Hitler trivia time! (Gaming)

by davidfuchs , USA, Thursday, August 15, 2013, 10:06 (4118 days ago) @ MrPadraig08

The part about her thinking the game itself is racist sticks out to me as the common thing many people do which is avoid even the slightest appearance of racism rather than everyone learning to distinguish real racism. Talking about race and talking about individuals is not in itself racist. If a person of any race is a bad person is someone out there going to call that person racist for portraying their race as bad?

That's why I tend to hate political correctness, because it feels like an attempt to paper over our problems rather than confront them. Easier to be safe and never say anything that could possibly be construed as bad, right? The entire blog is full of stuff like this and seeing it come from a white woman does give me that sense of this person being terribly uncomfortable at a personal level.

I know that I've got Indian-killing, slave-owning ancestors in my family tree, and I don't fault them too much for their actions, nor do I feel that guilty about it myself. What matters is what we do in the present to right past wrongs. Overreacting to a video game is focusing on the wrong idea of what the problem is.

I hear ya, for a long time I mentally denied my ancestors could've been responsible for these types of things (and for the most part I'm off the hook, Irish immigrating into Canada then Boston and Italians that moved to Chicago in the 1930's), but when I met my great Uncle who I aptly call Colonel Sanders (white boss hogg suit and everything), it was hard to mentally deny that part of my family was deeply entrenched in the south and most likely owned slaves. I don't feel bad about it, certainly nothing I ever did or would do.

Righting the present and certainly the future is our duty, but it's difficult for me to understand how prevalent the use of past symbols and events to mean somekind of mantra.

I live in PA, a northern territory, I have seen more confederate flags in the field than in every history class I've ever taken. I don't really understand it as a symbol. It really can't be all racially based, there has to be something about government and freedom in there. But, I don't see people trying to take back swastikas from the 1940's (even if it meant something before in asian cultures.)

Something to think about.

The symbolism is a difficult issue. The swastika had (and still has) a whole of different meanings from the Nazis. It still has that meaning, but it's been tainted--the first thing anyone's going to think of when they see it is the Nazis (like how you couldn't name your kid Adolf nowadays without getting looks, although Adolf wasn't a great name to begin with.) Aesthetically, I love the German WWII uniforms, those of the SS in particular. But I have to realize that wearing such a uniform would, to a casual glance, appear to be glorifying a government that did horrible things. I think there's a balance between being mindful of other's reactions and tempering, if not censoring, your behavior, and not projecting your own biases and rationales onto other's actions. This doesn't really even have to be about racism, Nazis, or touchy topics: if I'm at the store, waiting in line with nothing to do but people-watch, I start coming up with stories. Why is that lady over there loud, fat, and obnoxious? I start thinking about them according to my own narrative, but what if she's overweight due to steroids she has to take for a medical condition? What if she's yelling at her kid because of lack of sleep and frustration about her dying family member or something just out of her control? I can't put myself in someone's head and say that they're flying a Confederate flag out of some racist impulse; I can only tell them that it gives off that impression for some legitimate reasons.*

*On the subject of Confederate flags, though, I don't like the arguments that it's about southern pride or unity. Fact is there was massive anti-war sentiment on both sides during the conflict; lots of white southerners were opposed to the war and fighting over slavery, after all they didn't have the same economic investment in it as the rich landowners did. Likewise plenty of northerners would take peace over emancipation; for all its historical flaws Spielberg's "Lincoln" showed this pretty well. A lot of those people flying the Confederate flags I think are just badly misinterpreting their own history, buying into a version peddled after defeat to add some nobility to the "lost cause" and vilify the North as the aggressors.

It's funny that you mention all this happening in PA though, just goes to show you how little geography really has to do with these sentiments. My mom's side of the family has 17th century roots in old Southern Maryland; knowing how southern that part of the state is you can see why John Wilkes Booth got a warm reception on his escape through there.

Fun aside: My grandfather's friend once had a conversation with Hitler and shook his hand. So all of you at HBOHIO who shook my hand can claim you are four degrees of separation from Hitler. :P