We’ve been living under Hitler’s spell – time to wake up

Hitler’s age was not thirty and forty: it was our own life. It began in the forties, continued in full swing in the sixties, and now it seems to end.

In the post -war age, Adolf Hitler Our most powerful, unifying figure has been. It continues to be our touchstone and return. In a world where we cannot be understood on anything, we can almost accept it in condemnation. Everyone who defends Hitler reveals that they are a monster. When we want to condemn someone, we almost instinctively compare them with them. The indisputable evil makes it a unique fixed reference point in our moral landscape.

For example, as soon as Russia occupied Ukraine in 2022 Vladimir Putin as Hitler He began to appear – Putin himself harshly (and ridiculous) his The purpose of war was to “sea”. Hillary Clinton He compared Donald Trump to a new Hitler and compared Trump’s 2024 rally at the Madison Square Garden in New York with a pro -Nazi rally in 1939. Boris Johnson compared the EU with Hitler; On the contrary, during the height of Brexit Rancor, he was regularly depicted with a toothbrush mustache. Even now, it seems that we define our values ​​with reference to the Nazis. We can’t shake our magic.

I remember first I heard Hitler’s name in the late seventies. I think I was about six years old. I asked my mother something like this: Who is the worst person so far? So, who else could he choose? Who else would you choose? The next memory flash – even though it was months later – asks him: has no one wrote a book about Hitler? At that time, I remember feeling that the second question was a little embarrassing. My instinct was that it was wrong to write a book about a bad man; It was wrong to even learn more about him. But my mother surprised me by pointing to our book shelf, and in the naked surface capitals with that terrible name in the spine: my father’s area Bullock’s 1952 biography Hitler: A study in the persecution. “Oh, yes,” he said, “There is a lot.”

There is really more and more every year: not just because Hitler is a very big figure, but also because I am not the only person who finds his evil fascinating. We cannot stop re -invention of the story and story and the eternal rich story of war against him. After a lifetime, films, books, more documentaries than ever have come to come; According to the program of the history channel and the list of many publishers, Second World War It is almost the only event in the history of humanity. And historians have to share Hitler with storytellers and legendary makers-anyone who wants to harden everything they do with cheap moral souls. Sauron, Daleks, Darth Vader, Lord Voldemort: All, clearly and embarrassing Nazi tribute movements.

Hitler’s age is the age in which Western winners of the Second World War determine the conditions of global speech. Many of us experienced most of our lives during a broad and stable consensus during our most basic shared values. Human life is basically equal value; All people have fundamental and non -transferable rights; Our lives, our bodies and our conscience belong to us and anyone else. These facts seem open to the point of banality. However, most people in most periods of human history have not believed in such a thing.

And consider what will happen when anybody refuses to follow the alleged anti -Nazi values. For example, at the end of the nineties, in Zimbabve, Chengeli Hunzvi moves especially in the name of a brutal practitioner Robert MugabeHe was accepted and exalted in the name of “Hitler”. He pointed to the rivals of the regime to scare them and challenge any criticism they could flatten. It worked at this level. Nevertheless, for the rest of the world, he strengthened the view that Zimbabve’s rulers were only predators and contributed to the international stage of Mugabe’s externalities.

It is rare to deliberately align yourself with Hitler. More commonly, humans or movements discredit themselves with the repercussions of unwanted or poorly bondless nazism. The most prominent examples of this tend to many people. Anti-Israeli and anti-reactionary movements To be stray or jump around the world Open Jewish anti-Semitism. For most of my life, in Western societies, people who broke these taboo automatically excluded themselves. A sign of the end of the Hitler Age, this tab is clearly rotting.

The warrior can activate our anti -Nazi antibodies. Vladimir Putin may be surprised that the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 came together with such a surprising Western reaction than he was taken by him. War in Chechnyaor his Crimean annexation. However, these previous actions did not include a full -scale, unpretentious armed invasion of a neighboring sovereign state. When Putin tried such an action, he triggered Europe’s 1938-40 collective memories.

I am not the first person to realize that the modern world is engaged in Nazism or that the Nazis have a major role in our morality. But people who refer to this point often come from one end of the political range. Take French writer Renaud Camus, as the creator of Nail Chillious Extreme right conspiracy theory ‘big backup’: Führer’s career burned what he called “Adolf Hitler’s second career, as a moral symbol. Camus and other activists annoy how the Nazism ghost is called when immigrants propose the mass deportation, the liquidation of the judiciary or to restrictions on the religious freedoms of Muslims. These people believe that we stop afraid of the crusaders of the crusader.

This is not my opinion. I don’t want us to learn the lessons of Nazism, the lessons learned at such a terrible cost. It is the beginning of wisdom to recognize Hitler as representing an extraordinary evil. However, this recognition is not enough. Simply, knowing that Hitler is a monster is not a enough guide for the world we live in. In the UK, our instincts have long been to compare every crisis with World War II: we even tried with Covid-19 in a ridiculous way. There are some evil that Hitler’s age does not prepare for us to confront us and some misleading lessons that he taught us. “Nazi!” He shouts. There is a desperate way to deal with each other with our economic, environmental and demographic crises. And the rejection of the knee tremor of “sooty” is a weak guide for international relations in its own, in its own nuclear age.

Our values ​​are more fragile than we think. I feel like what is right and wrong, our deep beliefs about justice and human rights, timeless, clear facts, and we cannot help look at the ancestors who have no witnesses. Also, now we have grasped these facts, we cannot help believe that you will never leave them. Of course, people will always believe in democracy and human rights; Of course, does the arc of the moral universe bend towards justice? But this is clearly wrong. Our values, values, values ​​are the result of a certain historical process, a process in which the Second World War is decisive.

And now these values ​​are still in motion. On the right, Europe and beyond, the taboo almost went against parties with the smell of fascism. They play with Trump’s AColytes “Hitler Salutes” and the like, because they enjoy spreading their rivals with anger. In the meantime, on the left, the new identity policy of race and gender, simple equality, the desire to be blind, or anti-Semitism at all costs, such as the beliefs that are an extraordinary evil to be prevented. Indeed, both sides did not start anybody’s surprise Spitting poison about the Jews Again.

[1945-of-1945cannotbeabletodoso[1945sonrasıfikirbirliğinindevametmesinisağlayabilirizancaksavaşyaşayanhafızanınkenarındandüşüyorİsterbeğenyadabeğenmeHitler’inyaşıNazilerleolanhayranlığınahlakihayalgücümüzehakimolduğuyaşsonaeriyorSoruşu:Sıradaneolacak?

Hitler Age and Alec Ryrie (Reaction, 15.95 £) will be published on July 1 we will survive. Alec Ryrie will talk to the Oxford Literature Festival on July 30th. Tickets: Tickets: oxfordlieraryfestival.org