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Not antisemitic, just that it ignores Jews, who were Hitler's bête noire. There is a tendency to ignore the fact that Jews were a special target and say "Hitler
by josh_fyi 4y ago
Not antisemitic, just that it ignores Jews, who were Hitler's bête noire. There is a tendency to ignore the fact that Jews were a special target and say "Hitler did bad things to people." (The USSR was especially bad in this.) Kind of like "All Lives Matter" -- a fine slogan, but sometimes (not always) it holds a willful ignorance of specific suffering.
- rgbrenner 4y agoThe world is completely unaware of concentration camps at this point in the war. It literally just started 6 months before his review.
- detaro 4y agoPersecution of Jews in Germany didn't exactly start with the concentration camps... By 1940 it had been going on for quite a bit.
- sillysaurusx 4y agoBut why do we need to be mentioned simply to be mentioned? I don’t understand why it was a bad thing that Orwell didn’t mention Jews in this essay. The essay was about hitler’s appeal as a leader, not his specific goals.
- anigbrowl 4y agoTrue, but recall that the holocaust hadn't happened at the time Orwell was writing and the extent of conditions for Jews inside Germany wasn't fully known to the degree that it is now. In 1940 it probably looked as if Hitler had leveraged antisemitism to get elected and consolidate power, but then moved on from oppressing minority groups to a broader program of international aggression.