I decided that these merry days leading to Christmas, when we're infused with positive sentiments and hope for humanity, are as good as any other to read… #Hitler's _Mein Kampf_.
😲
Not really! In fact, I'm a bit embarrassed to leave my e-book reader lying around so that others can see what I'm reading… But my Theory of Reading actually supports and encourages reading _anything_ that has been very influential (for good or for ill) regardless of its literary merits, its veracity, its applicability today, or its moral qualities.
Not to put them all necessarily in the same bucket, but I have read _The Iliad_, _The Odyssey_, _The Communist Manifesto_ and _Atlas Shrugged_ — and I would read _The Bible_ and _The Quran_ too: all of them #books that are ( in a way or another) wrong, false, corrosive, harmful, evil, racist, sexist, pro-violence, or pro-war — or even all of those things at the same time!
Granted: #MeinKampf may well be the wrongest among the wrong books… And in a way, that contributes to making it “useful” as a reading.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/64930929-tripu?shelf=currently-reading
@tripu there was a dude in college I knew from my medieval course that said similar things. Granted he went on to discuss other things that he felt the book got right. I feigned interest and we lost contact. I wonder, what is he up to these days? Is he like that handicapped individual (he is physically disabled) in the 300?
@caranmegil What “handicapped individual” “in the 300”?
@tripu the guy rejected by Spartans who switched to the side of Xerces
@tripu except that it gives you singular insight into the soul of a revolution that took Germany by storm. It is so interesting to see that ideas as expressed in that book were so extremely infectious and then it makes you wonder why.
The journey that book takes you on within your mind is quite a journey.
@Hyolobrika Absolutely.
Lest we forget.
A huge minority of Americans apparently didn't know their history when they supported the previous president. His political playbook was essentially Mein Kampf -- he just changed "Jews" to "Muslims" and changed "Poles" to "Mexicans".
@tripu once I tried but besides being plain evil it's boring and obnoxious af. Ao couldn't finish it