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Hitler Quote Controversy In the BSD Community
New submitter Seven Spirals writes: Recently, the FreeBSD folks have removed Fortune with a fairly predictable far right 4chan condemnation. Then last weekend saw a lively debate on NetBSD's current-users mailing list about the inclusion of Hitler quotes in the Fortune database with dozens of posts falling on the left and right. The quotes themselves are fairly tame material probably intended as cautionary. However, the controversy and the reaction of BSD users has been real and very diverse. So far, the result has been to pull Fortune out of FreeBSD and to relocate the quotes into the "offensive" database in NetBSD's case.
...briefly what fortune is in this context (as in, the Unix program, not the magazine, town, or band):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortune_(Unix)
In FreeBSD's Fortune database (a database of quotes that are randomly shown in some areas of the UI for entertainment purposes, such as on login for example), there were quotes from Adolf Hitler (and some of the ones linked in TFS were incredibly sexist). They were finally removed even though there was a code commit to do it 12 years ago that was rolled back. The alt-right was angered by this. The quotes were moved into an extension of the Fortune database where offensive material is contained.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Here is a list of quotes that were removed. I am not sure if this is all of them, or just a sample:
"Everlasting peace will come to the world when the last man has slain the last but one." -- Adolph Hitler
"I shall give a propagandist reason for starting the war, no matter whether it is plausible or not. The victor will not be asked afterwards whether he told the truth or not. When starting and waging war it is not right that matters, but victory." -- Adolph Hitler
"Success is the sole earthly judge of right and wrong." -- Adolph Hitler, "Mein Kampf"
"The very first essential for success is a perpetually constant and regular employment of violence." -- Adolph Hitler, "Mein Kampf"
"A highly intelligent man should take a primitive woman. Imagine if on top of everything else, I had a woman who interfered with my work." -- Adolf Hitler
"What luck for the rulers that men do not think." -- Adolph Hitler
The last quote (men do not think) is likely a fabrication. There is no record of Hitler ever actually saying or writing it.
https://svnweb.freebsd.org/bas...
I think it's not exactly sincere Hitler supporters that are the only ones that could think the change a bad idea. I would think pretending those things were never said because we are hurt they were ever said is harmful for the future. Lest we have public figures repeat many of those patterns without recognizing the problem because we bury our heads in the sand at the past when it offends us.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
What does the 'S' in NSDAP stand for?
It stands for "Something that we say we are, but are not"
They did like to appropriate Socialist language when attempting to market themselves as being a "workers party," "of the people," and so on, as a way to paint themselves themselves as the middle road between the old-gaurd Nationalists upon whom they placed blame for the country's failures and the Communists who they saw as their main rivals to replace the Nationalists. Despite the marketing/rhetoric, nothing they did from a policy or governance standpoint stands out as more Socialist than any other European state of that era. They lied,
all the time, whenever they thought it would benefit them. This was no different.
There are many different flavors of Socialism in the world today, mainstream European Social Democrats, Berners who want to import that model to the U.S., Syndicalists in labor movements, Anarcho-Socialists and Autonomists who end up having a lot in common with Libertarians, and so on. While there are a few State Socialist/Leninist/Maoist hold-outs like Cuba or Vietnam, many countries successfully apply Socialist principles to certain national industries and infrastructure segments where market forces have historically produced bad outcomes, but leave things more or less to individuals/the-market otherwise.
No one before or after has ever used "Socialism" with the same context or connotations as the NSDAP, except people wanting to disingenuously tar Social-Democrats with Nazi associations as an ad-hominem rather than engaging with their ideas.
Dinesh D'Souza wrote an entire book on this subject, called "The Big Lie".
oh, you mean it's not about his extra-marital affairs?
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
Or more correctly, all fascists started out as marxists. Marxism being a genocidal ideology that veils itself as utopian to seduce the terminally stupid.
This is a blatant lie. The Stalin quotes were removed 1 day after the Hitler quotes:
https://svnweb.freebsd.org/changeset/base/325828
Here's the full diff.