Thanks, Guys....
Originally Posted by MikeF
Well, I can "explain" it, but I doubt that explanation would be the "truth"Definitely are marct question.
For a start, "Germany" (more properly the Germanies) has had the snot kicked out of it for the last 1200 years or so (and the Russians thought they had it bad!). They were also ruled by the sorriest lot of idiots for most of that time - people who made Attila look like a bunnies and light nice guy. At the same time, they did have a few rulers who could find themselves without 20 servants to point the way... Frederick Barbarossa comes to mind.
If you look at Germany mythography, the image of the strong man - heroic Leader (capital L on purpose) - is very apparent, and Hitler certainly played on this mythography quite heavily. By contrast, if you look at US mythography, the "leader" motif is played out in a character who is "self made" or, if from one of the elites, has at least got his "hands dirty doing real work" (think JFK or Senator McCain on that one).
Back to Hitler for a moment....
If you read Mein Kamp, especially Book 1, Chapter 11, Hitler was drawing on a conspiracy theory explanation for why the German people had been so downtrodden. He also gave his followers a well understood scapegoat, one they were very familiar with, and wrapped that conspiracy theory in a mantel of pseudo-scientific BS (I'm not going to go into the origins of it) that gave it a cachet of "validity" to go along with its already fitting into the cultural matrix (especially in Bavaria).
In many ways, Hitler's propaganda campaign is quite related to the takfiri junk being spewed by AQI. They are both revitalization movements; they both have an identified enemy, and they both hearken back to a "Golden Age".
As do I...
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