You both raise some good points, but in your case you may at least understand what Hitler was trying to communicate when you decide not to adopt his view. To a

You both raise some good points, but in your case you may at least understand what Hitler was trying to communicate when you decide not to adopt his view. To answer your question, a bad situation in my mind would be something like this example: a few years ago a relatively bright friend who had worked for a famous national politician got into a disagreement with me when I referred to The Colbert Report as satire. He did not think there was satire or that Colbert was putting on another character for the show at all. I was a big fan of the show, but it was alarming to me how many people might not understand subtlety like satire in novels and movies. Maybe there was never a golden area when everybody got it. In Voltaire's day, did the majority of the populace comprehend his meaning? Were the majority even aware of his messages? I have always loved reading novels from an early age, and find them superior in understanding other people's ways of thinking. As advanced and educated as many people enjoy being in the 21st century, I fear too many might still not bother to dig deeper into the intentions of a writer to truly understand what they were hinting at. It's an excellent skill applicable to other areas in life, and with controversial topics it can really help to bridge the gap in a polarized debate. Hitler is an extreme, and I personally don't believe all writing is fundamentally good and edifying to your soul, but I do think effort should be made to understand an author, especially when the writing clashes with contemporary norms. You can still discard it after carefully weighing it, but if you discard it without giving credit to what the author was trying to say because you don't even understand it, that's a loss. These zealous critics could apply their same logic to cancel my beloved Huckleberry Finn, a book that shed light on injustice more effectively than most even though the author did not come from the same ethnic background as Jim.