The Nazi were not something alien or foreign other. What they were was the worst qualities of contemporary western civilization inflated and focused inwards instead of outwards. They showed Europe and America the faults of western civilization (racism, bigotry, eugenics, scapegoating, nationalism, belief in "survival of the fittest") and that for all it's machinery and industrial power they were still capable of horrible evils.
If you respond by saying "Western Civilization is/was perfect!" then congratulations, you're the exactly the sort of collective narcissist that drives civilizations into the ground.
>>434286
Don't you have doors to knock on for the Bernie Sanders campaign?
>>434286
>Nazis
>very worst of humanity
>implying they were different from the Soviets/Japs/Americans
your liberal arts degree is showing
If you're interested in contemplating what the great wars meant in the larger context of occidental tradition as a whole, you should really read this book, OP.
>>434346
>>implying they were different from the Soviets/Japs/Americans
How much of his post did you read?
It sees the aesthetics of modern warfare as follows: if natural exploitation of the forces of production is held back by the ownership structure, the increase in technological substitutes, tempi and sources of power calls urgently for unnatural exploitation. This it finds in war, which with its destructions affords proof that society was not sufficiently mature to make technology its organ, that technology was not sufficiently developed to cope with society’s elemental forces. Imperialistic war is characterized in its ghastliest traits by the discrepancy between the hugely powerful means of production and their inadequate exploitation in the production process (in other words, by unemployment and lack of markets). Imperialistic war is a rebellion on the part of a technology that is collecting in ‘human material’ the ambitions that society has robbed it of in terms of natural materials. Rather than develop rivers into canals, it diverts the human stream to flow into the bed of its trenches; rather than scatter seeds from its aeroplanes, it drops incendiary bombs on cities; and in gas warfare it has found a new way of doing away with aura
‘Fiat ars – pereat mundus’, says Fascism, looking (as Marinetti professes) to war for artistic satisfaction of the different kind of sensory perception brought about by technology. This is clearly the culmination of ‘l’art pour l’art’ [‘art for art’s sake’]. Humanity, which in Homer’s day provided a spectacle for the gods of Olympus, has now become one for itself. Its alienation from itself has reached a point where it now allows its own destruction to be savoured as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order. That is how things are, given the kind of aestheticization of politics that Fascism pursues. Communism’s reply is to politicize art
>>434369
He's saying that their evil was caused by an embodiment of the worst qualities of these cultures, whereas I am saying that they were no more evident. The Americans had camps, the Japs had camps, the nazis weren't a caricature of the west, it was part of the whole.
>>434286
>gleened
>gleened
>>434381
Did you write this or is this an excerpt from something?
>>434509
Art in the age of mechanical reproduction
>>434488
Yeah, I get what you're saying. All fish are fish, right?
