IBM, Disney, Bush: Nazis?

[jbor]

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>From: Doug Millison <millison at online-journalist.com>
>

snip
> As so many of us point out so often here on Pynchon-L, Pynchon
> doesn't often go for the obvious jab, such as highlighting a direct
> connection between von Braun and Disneyland. I could make a credible
> argument, and I wouldn't be the first to do so, that Pynchon does
> "tar" Disney with the Nazi brush -- look again at Slothrop's E Ticket
> Ride through the Mittelwerke, and the way that Pokler's superiors use
> Zwolfkinder, with its clear echoes of Disneyland, as a way of keeping
> him under control and at the service of the Rocket.

Be that as it may, the von Braun/Disney connection isn't made in the
text(s), though both figure prominently. Further, Slothrop's E-Ticket ride
is orchestrated by the Allies. And Zwolfkinder doesn't connect Disney with
the Nazis in any way whatsoever as far as I can see.

> At least we seem to have gotten past -- I hope -- the suggestion that
> journalists and other writers -- you could number Pynchon among them,
> of course -- who bring this sort of information to light, who have
> uncovered these connections, are pursuing some sort of "hidden
> agenda" and using the history of Nazi war crimes and genocide for
> base motives.

Of course there are hidden agendas! The timing of the publication of the
book on the Bushes is hardly coincidental, surely! And, whatever Black's
credentials and motives, to get the book published there would have needed
to be an "angle".

I'm a little more skeptical than you are about the "general public" reacting
with disgust at connections made between Nazism and current political
figures and corporations. Particularly when all Allied governments of the
period similarly had "connections" with the Nazis.

best