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Nobel Winner Says Internet Might Have Stopped Hitler
There can be little doubt that the internet has changed everyday life for the better, but Nobel literature prize winner Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio has upped the ante by saying an earlier introduction of information technology could even have prevented World War II. "Who knows, if the Internet had existed at the time, perhaps Hitler's criminal plot would not have succeeded — ridicule might have prevented it from ever seeing the light of day," he said. I have to agree with him. If England had been able to send a "Stop Hitler Now!" petition to 10 friendly countries, those countries could have each sent it to 10 more friendly countries before the invasion of Poland, and one of history's greatest tragedies might have been averted.
this discussion is done now.
it's been happening well into the days of the Internets Revolution and nobody's done a god damn thing about it
Obviously. The minute Hitler saw how many members the "We dont lkie ppl kiling jewz!!!" Facebook group had, he'd have thrown in the towel right away.
Im sure that many aspiring dictators are foiled by the internet. Rather than stage political coups, they're all too busy trolling and participating in 4chan...
Im in ur internet, stopping ur warmongering mustache
I think there's a lot to be said about just giving something news coverage. My coworker made the comment that sometimes it's ok--maybe even better--to just ignore the news and relax. I had to disagree with him. I pointed out that even today a lot of things happen and giving them coverage on the news would be fighting half the battle. Being in the minds of the general populace is indeed a powerful thing.
... Despite what I was told as a child, he assured me that very few German infantry fighting abroad were full fledged Nazis. He claimed there is evidence these soldiers with Jewish ties were moved away from the homeland for this purpose.
...
Take for instance Mark Twain & King Leopold of Belgium destroying the Congo Basin. Mark joined a group and tried to just inform people of what was going on. He wrote a pamphlet King Leopold's Soliloquy: A Defense of His Congo Rule in which a monologue dripping in satire of the King defending himself was designed to inform not only Americans but by and large his own people--who were unaware of the campaigns as they never saw the money. Were it not for a few brave people that could not be bribed, that information might never have gotten out! And think how easily this pamphlet might have been distributed across the internet!
And yet today, the campaigns were run so well that we don't know for sure how many millions were killed or had limbs hacked off and I don't recall it being mentioned in my primary or secondary school history books. Left largely unknown to me until relatively recently--much like the Philippine/American War & Iran/Iraq War.
To say the internet may have stopped Hitler may very well be an understatement. A Russian classmate of mine informed me that in some Eastern European countries, there are memorials for German soldiers who fought and died against the Russians. "But I thought they were Nazis!" I remember saying. And he laughed and asked me if I really thought that tens of millions of soldiers--some with Jewish friends/relatives--were really all killing Jews or knew of the extent of the camps. He told me that some soldiers had convinced the local people they were intending on liberating areas from Russian threat. What followed certainly did seem like a Russian threat
So I am in no doubt the internet--an advanced dissemination of information--at anytime of war would help people collectively discuss and understand and do the right thing. I only wish I could have written a review of Mein Kampf for Germans to read before so many of them bought into it
My work here is dung.
Nice sentiment, but we have the internet now, and yet still, right this very second, the genocide in Sudan and Zimbabwe is very active. Not to mention the fact that the internet existed in the 90's, yet the 90's saw the worst genocide since the Holocaust and Pol Pot, with the (very preventable) genocide in Rwanda.
So, yeah. It's a nice fuzzy sentiment, but the recent and current active acts of genocide in the world are pretty clear evidence that it's just not true.
Yes, that would have stopped him and all his fanatical support.
He is wrong, of course. If he was right, the Neo-Nazis and other such groups would also die under the heat lamp of the internet... the Scientologists would fail to gain traction and influence as well.
I think the influence of the internet is over-estimated by this guy. Give me the nobel money... let'm keep his medal.
. If England had been able to send a "Stop Hitler Now!" petition to 10 friendly countries, those countries could have each sent it to 10 more friendly countries
So an internet chain mail would have stopped WW2. Right...
Newsflash : Hitler didn't cause WW2, he was the catalyst. The root cause of the war was the german people's resentment of the Versailles treaty, and particularly the war reparations and the way the French treated the Ruhr people when they failed to pay up. Hitler was considered slightly ridiculous and bizarre until he started to tap into the boiling anger the germans had inside them.
It can! Think about it, Hitler was an artist first, got stymied in that (due to lack of talent). The genocide and warmongering came afterwards. If the internet had been around, he would have been able to get his art published online and his art degree from university of phoenix. Even if he still got rejected from art, he may have set up an emo myspace page, an antisemitic/ conspiracy theory blog, and troll on /., and that would be as far as it got. In other words, if he had an outlet for his crap, he might never have gotten around to taking control of the government and the holocaust.
The internet: great at distracting would-be dictators with pr0n, lolcatz, and angry blog posts.
Maybe the Internet can invent a time machine, send a robot back in time to kill Hitler's mother and save us all from the horrors of WWII?
Dude, we tried that, and it SORTA worked. In the original WWII, Hitler won.
In fact, look at Obama's rise and the fervor people have for him. If you'd prefer, look at Ron Paul. These examples obviously don't have the maliciousness of Hitler, but it does show how stars and cults of personality can form rather quickly. If anything, I'd think that it would have helped him overall.
You won't find that in the history books
I found those in my history books and my history teacher made sure to mention it specifically. I even grew up in one of the most conservative counties in the US.
Strange... I read this in many history books. Here in the US. High school and college. I even was required to write a paper on it. Where did you go to school?
-Arthur
Cave ne ante ullas catapultas ambules
Of course like we all know what went wrong in world-war 2 was a single man. How realistic does that sound.
We all know what the problem was, what caused world-war 2 : an ideology. There are however 2 problems many people have with that : ... now the effects are known ... not so much)
1) it is the very basis of progressive ideology that "all ideologies are equal" (of course except anything that's not currently identified as "progressive". Example : eugenics was very progressive in the 1930's
2) the name of that ideology of hitler was national socialism. Of course progressive ideology is socialist.
I personally think we're not just going to see just how wrong this claim is. That the internet not only does not prevent racist and abusive ideologies from spreading, but that the internet can actually make ideologies spread faster, hit harder and with less that can be done to stop it. Also the internet makes sure that the size of an ideology does not have to be that big anymore for it to do real damage : having few members does not prevent communication like it did in the 1930's.
We will see that more ideologies, instead of just islam, will find the means of terrorism. They see the success terror can give an ideology, and some people will stop at nothing to push their ideas on others. The internet empowers these people, it does not weaken them.
Two points to consider:
1) Hitler actively embraced the newly emerging mass media technology called television. He also loved to make radio speeches.
2) Hitler was effectively elected dictator.
Hitler gained power through brilliantly capitalizing on the fear and discontent of inter-war Germans. He did that by USING mass media. If anything, the Internet probably would have helped him get his message out even more effectively.
Would it have slowed him down after he gained power, started the war and started doing the really nasty stuff? Probably not. You don't think Hitler was going to post on his blog about his death camps, do you? Or let any other eye-witnesses post on THEIR blogs?
1) Hitler actively embraced the newly emerging mass media technology called television. He also loved to make radio speeches.
And if you can't see the difference between a medium that lets a central authority send out messages and one that lets everyone else send messages, you missed the point of the internet.
The only question that remains is if the modern internet existed at the time of hitler, would it have stopped him, or would he have managed to filter and censor it.
"the great firewall of Germany"
See point #2. Hitler enjoyed widespread and overwhelming support. If you'd been reading an Internet forum discussion at the time it would have been full of people talking about reasons why you should help vote Hitler in.
I can feel the internet as it stops repression in Russia and Belaurus. Oh yeah, I can feel it! It's really working!!
Its far more likely, Hitler would seek to control the Internet in every country he controlled. It would be a dream come true, for the Nazis to monitor all communications. Hilter did after all, try to create a Totalitarian level of control, even without the Internet!. The Internet (for all its early utopian dreams) is (as the news is showing) turning into a means to monitor and datamine large numbers of people, in an automated way, while providing an automated means to censor anything they wish to suppress from within their own country.
Its extreme idealism to believe the Internet would therefore stop Hitler and fails to take into account Hitler's nearly Psychopathic behaviour.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy
"The psychopath is defined by a psychological gratification in criminal, sexual, or aggressive impulses and the inability to learn from past mistakes. Individuals with this disorder gain satisfaction through their antisocial behavior and also lack a conscience. Psychopathy is frequently co-morbid with other psychological disorders (particularly narcissistic personality disorder). The psychopath differs slightly from the sociopath, and may differ even more so from an individual with an antisocial personality disorder diagnosis. Nevertheless, the three terms are frequently used interchangeably."
I think Hitler qualified for aggressive impulses! (to say the least!), plus an extreme lack a conscience, combined with extremely narcissistic perception of his own importance!.... give that kind of person a means to automate the control and suppression of anyone who attempted to speak out and the Internet would allow the creation of hell on earth!.
By the way, while Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio is a Nobel prize winner, he is a Nobel literature prize winner!. Getting him to quote on technology and psychology, makes about as much sense as asking a Nobel Peace Prize winner to carry out Brain Neurosurgery!.
Hitler was Avantgarde. He and his marketing-message of merging socialisim and nationalisim was super-hip back in the day. And don't dare think for a moment that it only was hip with the Germans, no Sir. Aside from a sophisicated marketing machinery he was a breathtakingly unscrupulous dictator. He killed off the entire SA leader-cadre right after scoring the Machtübernahme. EVERYBODY knew he did it and ALL were scared shittless to even say 'Peep'.
Goebbels would've built broadband to every home and casted speeches of the Führer to every household and make the web a cornerstone of some Kraft durch Freude programm and at least 50% of the people would've loved him for it. And the rest of the world would've admired the Germans.
No, folks, Hilter, Himmler, Bormann and the Nazis were a very special type of evil people and they were outstandingly good it. Bin Laden, Ayatolla Comeni and Co. look like orphans compared. I have no doubt they would've use the Internet to their advantage and excelled at it.
Think todays Republic China or a healthy version of North Korea with the brakes removed and fueled by a nation of well educated people known for their drive towards technical perfection in most aspects of life - very much as the Germans are generally percieved - and you get the picture of what the Nazi Regime was made of. If anything, something like the internet would've fueled their agenda. I have little doubt in that.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I created a new utility suite based upon the idea that we can go back in time and create the internet before Hitler's rise;
C:\>rping Adolph Hitler -t 12-09-1932/17:32:00
Reverse Pinging Adolph Hitler with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from Adolph Hitler: bytes=32 time=76 years, 0 hours, 0 minutes, 0.000 secods TTL=64
Reply from Adolph Hitler: bytes=32 time=76 years, 0 hours, 0 minutes, 0.000 secods TTL=64
Reply from Adolph Hitler: bytes=32 time=76 years, 0 hours, 0 minutes, 0.000 secods TTL=64
Reply from Adolph Hitler: bytes=32 time=76 years, 0 hours, 0 minutes, 0.000 secods TTL=64
Ping statistics for Adolph Hitler:
Mode: Crazier than a shithouse rat
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in years:
Minimum = 76 years, Maximum = 76 years, Average = 76 years
I was going to send a reverse-bootp to his mother and hope he would have been hatched.
Tisha Hayes
See point #2. Hitler enjoyed widespread and overwhelming support. If you'd been reading an Internet forum discussion at the time it would have been full of people talking about reasons why you should help vote Hitler in.
I agree he still would have been elected.
However his support might have evaporated when news and photos and video of what he was actually doing in a lot of places after things got rolling were communicated to those people. He might not have gotten nearly as far as he did.
There are lots that say it could never happen in america because the military would never follow those orders. But the reality is, you could separate the military into the groups that would and the groups that wouldn't, and then deploy the groups that wouldn't of communication with home (helped by controlling the media), and then set the group that would to doing the atrocities you could get away with it. Hitler did just this.
The internet would have made it impossible for the portions of the military that wouldn't have gone along with it from being so completely out of the loop for so long. Even if you control the media, the truth still moves around on the internet.
Hitler would have had to censor / filter / and discredit it. It would have been an additional challenge at least; at best it might even have stopped him. But China is the obvious counter example.
What a random and unsubstantiated thing to claim. This reminds me of hippies who say the entire world would be peaceful if we all took LSD.
OMFG, YES!
Thank you for this post. I'm a child of an American soldier and a German mother. My German relatives were good people in every sense of the word. Wouldn't hurt a fly - literally (my great grandmother would catch flies and put them outside rather than kill them. She would sneak food to a russian soldier captured in the town because she felt sorry for him, despite the risk of the crime of treason). My grandfather fought in WWII on the german side and had lots of stories to tell.
I asked them all about WWII when I was a child and they said that honestly few people really knew what was going on with the concentration camps and such. It was as much a surprise to them as it was to the world at large when the story unfolded. I spent quite a few years conflicted because I thought they must be lying, until I decided the evidence available to me first-hand was superior to the much larger pool of second-hand evidence (ie. the popular media). They really didn't know what was going on, because they were just ordinary people living their lives as best they could.
This is why things like Gitmo really bother me. I never really understood how Nazi Germany could come about until I was able to witness the GWB administration first-hand. Consider that in the modern age we probably know more about Gitmo than the German populace knew about concentration camps in their day. We have a "secret prison", yet it has persisted for years and nobody has managed to shut it down for the outrage that it is.
This story really makes me wonder what the world would be like right now if it were not for the internet. Maybe all those apocalyptic sci-fi stories I read as a child would have been more prophetic than we thought at the time ...
Example : eugenics was very progressive in the 1930's ... now the effects are known ... not so much)
I don't think most people really know what eugenics is, or the beliefs that are behind that sort of thinking... nor how close most people are today to being just as firmly believing in eugenics and it's backing ideologies.
if Hitler had the technology we have today, maybe he would've conquered the whole world.
Hm. Do we have an example of the Internet's influence on war? Say, Iraq? It stopped the US from invading under false pretenses, right? Nope.
It might have helped stop the abuses at Abu Ghraib. On the other hand, the story was quite successfully suppressed by the US authorities until it was broken by a foreign news service. There weren't so many of those active in Nazi Germany.
Hm. Do we have an example of the Internet's influence on war? Say, Iraq? It stopped the US from invading under false pretenses, right? Nope.
No, but I think coverage of the war has made invading Iran a lot less palatable to American's.
It might have helped stop the abuses at Abu Ghraib. On the other hand, the story was quite successfully suppressed by the US authorities until it was broken by a foreign news service. There weren't so many of those active in Nazi Germany.
The internet helped get the news out. It did take a bit of time for the US mainstream to pick up the story (a delay at the request of the DoD according to wikipedia), but pressure was building up, they couldn't have kept the lid on it indefinitely.
And the US media is generally still pretty 'free' and trustworthy all things considered, and if it were believed to be nothing more than a mouthpiece for the state, the population would seek out and beleive foreign reports -- something they can do thanks, in large part, to the internet. Nazi germany had no alternative... either you believed what the media said or you didn't, but there wasn't any other source of news.
Gee, I get the same Mode when I ping George W. Bush. Nice to know the Internet stopped him from doing anything crazy or illegal.
Fortunately, the internet counters this empowerment of sociopaths by increasing the opportunity for exposure to different ideas, and by applying social pressure to the particular information that gets spread widely.
People have always been able to isolate themselves with like-minded kin, in the forms of cults/religions, and in the education/brainwashing of their own children to raise people with similar ideology. If anything, a vulnerable individual participating in an online community is much less isolated than one participating in an actual cult, allowing them access to a wide range of information sources which will inevitably conflict with any ideology too far removed from common social norms. As a group tries to expand itself through online recruitment, they must ultimately advertise their ideology on more general interest sites, where they will have to compete with arguments from people with more socially acceptable views.
In any online forum where individuals interact, there is always a pressure to conform to social norms (in the sense of avoiding sociopathic tendencies that negatively impact other individuals, not necessarily any kind of moral judgment on socially acceptable behavior, the latter of which is widely open for discussion). On Slashdot, for example, any antisocial commentary is immediately moderated down to invisible comment purgatory (for those with default viewing prefs). The same holds true in most other forums as well, even in the case of those forums without peer moderation, as antisocial behavior is repudiated and/or ignored (if they don't get themselves banned). The pressure to avoid sociopathic ideology is very real, and almost completely ubiquitous on the web.
The way information spreads on the internet today is that individuals are determining which information appeals to them, and either passing it on directly to their social connections, or flagging it of interest on social news sites. Inevitably, information that is socially positive will spread much more readily than sociopathic information, which simply dies a quiet death of irrelevance. Most people outside of an ideologically homogenous group will simply not spread antisocial information, making it quickly fade away with counterarguments and resistance once one tries to spread it beyond that group. The fact that information fed to people on the internet must go through a populist filter to be widespread means that sociopathic ideology hardly stands a chance at mass-appeal. Increasingly, only a secular humanist agenda has any chance of making it to the mainstream through internet information distribution. There will always be small groups of gullible or brainwashed outliers, but they will always be just that, and popular sentiment will inevitably be against them. In the context of the article, in reference to an entire society adopting a sociopathic ideology, I would argue that the decentralized nature of information distribution on the internet, dependent on populist appeal, is absolutely a very strong check against widespread antisocial ideology.
"I like systems, their application excepted", George Sand (French)
Hitler would have fit right in on 4Chan.
I strongly agree with your post, other than to say that it's still possible to be isolated on the internet. Closed groups and forums with selective membership can still be a breeding ground for antisocial tendencies. They can slowly absorb people with like minds, while simultaneously rejecting those people who may offer counter arguments to their ideals.
I do agree that the internet does make this harder to achieve than, say, compared to the environment of early 20th century Germany.
I just hope the Internet can stop (prevent) World War Three
Hitler was constantly trying to goad countries into war before his own imagined death, rushing Germany's military buildup forward without financial regard. It's really impossible to declare that the Internet could have "stopped Hitler" because his was the kind of personality that dictated such grand world plans. He had a future planned for the German people extending beyond his life.
The way he took control of his party and eventually his country might even have been empowered by the Internet. I suspect Hitler would have exploited such a communication medium. I think the Internet strengthens cults of personality as much as it exposes criticisms of them. To act like we're in such a great, enlightened time is silly. In my opinion, the Internet has made people even more gullible in many ways.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Ubiquitous encryption and darknets are gonna make this effect even more pronounced. Insular groups will be able to get more insular, requiring closed circuits of credentials and so on.
But likewise, their grip on their own members must weaken; In 1939, a German youth who doubted what he was being taught, would know better than to ask the important questions or search for validation for his misgivings. But if he were able to talk anonymously and securely on /b/ with some proxies Yer durn tootin' the opposition would have new and powerful ways to associate.
I guess I'm saying you got the nail on the head.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
Show some respect. Idle is helping to protect you from Hitler.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
My grandfather would agree that most soldiers weren't "fully-fledged" nazis (being still alive at the age of almost 90). He had to fight in WWII, and with "had to" I mean they didn't give him a choice. It was either you fight for the nazis or you get a bullet through your head. It wasn't like you could apply for service in the army, and they would kindly let you in, instead they grabbed everyone who could hold a rifle. He and his father actually were against Hitler, and tried not to support him. The result: His father got into a camp were they beat him up until he changed his mind, my grandfather had to stand (like in not allowed to sit down) in class because he refused to join the Hitler Jugend. Maybe, with the internet, they could've organized some resistance. On the other hand, there's a great risk involved in doing something like that in countries ruled by a crazy dictator.
My grandfather died in a concentration camp. He fell off a watchtower.
Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It's what separates us from the animals... except the weasel."