Regarding nazi books, academics, etc

[Matthew Cissell]

Dear all,

    First I'd like to say that the BBC piece only showed change from 2000 to 
2010, it would be more interesting to see a greater scope of time and more 
about print run numbers. Also to get a good understanding of it all we would 
have to look at the publishing houses and the audiences they are targeting as 
well as the end buyer. The news presents the info as if there were some huge 
surge in interest in Nazis, a conclusion that can't be supported without further 
evidence.
    I don't think Nazism is "popular"; it is widely studied, but certainly not 
for the same reasons that Heidegger has his followers. Nor for that matter 
would I call MH a nihilist. On the other hand I wouldn't explain the book flood 
phenomenon as some "affinity" between the UK and Germany, and I certainly 
wouldn't take Carl Schmitt's view to explain the rise of Nazism. 

    That said I can relate to Michael's concern about certain academic's 
unquestioning use of Heiddeger. However, I won't try to convince them of 
anything, it would be like tryng to convince a Christian that god is dead.
    Michael, take a look at Bourdieu's "THe Political Ontology of Martin 
Heidegger" you might find it interesting. It is difficult and unhelpful to 
depict Heidegger's work as nazi philosophy, but still he was a nazi. Zeev 
Sternhell, with whom i dont agree about everything, wrote: "When Husserl spoke 
in Vienna, Cassirer was already in exhile in Oxford and Martin Heidegger was 
making speeches about the greatness of Nazism and the spiritual truth it 
contained" (p250). In the Vienna speech to which Sternhell refers, Husserl 
clearly takes a stand against "the irrationalism that is so highly esteemed 
today". Husserl ends that speech thus: "There are only two escapes from the 
crisis of European existence: the downfall of Europe in its estrangement from 
its own rational sense of life, its fall into obscurity toward the spirit and 
into barbarity; or the rebirth of Europe from the spirit of philosophy through a 
heroism of reason..."
    Heidegger was not a nihilist but neither was he a Nietzschean jasagender as 
some would pretend. (Not even Hannah Arendt could admit to herself what was 
clear to everyone else: Heidegger was a willing nazi.) He was an 
anti-rationalist.
    I wont say anything about Dreyfuss and others who continue to admire 
Heidegger.     

    A final note. Perhaps the nazi book publishing increase is due in part to 
the fact that so many peole throw the word nazi around. "Fascist" was once an 
insult used by the left, now it seems that reactionary types can call Obama a 
socialist one day and fascist or nazi the next. The widespread and 
indiscriminate use of the term nazi as an insult has caused people to wonder 
(given the imporatnce of the concept & its history) what a nazi is. Books flood 
the market in response.

MC
"The sin of nearly all left-wingers from 1933 onward is that they have wanted to 
be anti-fascisit without being anti-totalitarian."