I’ve seen this technicality before, but it always feels hollow to me.
Like yeah, hitler changed the world, but he was an opportunist at the right place at the right time when his style of rhetoric and politics appealed to a country going through the aftermath of a world war and the Great Depression.
He didn’t change the world because of something clever or intrinsically special about him. He wasn’t special at all. That’s what makes fascism so dangerous.
To describe him as a supernatural outlier of a person builds a myth that the things he did could only happen under the influence of a single charismatic person.
Putting him on the list and the cover gives him credit he doesn’t deserve.
Synthesis: 1930s’ Soviet Union had a ton of great men, but the material conditions lead to one of them, who was the most fitting for the situation, becoming the general secretary.
1920s you mean. By the 30s I think the only other old bolshevik leaders still around were Lazar Kaganovich and Kalinin. Maybe Molotov if you count him.
Edit: I tell a lie. Bubov was still in government until 36
Synthesis: 1930s’ Soviet Union had a ton of great men, but the material conditions lead to one of them, who was the most fitting for the situation, becoming the general secretary.
I dunno this still smells like idealist thinking to me, it implies the material conditions have some metaphysical power to guide the right people to the right place. Considering how chaotic internal party politics were at the time Lenin could have easily been replaced by Trotsky or some other dildo like that. There could have also been a better person than Stalin for the job we can’t really know for sure. Also I’d wager the USSR would maybe still be standing today if Lenin had lived longer than he had and planned the transition of power better.
Just the other day I had been looking for an excuse to complain about this:
This is offtopic, but the way that people whitewash the Weimar Republic by talking about Hitler like he was a wizard who cast a spell on Germany doesn’t just have the effect of obscuring the political-economic conditions of fascism and its connection to long-standing European society, but further feeds into a fetishistic reverence for Hitler that encourages modern readers to hang off his every word to try to understand how the magic works, effectively working to spread his speeches even further than they would otherwise spread and lending a gravity to everything he says because, as far as many liberal histories were concerned, what he said was literally magic. It seems like a choice of characterization deliberately made so that the sins of the past can happen all the more easily for having already happened once, rather than protecting society from it using our past experience with it.
Coverage like this rag provides is functionally carrying water for fascism by mystifying its causes
I’m an atheist, an anti-theist, and the first person to point out fabrications in the Bible (shout-out to all of Matthew’s testament on the resurrection), but there is absolutely no reason to believe Jesus wasn’t a historical figure
So what they have on this cover:
Jesus, a man who may or may not have even existed
Steve Jobs, a guy who did what exactly? Was a presenter for the iPhone?
Oprah, was a talkshow host.
What they don’t have:
The Red Army and the Allies, who saved the world from the Nazis
The essential workers who were forced to literally die or cripple themselves to work though covid and keep the world running.
They literally have Hitler right there on the cover
Hitler did change the world alright. Not for the better (quite the oppositie actually), but he did change it.
I’ve seen this technicality before, but it always feels hollow to me.
Like yeah, hitler changed the world, but he was an opportunist at the right place at the right time when his style of rhetoric and politics appealed to a country going through the aftermath of a world war and the Great Depression.
He didn’t change the world because of something clever or intrinsically special about him. He wasn’t special at all. That’s what makes fascism so dangerous.
To describe him as a supernatural outlier of a person builds a myth that the things he did could only happen under the influence of a single charismatic person.
Putting him on the list and the cover gives him credit he doesn’t deserve.
No one is. Like the OP said. Great man theory, the magazine.
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Synthesis: 1930s’ Soviet Union had a ton of great men, but the material conditions lead to one of them, who was the most fitting for the situation, becoming the general secretary.
1920s you mean. By the 30s I think the only other old bolshevik leaders still around were Lazar Kaganovich and Kalinin. Maybe Molotov if you count him.
Edit: I tell a lie. Bubov was still in government until 36
I dunno this still smells like idealist thinking to me, it implies the material conditions have some metaphysical power to guide the right people to the right place. Considering how chaotic internal party politics were at the time Lenin could have easily been replaced by Trotsky or some other dildo like that. There could have also been a better person than Stalin for the job we can’t really know for sure. Also I’d wager the USSR would maybe still be standing today if Lenin had lived longer than he had and planned the transition of power better.
Just the other day I had been looking for an excuse to complain about this:
Coverage like this rag provides is functionally carrying water for fascism by mystifying its causes
It is one thing to recognize him and it is another to honor a place for him on the fucking cover. I don’t know, I just very much don’t like it.
Don’t be so dramatic, Hitler and Oprah are basically at the same level.
Ikr, what a joke
I’m an atheist, an anti-theist, and the first person to point out fabrications in the Bible (shout-out to all of Matthew’s testament on the resurrection), but there is absolutely no reason to believe Jesus wasn’t a historical figure
I play obtuse just to piss off Evangelicals.
I can’t fault you for that
Yeah it’s there’s broad consensus on the historicity of Jesus as a man who definitely existed