5 ms·

I just looked that phrase up. That’s some supremely bad taste from the author.

mjlee 8y ago
To be fair, you had to look it up. It's possible if you didn't know it was in bad taste you'd have repeated it in the future as well.
- JHonaker 8y ago
  Yea but when I did, I couldn’t really find any reference to it devoid of Nazi association.
  - depressedpanda 8y ago
    Since you needed to look it up, how about you give the author the benefit of the doubt rather than act so offended? Now, if the quote had been "Arbeit macht frei" I would understand the outrage, but to me the English translation sounds more like a reflection of the Calvinist/Protestant work ethic from the time when the saying was minted, at least 100 years before the Nazis rose to power. To some people the quote in itself holds appeal, and why shouldn't it? If read without context it is actually quite inspiring.
    - king_panic 8y ago
      I didn't need to look it up to know what it meant. Although I can easily see the author didn't mean to insult, it's offensive.
- normal_man 8y ago
  Anyone with a basic modern education should know exactly what that phrase references. It's like pretending "that's all, folks!" doesn't immediately evoke Looney Tunes
  - fny 8y ago
    I'm Jewish and I didn't know what that phrase references, and I've also been to many Holocaust museums.
  - detaro 8y ago
    > It's like pretending "that's all, folks!" doesn't immediately evoke Looney Tunes It doesn't for people who haven't grown up with Looney Tunes. You're on a fairly international site here. Similarly, you can't expect everyone's education about the Holocaust to have covered this specific thing in a way they'd reliably remember and avoid an embarrassing mistake like that.
dokem 8y ago
Correct, you get to decide what the author meant and what his motivations were. It's not that he pulled an ambiguous, five word, phrase out of the back of his head. One which we've all heard and are all only vaguely familiar with. No, the author is actually a closeted racist. He chooses to push his racist agenda, not through directly communicating his ideas, but by using banal, dated, phrases which have a racist context which most people are not familiar with. It's really not possible to use these five, every-day, words in that sequence without summoning all of the racist intensity and hatred which some people attached to this sequence of words some time ago when most of us weren't alive.
- king_panic 8y ago
  You do not understand the distinction between insulting someone and offending someone.

To be fair, you had to look it up. It's possible if you didn't know it was in bad taste you'd have repeated it in the future as well.

JHonaker 8y ago
Yea but when I did, I couldn’t really find any reference to it devoid of Nazi association.
- depressedpanda 8y ago
  Since you needed to look it up, how about you give the author the benefit of the doubt rather than act so offended? Now, if the quote had been "Arbeit macht frei" I would understand the outrage, but to me the English translation sounds more like a reflection of the Calvinist/Protestant work ethic from the time when the saying was minted, at least 100 years before the Nazis rose to power. To some people the quote in itself holds appeal, and why shouldn't it? If read without context it is actually quite inspiring.
  - king_panic 8y ago
    I didn't need to look it up to know what it meant. Although I can easily see the author didn't mean to insult, it's offensive.
normal_man 8y ago
Anyone with a basic modern education should know exactly what that phrase references. It's like pretending "that's all, folks!" doesn't immediately evoke Looney Tunes
- fny 8y ago
  I'm Jewish and I didn't know what that phrase references, and I've also been to many Holocaust museums.
- detaro 8y ago
  > It's like pretending "that's all, folks!" doesn't immediately evoke Looney Tunes It doesn't for people who haven't grown up with Looney Tunes. You're on a fairly international site here. Similarly, you can't expect everyone's education about the Holocaust to have covered this specific thing in a way they'd reliably remember and avoid an embarrassing mistake like that.

dokem 8y ago

Correct, you get to decide what the author meant and what his motivations were. It's not that he pulled an ambiguous, five word, phrase out of the back of his head. One which we've all heard and are all only vaguely familiar with. No, the author is actually a closeted racist. He chooses to push his racist agenda, not through directly communicating his ideas, but by using banal, dated, phrases which have a racist context which most people are not familiar with. It's really not possible to use these five, every-day, words in that sequence without summoning all of the racist intensity and hatred which some people attached to this sequence of words some time ago when most of us weren't alive.

king_panic 8y ago
You do not understand the distinction between insulting someone and offending someone.