-revelation. It’s precisely the sort of bullshit you’ve been engaging in since you first began excreting all over the thread.
No, mein Freund, it is not reasonable to pose as something you’re not (in Hitler’s case, being open-minded and unbigoted) in order to show how your views evolved by necessity. It’s just a sleazy lie, intended to draw in the gullible.
It’s beyond inanity for you to reapeatedly torture the definitions of a word and then accuse others of engaging in “semantics” (much as it would be fun to accuse you of being anti-Semantic :)).
And yet here you are.
Last bit of advice: There’s something to be said for being the devil’s advocate, if it sheds new light on a subject. There’s much less to be said for being a moron’s advocate (i.e. defending Pat Buchanan), especially when the stupidity rubs off so heavily on you.
Having read Mein Kampf 20 years ago, I was taken aback by how reasonable the opening was. I just assumed it was vitriol from the start. In the first chapter, he sound reasonable with his “Hey, Jews are like everyone else…” But it only took two to three more pages of reading to see it dissolve into white-hot anti-Semitism. I re-read those specific passages, trying to get a handle on Hitler’s sudden 180° turn with the Juden. . . it was like Chief Wiggum seeing a crazy street person and proclaiming, “I gotta talk some sense into that man!”
National Socialist prices are undefined. Fried food and processed food overlap. More to the point, they don’t fully cover the set of things called food.
Prices can increase, decrease or stay the same. Those are the only choices. Saying you don’t want any of them is simply taking a pass on reason. “National Socialist prices” are simply a nonsensical dodge in that context.
All orators may do that from time to time and from one extent or another, though this is a rather blatant example. My point though is that reasonableness is by no means a prerequisite for building a mass movement. I don’t think that’s controversial.
If you’re interested, here are my citations.
More broadly, it would be a mistake to focus unduly on Mein Kampf as a key to understanding Hitler’s rise to power. Sure it was a bestseller. But it was also presumably a book aimed at those who read books. As such, it is bound to have passages affecting a calm tone.
Disclaimers: I have not read Mein Kampf though, nor do I care to. (Lest that sound like a dig, I’ll note that the book was taught to certain classes in my high school. Reading primary sources can be laudable of course, but good historians take care to study a range of them. )