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Regarding Last Week's Letter
Defending Alanis Morissette
"Hitler was a
bad person. He was not bad because he was a German. He was bad because of who he was. It is sad that some people will hate entire
countries because of the acts of one man. You are probably pointing out to yourself that the country helped Hitler do what he did. I must point
out that it was Hitler that helped/made the country do what it did. That is my view on nationality."
Brooke Hagenow, from last week's mail
being english, and therefore perhaps, european, i have a slightly different view of hitler and germany, and i thought brooks hagenow should
hear it...
we demonise hitler because we find it impossible to believe that a majority of an entire western 'civilised' country agreed with him - they might
not have agreed with the extermination of the jews, many may not have known about it, but millions joined the army and marched into poland,
and into france... millions more made no attempt to stop him... we tend to forget that hitler was freely elected as chancellor, witht the president of
germany saying -- i'm sure we'll be able to handle him --- it just pisses me off that we demonise one man just so we don't have to offend our
consciences with the fact that most germans alive at that time were involved - german soldiers beat, shot and eventually gassed millions of jews
- they didn't all do it because someone had a gun to their head, and they didn't all do it because they passionately believed that jews were a
sub-species - they did it because man has an unquenchable potential for inflicting harm upon one another --- we may be the only species that
shows mercy, but we are certainty the only species that displays malice. [don't for a minute think i'm lessening hitler's involvement in the
holocaust or the war, just trying to say that maybe possibly the other 40 million people in his country had something to do with it] in 20 or 30
years, we'll be wondering why we didn't realise that the gulf war was waged, not just for oil, nor to protect the corrupt kuwaiti royal family, but
to direct our attention away from a second european holocaust -that carried out by [milo karadic? i'm AWFUL with names] in bosnia .... when
the full extent of his actions comes to light, we'll be unable to believe how much he did, and how little we were told about it...
and, by the way, i think ironic is alanis's best song, the lyrics never confused me, but the sooner she goes to some new-age retreat to grow old
and braid her hair, the better.
chris...
p.s. the world is still turning orange, and i'm still all out of marmalade.
Chris wrote a fine article for us a few weeks ago. -ed.
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