Posts by Lucy Stewart
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Muse: Guilt By Association Copy, in reply to Chris Waugh,
Portraying the Nazis as anything other than fully human seems to be an attempt to absolve ourselves of the possibility of such evil, and that, to me, is far more dangerous than any multimillionaire owning a book that creeps people out.
The one WWII-related museum I visited in Germany - the exhibit associated with the rally grounds in Nuremberg - was designed to explain exactly how the Nazis had become popular and widely-supported in Germany over the course of the 1930s, and that had progressed into WWII and the Holocaust. It was thorough and interesting and pretty hard to deal with, but it never lost sight of the fact that ordinary people had enabled and accepted what the Nazis became.
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Muse: Guilt By Association Copy, in reply to Rich Lock,
In the process, they’re being diluted and turned into something fantastic (as in, a group of non-human fantasy creatures), by being turned into zombies, magicians, space aliens, etc.
I have been fascinated by the way that genre fiction over the last decade has come to the universal agreement that the Nazis were not just bad humans but literally demonic in some way, or at least trying to conjure some up. (C.f.: Hellboy, Charles Stross, Ben Aaronovitch...) It's almost medieval in the way it resorts to supernatural evil to explain human horror. And it's probably only possible, as you say, because most people who dealt with them as human beings doing evil to other human beings are dead, or very old. They're retreating into myth, in a weird way.
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Muse: Guilt By Association Copy, in reply to Keir Leslie,
It’s like the people who wander around saying that the Waffen-SS were, you know and after all, excellent professional soldiers etc. Sure, fine, whatevers, weird military historiography’s not my bag etc, but it’s also pretty damn suspicious.
Absent other evidence I find this sort of attitude less suspicious and more evidence of contrarianism above all else - "The rest of you just aren't capable of putting your emotional responses aside and judging them on their merits!", etc. People, find something else to be more-discerning-than-thou fanboys about, kthx?
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Muse: Guilt By Association Copy, in reply to TracyMac,
I dislike this whole thing of confusing someone’s (admittedly extreme) collecting tastes, and deciding that this is somehow worthy of public or political note.
I don't think this should have been muckracked into the public sphere in the way it was, but now it *has*, it's going to get discussed. But in my opinion it isn't (and shouldn't) be a dealbreaker for his political participation in this country, although it will probably lose (and gain) him a few votes here and there.
He’s also clearly an A-grade mischief maker – he just loves to throw a jolt into the squares (like teenage boys do). He’s made an entire lifestyle and career out of it.
Yep, this.
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Muse: Guilt By Association Copy, in reply to Sofie Bribiesca,
That should be fine to have an opinion huh?
I am pretty confident that it’s OK for me to hold opinions, yes, weirdly enough. I don’t think that my opinions are reasons for real-world consequences, however – people are entitled to collect these books* and there’s no reason they shouldn’t be. But I find it weird and creepy and I’m also entitled to do so.
*Again: the weird and creepy bit for me is the autograph, although if someone made a habit of collecting works by genocidal dictators in general, and wasn't making an academic study of them (or possibly even if they were) I would find that creepy, yep.
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Muse: Guilt By Association Copy, in reply to Sofie Bribiesca,
So what about his Churchill and Stalin books?
I'd pretty much feel the same way about an autographed book by Stalin, for the record. Or Pol Pot, etc, etc.
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Feed: My Life in Curry, in reply to Ben Chapman,
Admittedly, they are likely to be unripe, which perhaps puts them on the other side of the culinary fruit–vegetable divide.
Yeah, it's not quite the same thing as sultanas or ripe banana - different flavour profile entirely.
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Muse: Guilt By Association Copy, in reply to Russell Brown,
But huge material harm flowed from each of those. What material harm comes of Dotcom owning a rare, if clearly controversial, book?
No material harm comes from investing in companies that have stopped doing the harmful things – the spill has happened, the subprime mortgages are largely no longer offered – but you’re still investing in a company that has value partially because of actions they took that led to that harm, and the book has value because of, well, Hitler. It might not be technically unethical but at best, from my point of view, it’s utterly tasteless. That doesn’t mean it should be illegal – but like I said, any time you have to explicitly deny you agree with the Nazis…
(Note: for me, it’s not the fact he owns Mein Kampf, it’s a historical text, whatever; it’s the autographed copy bit that crosses whatever line there is to cross for an individual book.)
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Muse: Guilt By Association Copy, in reply to Russell Brown,
I don’t think that’s a valid comparison.
Okay, the exaggeration was over the top, but the point was that something can be an investment - a good one! - and that doesn't make it not distasteful. A better comparison might be banks that made subprime mortgages, or BP after the Gulf spill. Valid investments? Probably. Liable to make people form particular opinions of you? Also probably.
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Feed: My Life in Curry, in reply to Russell Brown,
Fruit in curries was quite clearly a thing. Like Susannah, I wonder if there’s some connection with the sweet, fruity curries of the South African Cape.
Or with the various raitas one eats with curry? I've had banana and coconut raita with various types of curry and it's pretty seriously tasty - the sweetness of the banana and creaminess of the yoghurt cut the intense curry flavour in a great way. C.f. also mango and lime chutneys and pickles. Eating fruit *with* curry is widespread in South Asian cuisine; apparently the British just missed the step where you don't cook it *in* the main meal...