Text, technology, and the Jewish Question.

So I have been remiss in my lulz, no? That is all right. Because much like the Gestapo, if you leave them alone long enough, the lulz find you and kick your bloody door in and relocate you to some ghetto.

So today, the ghetto in question is the Walled City of the Huffington Post, which has the benefit at least of being a blog full of opinion articles, and only barely pretends to be a legitimate news source (CNN, Fox, I am looking at you), and the lulz are found via Alan Kaufman's post thereupon about how the kindle is to books like the NSDAP is to the Jews. No, srsly.

Normally, we would giggle, Godwin, and go home, but Das Kainenchen felt moved to comment on some of the more egregiously alarmist and flat out hilariously wrong points here (i.e.-- the difference between a mandated purge and the expansion of a medium). And there, in the comments, we came upon This, from the author:

As not a few comments on this and other sites have invoked Godwin's Law in response to my article, as though it were Holy Writ, I've fornulated my own law:

KAUFMAN'S LAW: "Efforts such as Godwin's Law to thwart the finding of contemporary relevance in the Holocaust is a form of Holocaust denial."

Now wait just a cotton pickin' second there, son. I don't think that means what you think it means.

For starters, what we have here is good old Reducto ad Hitlerium-- you know, the Hitler wore pants arguments. Hitler burned books, so anything that might possibly be of percieved harm to books = Hitleresque. Quid pro quo, Clarice. Sometimes he still hears the books screaming at night.

For the moment, I shall dispense with the argument as to whether I think the kindle causes harm to traditional books (I don't, quite the opposite), or even whether I agree with the point that having all of one's texts available solely through controlled (digitally licensed) media is worrisome (I do, but note the qualifier) and deal with the above truly lulz-worthy statement.

There is a difference, and while that difference may be utterly lost on tehs intertubes, it is yet a profound difference-- between Thought and Godwin. It is one thing to genuinely examine the causes of National Socialism and how the Fascist expression thereof became the Holocaust as it happened in Nazi Germany, and to wonder if such a thing could happen Here and Now-- and if so, how it could, and why, and what factors might lead to it. It is one thing to wonder if there are not elements of our society that might not, left unchecked, lead to holocaust-like purges-- for example, the examination of American internment of Japanese people in WWII, or the worries about the treatment of contemporary Muslims and/or Arabs in light of the actions of a few. It is quite another thing to compare any random thing one doesn't like to a bloody, unilateral, government sanctioned relocation, enslavement and massacre of a race/religion. Even-- perhaps especially-- when said massacre is personally relevant to your own history. I understand the emotional resonance of invoking such a horror for... you know, whatever (even books, physical books, which are a thing that I love), but one must be judicious not only in the subject of the comparison, but also in the way in which the analogy is carried out. I don't think it is too much to ask that the analogy be... I don't know, relevant? That one not have to reach to draw parallels where what parallels there might be are so tenuous as to be completely irrelevant. Else, the discussion, when there is something important here becomes weakened, pathetic, a breeding ground for lulz. Like here. The import of the Shoah is lessened, the import of the issue the man actually wished to discuss is lessened. Houston, We have Doing It Rong.

To take that a step further and to say that calling Godwin's is Holocaust Denial is lulz of the highest order. The whole point of Godwin's Law is that petty and trivial things-- faith, anything short of wholesale slaughter or the path thereto (barring slippery slope fallacies like this one here) is probably petty and trivial by comparison. This is not Holocaust denial. It is a ridicule of someone's use of the Holocaust to validate their own point, whether that point be sketchy or valid.

And as to what I think of the point... well, that is not a matter for Dead Nazis, but rather a tl;dr.

ETA: Even better, I seem to have been banned from commenting on yon post, which makes me wish hard that I had saved my comment to post here or on Tl;dr. Cozya-- it was largely about how book replacement wasn't mandatory or otherwise being enforced by a government, so who were the great Technocratic They waging this war against the real book, citing some books that I can only get in e-format. Eh, it was probably Das Kainenchen's username (deadnazi) what did it. /sigh.

Station clarification.

Feeling googleicious. Today we whip out the reminders:

What is Godwin's Law?

Tell you what-- Ask Mike Godwin!

Long live Usenet.

You can't have it both ways.

For those who are going to protests carrying things like this:






And touting more of this kind of crap, I have a bit of a semantics lesson for you. Please to be paying attention to the Gauleiter in the Jackboots. There's a love.

Just because National Socialism has "Socialism" somewhere in the name... well, this does not make it actually socialist. There were some things about socialism, sure, that NSDAP embraced-- community, unity, workers working solidly together for the universal betterment of their country, and putting their country before all other concerns... well yes, in theory. However, this was a Single Party System that got rid of all other parties and put a dictator in charge. That makes it fascist.

This thing you're talking about with Obama? Not fascist. Hell, George Bush wasn't actually fascist, though the post 9/11 lingo has a little bit more in common with fascism... well, with National Socialism in particular... than what is going on now. Why and how can I say this?

Because the man went away when his term was over. As will Obama. There's still multiple parties in your shiny Amerikanner guv'mint. Go figure!

At the end of it, like it or not, you may find yourself with affordable access to health care, even if you have a shit retail job. This is a leftist ideal, by the way... that the government has the obligation to provide health care to all of its citizens, regardless of who and what they are. And without radically re-defining who is and isn't a citizen either, like *koff*some people*koff* did. National Socialists are, by definition, so far to the right they make your silly republicans look like Engels supporters. We killed communists in ways Joe McCarthy only wished he could. You don't know about our anti-communism, bitches.

To say that some of us know better now would be an understatement. But I'd like you lot drawing little scrub moustaches on Obama to consider whether or not you're doing it because you have any idea of what Hitler's party stood for and can argue, in good conscience, that they have thing bloody one in common, or if you're doing it because dad gum, dem lib'rals did it to Bush and Hitler has come to represent to you lot Everything Evil Ever? Just think on it.

Though really, if you're going to use someone to represent Everything Evil Ever, I still think you'd do better going with Himmler. The sick sadistic little fuck.

On youtube, everyone can hear you godwin.

So you've probably all seen This story, by now. But let's go forward a moment, to a video:





And some commentary that says it far, far better than I ever could:

Wanting to overhaul our completely fucked up health care system is not. the. mother. fucking. same. fucking. thing. as. Nazism.

Fucking. Hell.

You may think because World War II ended 60 years ago that your slinging the term "Nazi" around like a goddamned tether ball won't hurt anybody but, maybe, a few decrepit veterans and Holocaust survivors, who aren't paying attention, anyway. You fail to realize that the descendants of these veterans and survivors (and the descendants of the millions of non-Jews the Nazis murdered) are countless. We are part of this debate too, and we are listening to you as you pout and scream and wave your little posters. Some of us were probably even in that same hall as you when Barney Frank asked you what planet you came from. In fact, one was. Frank himself is Jewish. And if you think that misusing a term like Nazi in front of him didn't affect him, think fucking again.

Indeed. What planet are you from where you can afford to be so blisteringly ignorant about a war that is still very much affecting not only survivors and their descendants, but world politics? What planet are you from where it is acceptable to take a specific and very, very loaded term like "Nazi" and twist it to mean "someone we don't like." What gives you the right to do that with equally specific and loaded terms like "fascist" and "communist" and "Bolshevik?" (Not that I hear the last one so much, given that you probably wouldn't know how to pronounce it).

That right there? That's what I'm fucking talking about. And for those derailing the um... necessary and important conversation about health care with accusations of nazi-ism like it has shit to do with shit:





Barney Frank FTW.

Der Specialday.

So another year flies by, and it's time for the anniversary of our favorite winfail: The July 20th assassination plot!





I think tonight, I must needs rent Valkyrie and have cake.

Yeah, always have to trot out the demmed cake. I suppose it's better than the pants of assassination, huh?

All right, all right, I'm done.

Begin the Lolocaust.

So you know, if I was making a Time-Travel-Romantic-Wtf? movie about the Holocaust, I would totally cast Britney Spears as the female protagonist.

You know, for the lulz.

Somewheres over the rainbow...

There's lolz, then there's laughing at other people's stupidity.



I believe in the invisible pink nazi unicorn.


Oh shit, now the secret is out. The SS?

Totally shit outta clouds by pink nazi unicorns. The faerie farts of the SA.

This is undoubtedly Ernst Rhoem's revenge.

I miss Rhoem. He threw the best parties.

U can tell by teh pixelz....

From just about everywhere:



Mmm, tastes like clone tool. Now this right here? This is some LULZ. One way or the other. I guess they couldn't figure out cropping, but they had all this clone tool there. And a touch of blur. Either way-- I mean, whether there's an innocent explanation or not-- That's some funny shit right thar.

Also, torir.org. Spread the knowingz.

At the Risk of Godwinning a Movement...

So if you're online at all, you probably know about what goes on in Iran, right as we speak and for the last few days. Please to be forgiving the Kainenchen for being a bit behind on this one-- the politikkks, in any real way, we usually leave to others, of a more legitimate and less lulzy nature.

That said, there comes a time when even the lulziest among us must learn to turn our laughter in the proper directions, and back it up with Ways You Too Can Help!

Set up a proxy server for Iranians-- using squid! Here find some happy instructions for doing these things!
iran.whyweprotest.net-- Ways techy folks can help out. From Our Best Friends. Also a good source for pictures and video.
Best practices for those outside Iran wanting to help!-- general guidelines and the like.
Follow @ProtesterHelp on twitter. From there, you can probably find the other good folx to follow.

Also, because we cannot do these things without some awesomeness and lolz...

Grand Ayatollah Husayn Ali Montazeri tells the Iranian army and police that "I was just following orders" will not cut it with Allah. Iran election/revolt thread, Part IX


OH NOES A MOUSE!
Good Karma to @SeanPercival for teh lolz.

This has been your dead little voice in the dead little darkness, nothin' but love for my Persian Homies. Peace.

i got nuttin.

Life has been short on lulz lately, I know. This is sad. There is only one solution:


Godwin Everything.


For great lolz.

Peter Jackson + Zombies + Nazis + Time Travel + Celluloid = LULZ.

More shit we can't even begin to make up.

All I know is that if this happens, Das Kainenchen is so there.

I'd like to take it down a notch, whaddya say?

Yom haShoah, y'all.

It's Holocaust rememberance day. Read you some Maus, Light you some candles, watch some producers, laugh till you cry, obey your yetzer ha-tov, shun the yetzer ha-ra, don't be forgettin' now, y'hear?

This is a little of what we do here. No, it is what we do here. Under all the tanks and the lulz and Darling Adolphe's dancing Stormtrooper Review and Krystallnacht Cabaret, we are telling and retelling the tale of some funny little men who were nevver quite laughed at enough, not in the right way. Should we laugh at the holocaust? I think so, because it helps us cry better. Many times, laughing allows us to cry when we can't do anything else. It allows life to continue. You bury what hurts you under layers of thick and unspeakable black, and you cringe and crawl away from things that bring it up again, you lost that. I wish the Germans laughed more. I wish the Germans had laughed more back then. A proper sense of the rediculous might have awoken the people in Germany, in Austria, and in Poland particularly to the farce in which they were taking part before it became the tragedy that it ultimately became. But anyway. You forget, you try to forget, you just want to forget.

But laughter, you don't forget. Even the painful laughter. So laugh, darlings, laugh and never forget. It doesn't make it okay, but it does allow us to go on and remember both at the same time.

Until tikkun olam,

Shalom Alecheim.

Just sayin',
K.

Fo-twenny.

I have very little to say today.

So I'll just say (based on a hitler_lolz post):





Have a spliff, big daddy.

A little bird killed you.

Things dead nazis like:

• Tanks.
  
• Schapps.
  
• sendups of 'the downfall'
  
• Twitter
  
• Boots
  
• lulz
  

Ja, we have a twitter now. Why?

I don't have to answer your damn questions!

And today's "The More You Know" Win goes to the British school system today, since a whole fuckton of British kids seem to think that Auchwitz is a kind of beer.

Ferserious.

It estimated that among Britain's 4.5 million 11- to 16-year-olds, 90,000 believed Auschwitz was a drink and 45,000 thought it was a type of bread.

...

Ninety seven per cent, however, were able to identify Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler from a photograph.



Tastes like liquid doom.

Internal Documents.

There are some more serious, 'Things that Kind-Of Make Kainenchen Cry in a Sad Way' things to include eventually, but before that. Before that. We stumbled on one of DarlingBoss's old memos. You know, the sort that used to get fwded around the old Wulfschannze, before the propaganda ministry vetted everything. For all the good that ultimately did. But I digress.





Of course, this is exactly what happened.

(tip to Johan Gasmask and also Cracked.com)

P.S.(Though Himmler's paper? Even worse better. And he made you eat it after you read it.)

P.P.S. My my-- 100th post! Surely that calls for... no, no, I can't link it again.

Till you can't dance no...

I told you it would be soon.

Das Kainenchen has been having far too much fun over at Obamicon.me, and apparently, so have quite a few of the Darling Adolphe Dancing Stormtrooper Review Fan-Club and Sewing Circle! Let's see some of their masterpieces:



Ich bin ein Berlimer.


Guess she told you.

I'm not sure what to say about this one:


For some values of 'visionary'. YMMV. Mine ran out of gas in Poland.

Here's another which skirts the line between amusing and being facepalm-fail:


So... what exactly are we trying to say with this piece?


Finally, an answer to that age old question (well, not my answer, but still...):



This calls for...

DANCE PARTY:



(and be sure to check out The Original Dancer of Pants offa Churchill all grown up.) Lol, awesomeface.

Why they can't do this whole rock you till dey mock you shit to Napoleon is beyond me. Nappy and Hitler should so form a rap group together...

Hm.

Stay tuned, mine kinder.

Why dead nazis <3 Cake Wrecks.

Without them, we could never have known about this:




Which makes us feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Hearty Dankes to this post.

This cake = not a lie.

(and yes, I am wondering wtf reichcakes!?)

Expect a Darling Adolphe post sooniche, by the by.

Norwegian Nazi Zombies.

You can't make this shit up.

Mostly I love how booze and teenage sex bring the zombie nazis back to life. Priorities FTW.