> the brutality of the Caesars, the Chinese emperors, the Comanche [...] we can speak of them dispassionately, as non-temporal observers [...] but mere broaching of the subject of the Nazis requires confession that, let's repeat it in unison, they were evil.
There's the thing about temporal closeness and impact on actual politics and ideology. Nazism and Fascism's brands of ultra rightwing ideology still looms large in part of the world.
And there are still people alive who lived through some of the horrors the Nazis inflicted upon the world. None lives today who saw Caesar's dictatorship. Nobody, to my mind, seriously worships Imperial China or wants a return of the Caesars. There are no Comanche atrocities apologists (of note).
But Nazism and its modern day offshoots are still worshipped by enough people that every mention of people related to Nazism must be peppered with these disclaimers. It's important to note Von Braun was an unapologetic nazi and that he should not be celebrated as a person.
It's also funny to brand Caesar as an evil dictator. He was a revolutionary with very benevolent tendencies, both toward the masses and to his enemies. Dictatorships like Sulla's, which came before, were the brutal ones. What the people back then saw Caesar as was as a populist hero fixing a crumbling, broken, and corrupt system. Later, the people of the Empire would think back of the Republican era as one of horror and chaos -- because that's what you get with mob rule.
It's all very relativist.
I think, in the far future, people will regard the Nazis as a point on a continuum and all current governments today as not that far away on that continuum -- not like we do, thinking Hitler was the devil.
Also, both Caesar and Hitler were products of their environment. Normal people responding a certain way to their circumstances. Maybe it's more productive to regard that environment as "evil" than raising people up to Anti-Christ status when the environment churns them out. In Caesar's case, that was a broken senatorial system and a provincial military system not designed to deal with how large and ambitious Rome started getting; in Hitler's, it was how brutally the European powers treated Germany after WW1 and the nearby rise of communism.
I agree that, with enough distance and with no danger of another Hitler, future historians will be able to see that dark period in human history more dispassionately.
We're not there yet, not when this is still relatively recent history and when we haven't yet dealt with Nazism's offspring.
> Also, both Caesar and Hitler were products of their environment. Normal people responding a certain way to their circumstances.
I don't know about Caesar, but I certainly don't buy this argument for Hitler. The minute he supported the Final Solution or decided to get rid of 80% of Eastern Europe, he crossed the line. There were people at the time of Hitler, even in Germany, who were horrified by Nazism -- not as in "I don't agree with this", but "I cannot believe this is happening". Some were executed for objecting to it. I'm sure more were silently horrified, not brave or reckless enough to openly reject it, but in private repulsed by it. There were people who hid or helped Jews (and I'm not arguing here Jews were the only victims of Nazism, mind you!).
Hitler was a product of his time and upbringing, but he was also an evil man. There are no excuses for the Holocaust or Generalplan Ost or the many evils of Nazism, when we know people from that time were horrified by it. Evil may be banal, as Arendt put it, but it's still evil.
> Nazism and Fascism's brands of ultra rightwing ideology still looms large in part of the world.
Not as distinct from basic impulses we can detect in all periods. These terms we use (rightwing, fascist) are new terms for ancient political dispositions. If I describe someone as imperialist, patriarchal, sexist, antisemitic, and racist, am I more likely to be talking about the Nazis, the Romans, the Egyptians, the Abbasids or the Puritans?
> Nazism and its modern day offshoots are still worshipped by enough people that every mention of people related to Nazism must be peppered with these disclaimers
My understanding of human psychology does not incline me to think this is a remotely successful strategy.
> Not as distinct from basic impulses we can detect in all periods
I disagree. Nazism and Fascism are largely influential today but Caesar isn't.
> My understanding of human psychology does not incline me to think this is a remotely successful strategy.
I cannot vouch for your understanding. I do know Nazism and Fascism must be loudly denounced whenever found. They must not be allowed to fester in the darkness.
There's the thing about temporal closeness and impact on actual politics and ideology. Nazism and Fascism's brands of ultra rightwing ideology still looms large in part of the world.
And there are still people alive who lived through some of the horrors the Nazis inflicted upon the world. None lives today who saw Caesar's dictatorship. Nobody, to my mind, seriously worships Imperial China or wants a return of the Caesars. There are no Comanche atrocities apologists (of note).
But Nazism and its modern day offshoots are still worshipped by enough people that every mention of people related to Nazism must be peppered with these disclaimers. It's important to note Von Braun was an unapologetic nazi and that he should not be celebrated as a person.