Burke handles criticizing Mein Kampf in
a very objective and methodical manner. This feat is somewhat
impressive considering the negative emotional attachment people have
to Hitler and Nazis in general. He examined Hitler's quest to control
Eastern Europe through the eyes of a rhetorician and skilled orator
and finds that Hitler's success depended upon his ability to
scapegoat everyone but the Aryans and set up a binary opposition of
qualities amongst his group and their “opponents”. Burke argued
that this piece of the scheme's puzzle was the most crucial to set
down right. This idea of unification, both geographically and
ideologically, is what sets movements going forward. Burke even
fittingly quotes Hitler in his essay: “the efficiency of the truly
national leader consists primarily in preventing the division of the
attention of a people, and always in concentrating it on a single
enemy.” (Burke, 193)
Burke also mentions that Hitler was
helped out by the fact that Germany was economically struggling
before his reign. The people were desperate for an answer and Hitler
answered their questions convincingly enough to rally a nation of
poor (and as a result, gullible) around a common enemy. In effect,
Burke mentions that Hitler's antisemitism was ramped up to complete
this image of a binary opposition where there was none, the
definition of the illogical practice of scapegoating.
Furthermore, as it relates to the term
heteroglossia, Hitler's reign and style of warmongering unified not
only Germany, but did so by unifying the enemy in the eyes of his
German people. Hitler wanted to limit the number of voices/opponents
in order to hype up the power of the non-Aryans in the eyes of his
own Germans. By making the Jews seem like this big, bad unified
force, their “threat” was taken more seriously throughout Eastern
Europe, effectively making the “problem” seem big enough for
Germany to do something about it on a national, genocidal scale.
Hello! I think that something important that you had mentioned was how Hitler had taken advantage of Germany's situation to create a scapegoat in the Jewish people. Creating the binary opposition between Hitler's Germany and the Jewish people was the impetus of the entirety of WWII. It's seen as a horrible add on, but it united people together in a twisted way to hurt others.
ReplyDeleteI thought that it was interesting when you talked about the binary opposition Hitler created. It made me think of Derrida's concept of being defined as what we are as much as we are defined as what we are not. Hitler did these two things simultaneously, creating a sense of othering for both parties that played right into his hand.
ReplyDelete